The Good Dad

The Good Dad: Pain Is Part of Relationship
by Jim Daly, The Good Dad
“You always hurt the one you love,” the old song goes, and it’s
sadly true.
The moments will come when you hurt your kids. You’ll say
something you shouldn’t have. You’ll do something that
embarrasses them. You’ll break a promise.
None of us are perfect. And even when we say we’re sorry and
admit our faults, we can’t erase what happened.
Our kids can hurt us too, sometimes accidentally and sometimes
on purpose. They can lie. They can scream insults. They can
slam doors or smash things or even hit us. And when they get
older, sometimes the hurts can grow far worse. They can rebel.
They can reject everything we tried to teach them. They can get
into drugs or alcohol or promiscuity, and we’ll feel powerless to
help or protect them.
When we look at the Bible, we see a depressing number of
hurting families and grieving fathers. How grieved would Isaac
feel when he learned that Jacob had tricked him and stolen his
brother’s birthright? How many nights did the father of the
prodigal son wonder, with a heavy heart, whether his boy was
safe or even alive? I think about David grieving over his
rebellious son, Absalom, after his boy died. "O my son Absalom!
My son, my son Absalom!” he cried over and over (2 Samuel
18:33).
I wonder: Did he grieve much less when Absalom forced his own
father out of Jerusalem? Wouldn’t every father grieve?
This all brings us back to the importance of making moments
with our children. These moments serve so many purposes.
They’re memories to cherish. They’re teaching opportunities.
They’re fun. But most importantly, they’re monuments that father
and child alike can hold on to, monuments to your love and
reminders of those bonds of affection that tie father and child
together and keep them forever connected.
We can’t forget that, whatever the hurt or the wound, love really
does conquer all . Love is irresistible, irrefutable, undeniable.
Nothing rises to it. The dark side of our character has no
weapon against it. It’s our trump card, and I think it’s the only
one we have in the deck. Love is the key. That tether of love is
the key to everything.
The tether of love, if you have rebellious children, becomes
paramount to your relationship. Your kids can irritate you,
frustrate you, and drive you to stop talking to them. That tether
can fray, and fray badly, in the heat of anger, hurt, and
heartache. But you can’t allow those frustrations to overwhelm
your love. You must hold on to those moments you’ve built.
You have to hang on to that tether, even if it’s just a thread.
Because when your rebellious son or daughter turns twenty or
twenty-five or thirty, they may remember those moments and
long to see you and hear your voice and maybe even say they’re
sorry. If that thread exists, they can find it and follow it back to
you.
They know that, despite how much they hurt you and
disappointed you and damaged their relationship with you, the
thread of love continues to exist. They see it. They know the
tether has never completely snapped. And then the two of you
can begin to make some new moments, some new threads, to
strengthen that bond once again.
To Forgive Is Divine (And Very, Very Hard)
But what happens if the tether breaks? What if the relationship
gets truly severed? Is it too late then? Is there truly no hope?
There is hope, I believe. It’s never too late - as long as both
father and child are still living.
But I don’t want to think simplistically about the process. If the
tether breaks, it’s very, very difficult to tie it back together.
And forgiveness has to come in torrents.
If our love is a tether, then forgiveness is the knot that can
mend the two pieces back together.
If we don’t have someone willing to forgive, and sometimes
forgive a lot, we don’t have a lot of hope, in my opinion. But
here’s the good news: If we do have forgiveness in such
situations, then I think the tether can wind up even stronger
than before.
We see it often in marriages when a serious failure or breach of
trust has occurred - lying, adultery, or any number of behaviors.
Once everything has come out in the open, those involved in the
relationship may be able to save it and even strengthen it.
Renewed honesty allows the level of trust to rise.
Forgiveness from one party can boost gratitude from the other.
Where there is trust and gratitude, the love and affection two
people have for each other can grow again - even stronger and
in deeper and healthier ways. It seems counterintuitive, but I see
it time and time again. Couples who fight through those
situations come out on the other side healthier and even
happier. And now they have nothing to hide. It again reflects
that simple truth Paul outlined in his letter to the Romans -
suffering can lead to hope.
In the same way, honesty and forgiveness can heal relationships
between fathers and their children. But man, it can be hard to
forgive! It’s much easier to bury our hurt in a pile of
complacency and fool ourselves (or pretend) that we’ve
forgiven.
Forgiveness doesn’t come easy to us. It’s not natural.Revenge is
easy, while forgiveness comes primarily through faith, by the
strength that comes through Jesus.
Anytime you say, “I’ve forgiven you,” even if you say it in your
own mind, you should question yourself: Have you really
forgiven this person? Or have you simply turned your heart off to
the pain?
A good test to know your true feelings is to imagine if something
happened to the person you’ve “forgiven.” If they died or were
seriously injured, what would you feel? Joy? Pain? Indifference?
That little test can provide a view into your own heart.
Sometimes what we call forgiveness is really nothing more than
a mask, one more tool we use to hide the pain from others and
ourselves. Forgiveness is hard. I struggle with it to this day. I
don’t hold grudges. If I saw Hank or Mr. Reil today, I’d shake
their hands. But have I truly forgiven my failed fathers? Or do I
just not care anymore?
I think I have forgiven my father. I found that path to
forgiveness easier, because I knew he loved me. While in many
ways he was a horrific father, I still felt his love. And even as a
child, I could distinguish between his love and his mistakes. I
think I’ve forgiven Mr. Reil, just because I feel sorry for him, a
sad, confused man. Perhaps what he did to me wasn’t exactly
his fault. And in a way, perhaps that means I have nothing to
forgive. You don’t forgive the rain for ruining your picnic or for
flooding your basement. I saw no malice or purpose to Mr. Reil’s
fear of me. He didn’t know reality. I just felt sorry for him
because a grown man should know better, and he didn’t.
But if I’m being honest with myself, I doubt I’ve forgiven Hank.
At times it feels as if I have, but disregard is not forgiveness. I
don’t care, just as he may never really have cared for me. It’s
sad to say that, and I’m embarrassed to say it, but I think it’s
true. Hank is in God’s hands. But emotionally I can’t expend the
time.
About a year ago, I visited my mom’s gravesite - the first time
I’d gone there since I was ten. Hank had bought two adjoining
plots when Mom died, one for her and one for him. He imagined
at the time, I suppose, that the two of them could lie there side
by side until the world stopped spinning.
I expected to see Hank there too, beside my mom as he
imagined. I hadn’t seen him since the day of the funeral, and I
braced to “see” him, albeit in a much different form, for the first
time in forty years. Maybe for the last time.
I remembered as I walked to the grave his last words he ever
spoke to us: “I can’t deal with this.” And when I got to the
gravesite, those words struck me anew. In front of me lay more
evidence.
A stranger - some other woman - now lies beside my mother’s
body. Hank must’ve sold the gravesite. He ran away from us,
and in the end he ran away from her. He scrubbed us all clean
from his life.
I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. I do wonder, though, whether
he ever looked back on those two years he spent with my mom
and wondered if he could’ve, should’ve, done things differently.
Could he have become a better stepfather? Did he have it in him
even to try? Did he ever feel regret? Did he ever have the urge to
find us again, to call one of us Daly kids and apologize? Or, for
him, was it just too late?
It’s Never Too Late
I know I’m not alone in wondering. Some men reading this live
with the pain of a damaged relationship. Others still wake up
with a hurt inside them. Maybe they had a hard relationship with
their own father, a story that sounds a little like mine. Maybe
their dad drank too much or abused drugs or doled out abuse.
Maybe he was a workaholic. Maybe he landed in jail. And the
pain, after all this time, lingers.
Maybe you hurt your father. You left home in a huff, turned your
back on your dad and family and went as far away as you could.
And now that you have children of your own, you long to
reconnect, but you don’t know how.
Maybe I have some readers like Hank. They never took the time
to know their children. Perhaps they’ve never even seen them.
But sometimes they wonder about them. Do they have families
of their own? Have they moved on? They wish they could’ve
done things differently. But they wonder - is it too late?
It’s never too late, not as long as we have breath in our bodies.
Our relationships may have bent. They may even have broken.
But with time and effort and a whole lot of forgiveness, we can
mend them. There is hope!
There’s still a chance to make a moment or two. Or twenty. Or
two hundred. There’s still a chance to reconnect with your
father.
There’s still a chance to be a good dad.