*I know this is not Father’s Day today, but the subject matter here is that of abuse, specifically the abuse coming from a father, but this can extend to abuse coming from anyone in a position of rule and authority over others. So this can include the abuse inflicted by any parent, spousal abuse, and the abuse administered by people in positions of authority in the gatherings of the church or in the government or in the workplace. And this is also a message of healing of damaged emotions related to abusive situations.
On Father’s Day
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 (I forgave her), 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 mine, 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.
On Father’s Day
Video Talk
June 18, 2023
https://youtu.be/tQqnuXAmdng
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