Father Wounds

I’ve heard people jokingly say things like, “she’s just got daddy wounds!” It’s apparent to all of us that there is a direct connection between each of us and our biological father. However, just recognizing that it occurs is a long way from understanding the cause and effect related to our fathers.

Passive wounding

In conversations with hundreds of individuals, both professionally and casually, I believe that most people assume a “wound” is a result of something that happened to you during childhood. No doubt, a person will have residual emotional effects from being abused, molested, rejected, or abandoned. But the deepest wounds are those that occur through neglect — your father not actively participating in you childhood developmental needs in various ways.

This can occur due to the father literally being absent, as was the case in my childhood. But just as damaging is to have a father who is physically present yet emotionally absent, immature, or toxic. Without a doubt, the number of children growing up in America today in homes with the absence of a healthy father is at an alarming level. And society is reeping the cost for that.

Unmet needs

Children have a litney of emotional needs that must be nurtured as they move toward adulthood. The more effectively this happens, the more emotionally and spiritually healthy and well-balanced the individual will be. there are three specific innate needs that every child receives the answers from their birth father.

Identity

Every human being spends their entire life seeking to know themselves. We try everything to answer the question, “Who am I?” Wealth. Power. Beauty. Prestige. Knowledge. Success. Perfection. The list is utterly endless.

Kingn Solomon, considered the wisest man to ever live, had everthing a human being’s self-indulgent nature could ever long for. Yet, he concluded later in life that it was all meaningless!

“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

Ecclesiastes 1:14 NIV

When all was said and done, Solomon realized that only God could fill that void within him. And to a child, their father is the placeholder for God until the child becomes mature enough to move their trust and dependence from dad to God. This in a nutshell is the reason the father’s role in the life and development of a cihld is so critical. No other human can fill this role.

Worth

Prior to the fall of mankind, Adam and Even found their “enoughness” in their unblemished intimate relationship with God. Tragically, when sin and selfishness entered the human race, the search to answer the question, “Am I enough?” became the driving pursuit of every human’s heart.

Author Robert McGee describes this succinctly in his Best Selling book, The Search for Significance. He refers to this as “Satan’s Equation.”

MY PERFORMANCE + YOUR APPROVAL = MY IDENTITY, WORTH, & VALUE

If your father lives a “performance-based” life infront of you, there’s a high probability that your life and worldview will be built on this equation. Sadly, this equation leads us to a myriad of struggles:

• Codependency
• Workaholism
• Perfectionism
• Control
• Comparison
• Drivenness
• Compulsions
• Addictions
• Fear of rejection
• Fear of failure
• Fear of disapproval

Value

Where human worth is found intrisicly, value is a more relative term. Not what is your worth intrinsically, but what is your worth relative to whoever or whatever is external to you.

An old poem entitled “The Touch of the Master’s Hand” offers an analogy to the difffence betwwen our worth and value.

‘Twas battered and scarred,
And the auctioneer thought it
hardly worth his while
To waste his time on the old violin,
but he held it up with a smile.

“What am I bid, good people”, he cried,
“Who starts the bidding for me?”
“One dollar, one dollar, Do I hear two?”
“Two dollars, who makes it three?”
“Three dollars once, three dollars twice, going for three,”

But, No,
From the room far back a gray bearded man
Came forward and picked up the bow,
Then wiping the dust from the old violin
And tightening up the strings,
He played a melody, pure and sweet
As sweet as the angel sings.

The music ceased and the auctioneer
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said “What now am I bid for this old violin?”
As he held it aloft with its’ bow.

“One thousand, one thousand, Do I hear two?”
“Two thousand, Who makes it three?””Three thousand once, three thousand twice,
Going and gone”, said he.

The audience cheered,
But some of them cried,
“We just don’t understand.”
“What changed its’ worth?”
Swift came the reply.
“The Touch of the Masters Hand.”

“And many a man with life out of tune
All battered and bruised with hardship
Is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd
Much like that old violin

A mess of pottage, a glass of wine,
A game and he travels on.He is going once, he is going twice,
He is going and almost gone.

But the Master comes,
And the foolish crowd never can quite understand,
The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought
By the Touch of the Masters’ Hand.

MYRA BROOKS WELCH

If a child learns that they have not only worth, but value, in their father’s hands, then he or she will always feel valuable in God’s hands, no matter what circumstances life may present.