The sacrificial love of a father

In the past week I’ve listened to two young men describe the love they feel for their children. I noticed their face and eyes lit up as they described their powerful experience of dedicating themselves to putting the needs of their little people before their own. Only a self-sacrificing love that focuses on the other can make a man’s face shine like that.

I remarked to them both that the love they described for their children is what the ultimate father, God, feels for us human children, irrespective of age. Or rather what us humans feel for one another is probably a fraction of what the living God feels for each of us.

How humbling, encouraging, mind blowing and heart expanding to meditate on the heart, character and nature of the ultimate Father God, who see’s, knows and loves us all anyway!!

Typically, we tend to expect God as Father to behave as our own father’s have. Many women of my generation had father’s who were unable to contain their anger or to discipline us without using terror to control in us, what they could not control in themselves. Many of our father’s had fathers who fought in the war and were expected to return to their families as if unaffected.

However, the research, understanding or support about trauma was nowhere near as advanced as it is now. Without support to process their unimaginable experiences, many of these war surviving men would have unconsciously acted out the very feelings that they could not manage or verbalise themselves, upon their children. This is how intergenerational trauma gets handed down. And how family culture gets created and maintained if left unaddressed or healed. I think it’s important to add that many of these fathers also made excellent providers through seeking refuge in their work. Think of the message within Mary Poppins.

I don’t know what it is to be a father or even a mother! But I’ve seen and heard enough to know it’s not for the faint hearted! My observations highlight that all unresolved psychological issues get passed down the familial line along with some sickness and diseases.

Whatever parents inherit through family on a psychological level, will be tapped in to, (think buttons pressed) by the children whose job it is to test their parents in such a way – this is how the teachable parent learns and grows beyond the limitations and unhealed wounds of their own parents! If they choose to accept such a challenge! Asking for help from on high is a good starting point!

I know this is easy for me to say as a non-parent! As one who couldn’t get her shit together in time to reproduce, the nearest I get to this phenomenon is through my work. I hold space for the unresolved parental issues to be worked through in the context of the therapeutic relationship. This is not a substitute for parenting. But it does illuminate the relational patterns internalised through how our parents, parented us.

All too often we then expect God to parent us in the same way whether it was good, bad or the more likely mix of all. We must work through these past, parental relational template patterns if we want to create new, healthier patterns. By simply denying or dismissing the past, we deny and dismiss the opportunity to grow out of and beyond it.

I am massively thankful to God for blessing me with a man I call my Church dad. The one and fabulous-only Johnboy; long serving, long suffering, long sacrificing man who shows me what a dad can be like. Whether putting up pictures in my house (it’s not straight John!), organising my birthday meals and cakes, praying for me and sending me scriptures in difficult times, Monty cat-sitting, or generally being a top banana human being.

John is available, attentive, kind, thoughtful and full of Godly wisdom. John models the sacrificial love of a father to me. And I am immensely grateful to God for the gift that John is to me. And I pray that I am a gift to him too because the win/win is the way of God’s heart. The way that John models being a father gives me experiential insight into the heart of the ultimate Father.

God’s love is a love that welcomes us any time of the day or night. There is literally nothing we cannot bring to him. He always awaits us with open embrace. He is the Father to whom we can take our rage, pain, disappointment, resentment, shock or anything else to. This is true whether such emotions are evoked by the conduct of others or our own!

God is a parent who loves us enough to recognise that our bad or just off, behaviour comes from the unhealed parts of our hearts. And therefore, he offers us the safety and sanctuary required to be still, lick our wounds and let him comfort and calm our stressed systems in his loving presence.

Then, when we are ready, he gently helps us to heal from the behaviour of others. He doesn’t leave us there as he also helps us to recognise and take responsibility for our own behaviour, when it is lacking. He knows that we all mess up and he waits patiently for us to bring our mess ups and mistakes to him. He loves to help us to do our part in owning, acknowledging and apologising whenever we fall short (EVERY single time we do it). He gives us His grace, humility and love when we mess up so we know we can always bring our mistakes to him. We do not need to be bound by fear, secrecy or shame. God loves to release us from these so we can learn, grow and heal in His loving presence. And then we can try to share these with others when they mess up with us.

When we refuse to own up to our mistakes, we are choosing to be bound by guilt, shame and fear of punishment. To admit our mistakes and ask God’s assistance to help clear them up, is to keep our hearts clean, take responsibility for the impact of our actions on others (irrespective of intention) and to apologise for them.

This is how we live with healthy hearts – this is the freedom that comes from being truthful about ourselves. We are only responsible for our own conduct and the maintenance of our own hearts.

The only perfect parent in existence (if not bodily form) loves us with such a sacrificial love that he allowed Jesus to endure the torture of the Cross. This means that every single one of us (without exception) never has to face or fess up to our own failings, on our own. We are always welcomed by the loving father that God is, who helps us own, acknowledge, apologise, learn, heal and grow through all the flaws and failures of all of our hearts.

Wow, what a parent, what a God, what a gift. And like most gifts, one to be shared as generously with others as God shares it with us.