Ephesians 6:4 ESV
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
In America we have one day a year where we celebrate our
Fathers. It is called “Father’s Day.” And for those who had good and not
negative experiences with their fathers, it is usually a day of good memories
or of good times in the present day. But not everyone had a father, or if they
did, not everyone had a good father. Many of us had abusive and hateful fathers
who did not love us at all.
Now when this talks here about fathers not provoking their
children to anger, but bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of
the Lord, this is saying, I believe, that there is a difference between
discipline and abuse. Abuse is usually done in anger and plain meanness, for no
thought for what the parent is actually doing to the child, and it can be very
selfish driven. Now true discipline should be painful, to a certain extent, but
it should be pain which is related to loving correction, and not in rage or
selfishness.
Now my father was an abuser of the worst kind. He abused
some of us sexually and all of us physically and emotionally, and “us” includes
my mother and all four of my siblings. And we never knew when he was going to
blow up at us, and it could be for nothing we did at all, but sometimes it was
just what he created in his own mind, or because we didn’t do something his
way, the way he thought it should be done at the very second he wanted it done,
and I am not speaking of us disobeying him here.
I will give you an example. This one day he wanted me to get
a book for him out of a bookcase filled with books. Now he could see the book
he was pointing to, but I saw a whole bookcase full of books and I didn’t know
which one he was pointing to, so I didn’t go grab it because I didn’t know
which one he meant. And so as I stood there trying to understand which book he
wanted, he knocked me over the head with his fist. I got hit in the head a lot
when I was a child.
And here is another one. Back in my day we didn’t have
dishwashers. My sisters and I were the dishwashers. One of us would wash, another
would dry, and the other would put away. And we would rotate these chores so
that we didn’t all get stuck with doing the same job all the time. But sometimes
my sisters wouldn’t get a dish clean, and so I would hand it back to them to finish
washing it before I dried it.
So, this one day when I was the one washing the dishes, I had
missed washing the back of the spatula when I handed it to my sister to dry. It
still had grease on it. But rather than handing it back to me, she showed it to
my father, I think out of spite, which she admitted many years later, and so he
swiped me across the face with it. And that’s just the minor stuff. For he was
particularly physically abusive to our mother, beating her regularly. We never
knew when his fist would strike, and so we lived on edge and in fear.
But then I grew up and I got married and I moved out of my
father’s house. And we only lived in my birth city for about 8 years after that
before we moved south permanently, well, at least for the next 34 years, we
did, until my husband retired. And so I only saw my dad maybe once or twice a
year after that, and it was limited visits. But on Father’s Day I always felt
obligated to send him a card, and that was a painful experience for me.
And maybe you can identify with this. But I would go to the
card shop and pick up a card and it would talk about the wonderful father I had
and so I would put it down and pick up another, same scenario, and so I would
pick up another, and the same. Not one of them expressed the relationship I had
with my birth father. And that was a painful experience to go through year
after year after year. And then the Lord gave me permission to not get him a
card at all, for that holiday is just a human tradition. But after some time of
healing I went to getting him a more generic card just to show him love.
So, if you identify at all with any of what I have shared
with you, I empathize. I feel your pain. I hope you have come to a place of
healing and wholeness and that you are no longer living in that pain. But I
know that Father’s Day is still not a day of celebration for you unless you can
find something you feel that you can celebrate.
For me, I just found things that my father did that were
unrelated to abuse and that were just his quirky way he did some things, like
moving the pictures on the wall so many times that the walls had holes all in them,
or how he always had to explain about the stack tables he had that slid in and
out of one another, big to little. I can think of those things and smile. And
my favorite picture of my dad is when he was a boy. I like that picture. I don’t
like the ones of him when he was my dad. I’m okay with that.
So, what’s the encouragement today? If you are a dad, please
know that there is a difference between loving correction and abuse. Please do
not abuse your children in anger and in selfishness but correct them in love so
that they might learn to be responsible and loving and caring adults. And if you
had a dad like me, know that healing is there for you through Jesus Christ if
you will trust him with your life and if you will relent of all bitterness and
if you are willing to forgive those who have hurt you. And then let God be the
one you celebrate today as your heavenly Father who loves you.
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You
Loved Me
An
Original Work / December 3, 2019
A
song based off the poem by the same name
When I
was lonely and afflicted,
You
were there to pick me up.
You
took me in Your arms,
And
You held me tenderly.
Your
love embraced me.
Your
grace sustained me.
When
my heart cried out to You
In my
fear and my despair,
You
never turned away,
But
You let me know You loved me.
Your
grace forgave me.
You
did not shame me.
Then,
when I answered the call,
“Here,
Lord, send me.”
You
sent me to where I must be.
Your
mercy held me, did not fail me.
All
this, You had planned, to use me.
And,
when all trials and scorn
Came
to test me.
You
gave me all that I would need.
You
strengthened me so I’d not fail You.
Your
kindness blessed me, it touched me.
And,
when I needed the church
To
lift up me,
To
hearten me so I’d not fail,
You
blessed me with folks who would love me.
Their
presence with me, Your praise hailed!
And,
when I walked through the valley
Of the
shadow of the death,
And
tears flowed from my eyes,
Still Your
kindness was there for me.
Your
touch, it healed me.
For I
believed You.
When
now I think about the ways,
Of the
many, many ways
That
You in Your great love
Show
me that You’ll always care for me,
My
heart, it thanks You,
And
gladness fills me, fills me.
*When
a fellow blogger, Tosin Iyawo Ogaga, read this poem, the Lord gave her a tune
for part of it and she wanted to sing it, so we both sing in this one, and the
music was a coordinated effort.
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