Chapter Two
I Need A Dad
If we didn’t have a Dad or Mom who loved us as a child, we are left with a
gaping void in our heart. We will never be completely free of the damage
from that loss until our need for the love of a father or mother is met.
As an adult we can’t look to our earthly parents to provide this need. They may
never be able to give us a healthy, supportive love. Therefore our
becoming whole can’t depend on them changing the way they relate to us. If
we mistakenly believe that the only way we can ever heal from the
suffering of the past is for this to take place, we will remain stuck in our pain.
We will keep on looking back into our past and hurting.
We will treat others just as abusively as we were treated and hate ourselves for
being that way or we will be attracted to people who mistreat us in the
same way that we experienced as a child. We will especially recreate with
a spouse the destructive behaviors that we were accustomed to experiencing
with the parent who mistreated us.
Inevitably we wake up one day with this cruel realization…
“The person I married is just like my mother or father.
I’m hurting in the same exact way I felt growing up.”
This is a terribly sad reality to face because no one wants to end up hurting
just like they did as a child.
In my own determined search for freedom, breakthrough occurred when I realized
that only God’s unfailing love for me could heal the empty places in my
soul. Only His tender caring can fill that dark, bottomless pit.
In this chapter and in the following one titled, I Need A Mom, I explain
how His love transformed me from a seriously disturbed woman to someone
who is genuinely happy. The past has no power over me anymore. This is a
phenomenal miracle because for the first forty-five years of my life I
suffered such violent, relentless abuse from those I trusted to love me.
God mercifully revealed Himself to me as a very real Dad and the mother I
never had. As this new, amazing love came into my broken heart, I was
different and I have never gone back to the person I was before this
healing love set my heart free. I no longer walk around feeling like an
emotional orphan. I live each day feeling special and cherished.
This radical change happened as Papa God’s own tender, compelling words exposed
His true heart to me. Much of what He revealed to me was initially a
shock. I had never seen God in such a personal way. Yet I discovered that
He actually tells us over and over He yearns to give us the love we missed
out on when we were growing up. He longs to fill us with so much of His
kindness that we are completely delivered from the pain of our past.
My breakthrough occurred when I
let Him have the place in my life where a father or mother’s love should
have been. Then He could become that loving parent who always wants the
very best for me. As all of this sunk in I became less and less willing to
accept what others have cruelly told me I am. My new Papa God helped me to
see myself as He sees me and through that drastic difference in
perspective, I was changed forever.
How He sees me actually became
my new reference point for deciding who I really was and for determining
what behaviors I would now be willing to accept from other people. This
change empowered me to stop choosing destructive relationships. It also
had such a profound impact on me that I began to be drawn to personal
relationships with healthy people who genuinely loved me.
To help others also enter into this same transformation, I begin by first
exploring the insights that I learned about Papa God because each of us needs a Dad.
Papa God wants to be my Dad
If we had an earthly father who was never around when we really needed him, we
missed out on him being with us during those special moments that any
young child wants to share with his Dad.
I felt that way as a child and that is why I always felt sad whenever I thought
about my father. So many times I longed to share my accomplishments with
Pop or just a fleeting moment that was important to me.
But it never happened.
I remember working hard on a lead part in a school play and dreaming about
him coming to see me perform. I wanted to know that he was watching me and
sharing my world with me. I wanted him to be proud of me. But whenever I
looked out at the faces of all the other parents, Pop was never there.
My hopes to share my life with him always ended in disappointment.
Then a miracle happened.
I discovered that God is a kind, caring Dad. I found a healing embrace in
His love. I began to experience a Father’s involvement in my life that I
had always longed for. That revelation began when I found out that Papa
God assures us in His own words that He truly wants to be our Father…
“You have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again,
but you have received a spirit of adoption, by which
you may cry out to Me, ‘Abba Father.’”
Romans 8:15 NASB
In the Greek, Abba Father is as personal and intimate a name for God as if we were saying to
Him, “Papa God” or “Dear Daddy.”
“See how very much I love you as a father.
I allow you to be called My child, and you really are.”
1 John 3:1 NLT
“You are My very own child,
adopted into My family, calling Me ‘Father, dear Father.’”
Romans 8:15 NLT
“Because you have become My child,
I sent the Spirit of My Son into your heart, and now
you can call Me, ‘my dear Father.’”
Galatians 4:6 NLT
“You shall call Me, ‘My Father.”
Jeremiah 3:19 NASB
“My unchanging plan has always been to adopt you into My own family
by bringing you to Myself through My Son, Jesus.”
Ephesians 1:5 NLT
“If your father has abandoned you, I, the Lord, want to adopt you.
I want to take care of you and hold you close.”
Psalms 27:10 NASB/MOFFATT
“I sent My Son to buy your freedom
so that I could adopt you as My very own child.”
Galatians 4:5 NLT
“I want to be a father to you, if you’ve never had a father,
because I am a father to the fatherless.”
Psalm 68:5-6 NASB
“I would love to treat you as My own child.
I look forward to you calling Me ‘Father.’”
Jeremiah 3:19 NLT
“I will never fail you.”
Hebrews 13:5 NLT
Look behind you and I am there.
Then look up ahead and I am there, too.
My reassuring presence as Your Father is with you, coming and going.”
Psalm 139 MESSAGE
“Be assured. I am always with you as that Dad you never had.”
Psalm 16:8 NLT
Besides always feeling a deep sense of loss because my father was never there for
me, I grew up feeling like a mistake. Always from a distance I watched
other children laugh and talk and have fun, but I never felt a part of
what they were doing. I didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. I didn’t belong to
anyone. Because I was not good enough to be acceptable to Pop, I was not
comfortable anywhere I went.
A terrible emptiness from living on the outside looking in followed me everywhere.
Then one day I realized I was no longer an outsider as I went through life. I no
longer looked at myself as a misfit or somehow unacceptable.
Instead I finally belonged to someone who made me feel wanted and special. That
someone was my new Father who genuinely loved me just the way I was.
This was a phenomenally healing realization for me. It helped me to relax inside
and enjoy being me. It had an impact on the kinds of people I wanted to be
close to. I was so much healthier now that I was finally drawn to healthy
people. And I no longer had to search for someone who could make me feel
good about myself. My new Dad gave me this priceless gift and a new life
began for me.
Papa God is the one who revealed this profoundly life-changing acceptance to me in
His own unforgettable words…
“I have made you accepted in Me, the Beloved.”
Ephesians 1:6 KJV
“You now have the free gift of being accepted by Me.”
Romans 5:16 NLT
“I call nobodies and make them some bodies.
I call the unloved and make them beloved.
In the place where they yelled out, ‘You’re nobody.’
They’re calling you ‘My living child.’”
Romans 9 MESSAGE
“I will validate your life in the clear light of day.
I stamp you with approval at high noon.”
Psalm 37 MESSAGE
Papa God will never change
how He feels about me
The comforting love from Papa God that transforms a troubled soul isn’t here
one day and unavailable the next time we need it. It is ours forever and
it never changes.
We can depend on this love every moment of every day for our entire life.
Contrary to what I had experienced growing up, there is no disappointment
in this love from Papa God. He never builds up my hopes, only to let me down.
Once again the Father reveals that this is indeed His heart toward us…
“Place your trust in Me as your Papa God,
and you will not be disappointed.”
1 Peter 2:6 NIV/NASB
“With unfailing love I am drawing you to Myself.”
Jeremiah 31:3 NLT
“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed,
My unfailing love for you will never be shaken.
My promise of peace will never be removed from you,
because I have compassion on you.”
Isaiah 54:10NIV/NASB
“I will never stop loving you. I will not let even one of My promises to
you fail. I will not take back a single word I said.”
Psalm 89:33-34 NLT
I am placing a new foundation stone in your life.
It is a firm and tested and precious cornerstone that is safe for you
to build on and you never have to run away again.”
Isaiah 28:16 NLT
“Therefore whenever you run to Me for refuge you can take new courage because you
can hold on to what I promise you with confidence. And this solid confidence that
you can have in Me as your Father is a strong and trustworthy anchor for your soul. It
leads you through the very curtain of heaven into My inner sanctuary where
I am. There we can be close, you and I, and you can always be secure in My
Father’s love for you.” Hebrews 6:19 NLT
Papa God hurts every time I hurt
Nothing causes a loving father more heartache than to know that his child is hurting.
Papa God always cared about me in this way.
I just didn’t know it.
Whenever I was filled with pain as a little girl, He saw what was happening to me
and He grieved terribly every time I hurt. He wept over my suffering just
as Jesus cried over the people in Jerusalem. He saw their need for Him,
but He was not able to help them because they would not receive Him.
Every time I was abused and rejected, Papa God
longed to reach down and help me. He ached to scoop me up into His arms to
shelter me. But He couldn’t.
He had to wait until I was willing to give Him a
chance to be my Dad. Only then could He pour his healing love into my
broken heart. These compelling words capture the Father’s anguish every
time each of us hurt…
“As a parent feels for his child, I feel for you.”
Psalm 103 MESSAGE
“I have seen your troubles,
and I care about the anguish of your soul.”
Psalm 31:7 NLT
“My child, My child, how often I wanted to gather you
to Me the way a hen gathers her chicks under
her wings, but you were unwilling.”
Matthew 23:37 NASB
“I’ve never let you down.
I’ve never looked the other way when you were being kicked around.
I’ve never wandered off to do My own thing.
I have been right there, listening.”
Psalm 22 MESSAGE.>
“In all your suffering, I suffered.”
Isaiah 63:9 NLT
Papa God cares deeply about me
Papa God is not a remote parent who lives somewhere
in a distant heaven. He’s not a Father who is oblivious to what we are going through.
"He is the Creator of all, but He is also our very own Dad.
He has the same concern for our welfare that any loving father has toward his child.
"He cares about us just as profoundly as the father in the following
true story…
A catastrophic earthquake hit a small town
in Russia and the shattered walls of a grammar school collapsed. A young
boy and all his classmates were buried under a mountain of splintered wood
and glass. The people in the town scrambled to reach the children,
including the father of one of the young boys.
After fourteen hours, the men with the
heavy equipment gave up and left the site of the demolished school. The
father kept digging. He was determined to find his son alive. As the hours
passed, one by one the people abandoned their rescue efforts and walked
away. The father never gave up. Although all others had long gone, he kept
searching for his son. During all this time, the boy confidently reassured
the other frightened children, “Don’t worry. I know my Dad. He won’t give
up until he finds me. You will all be safe. You’ll see.”
Thirty-three hours after the violent
earthquake shook this small Russian town that father was still digging and
searching. In the thirty-fifth hour he found his son and brought him to
safety, along with all the children who were with him.
“See, I told you”, the young boy said to his classmates as they climbed
out of the rubble that was once their schoolhouse. “I told you my Dad
would come. I told you he wouldn’t give up until he found me.”
Papa God wants us to have the same unwavering confidence in His love for us that this young
Russian boy had in his father. He wants us to be able to say with absolute certainty…
“My Papa God cares about me just like a real Dad.
He will find a way to help me, no matter what.
He will never abandon His efforts to rescue me and help me.”
God’s Word assures us this is exactly how He feels about us…
“I have cared for you, again and again, in your time of wilderness,
just as a father cares for his child.”
Deuteronomy 1:31 NLT
“I’ll stick by you when you are down.”
Psalm 18 MESSAGE
“When you cry out, ‘I am slipping.’
My unfailing love will support you.”
Psalm 94:18 NLT
“As a parent feels for his child, I feel for you.”
Psalm 103 MESSAGE
“You will not be shaken because I am right by your side.”
Psalm 16:8 NLT
“
If you’ll hold on to Me for dear life,
I’ll get you out of any trouble. I’ll give you the best of care, if you’ll
only get to know and trust Me. Call Me and I’ll answer you. I’ll be at
your side in bad times. I’ll rescue you.” Psalm 91 MESSAGE
Papa God gives me a sense of destiny and purpose
A father’s affirmation births a sense of destiny in
the heart of an impressionable child. When we are young, this validation
from a dad builds a confidence that we have what it takes to succeed in
life. But without this fatherly encouragement and support, we can wander
aimlessly through life, robbed of any meaningful direction or goals.
If we were one of those children who didn’t have a dad who communicated that he
believed in us, Papa God understands that hope dies within us if we don’t
have a purpose. Therefore as our wonderful Father, He wants to tell us
that He believes in all we can ever possibly become, and He will do all
that He can to help us. Most astounding of all, He has the power to help
us fulfill what our lives are all about because our destiny comes from Him.
These are the revelations that helped me to understand Papa God’s heart as our
Dad to encourage us in these vitally needed ways…
“Without My vision for your life, you will perish.”
Proverbs 29:18 KJV
“I know the plans I have for you,
plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11 NIV
“Be glad for all I am planning for you.”
Romans 12:12 NLT
“I will work out My plans for your life.”
Psalm 138:8 NLT
“I will keep on guiding you with My counsel.
I will lead you to a glorious destiny.”
Psalm 73:23-24 NLT
Papa God holds me by the hand
There is nothing more comforting to a young child than walking by his
father’s side with his little hand reassuringly in his father’s big, strong hand.
I never experienced this with Pop and I vividly remember the day when I
ached to have that kind of dad. Here is that story…
“Would you like to go to the park with me today?”
Pop asked my older sister and me early one morning when I was nine years old.
“Sure, Pop,” we told him excitedly and with happy anticipation we walked by his side to
the bus stop.
Soon we boarded the bus that took us far from our home to a place I had never been.
When the ride ended, the door swung open and we stepped down to the curb.
“I have to go somewhere for just a few
minutes,” Pop told us. “I promise I’ll be right back.”
I watched heavyhearted as he walked away from us down the street.
“He promised he’d come back soon,” I kept telling myself.
I reluctantly sat on the grass that was
still wet with the early morning dew and waited for Pop to return while my
sister wandered off to play by herself. Several hours went by and I still waited.
Not far from where I was sitting a young
girl and her father came into view. She walked by her father’s side along
a meandering pathway that was shrouded in trees. One of her hands was
securely enfolded in her father’s big, strong hand. As I watched
longingly, the father picked his daughter up and held her close on his shoulder.
“I wish I had a dad like that,” I said
wistfully to myself. “I wish Pop was here and he would hold me like that
so that I could feel safe and not hurt anymore.”
After awhile I grew weary of waiting and
walked around the park, but I couldn’t enjoy being there. I kept hoping
that at any moment I would see my father coming toward me.
Night came and I was hungry. I shivered
from the cold while my sister sat on the swings at a distance from me.
For a long time I watched a group of
children having a birthday party in a large picnic area. As soon as they
left, I frantically rummaged through the garbage pail by their table for
leftover food and ate whatever I could find.
Much later Pop arrived.
“Sorry I took so long,” he mumbled apologetically.
“Where were you, Pop?” I asked him as I tried my very best to hold back my tears.
“I waited so long for you.”
“I got tied up,” was all he replied.
My sister and I sat in silence next to Pop all the way home. Silent tears rolled down my
cheeks as I stared out into the darkness of the night. I felt so lost, so alone and so
overwhelmingly sad.
The wound from this incident went deep into my soul. It was one of many
times when my father let me down. The devastating feelings of rejection
from Pop stayed in the troubled recesses of my heart and nothing could
silence them. Yet now this terrible loss has no power to poison my soul.
It no longer torments my thoughts. It does not disastrously affect my
choices about relationships anymore.
All of this astounding change took place when I discovered that I have a
Papa God who always holds me by the hand just like the man did for his
little girl in the park. When this surprising revelation became a part of
me, my longing for the happiness I saw on the face of that little girl was
fulfilled. I no longer felt lost and alone. Whenever I reminded myself
that my hand is in the hand of my Papa God, I felt secure.
Most comforting of all, my new Father never lets go of my hand, even if I
mistakenly let go of His.
And every time I am afraid, all I have to do is cry out…
“Father! Papa God! I’m scared! Please take my hand and help me.”
And He does.
Then peace returns to my soul because my Papa God
is securely holding me by the hand and assuring me…
“I am here. So everything is going to be alright.”
These are the Scriptures that opened up to me this amazing breakthrough…
“I will hold you by the hand and watch over you.”
Isaiah 42:6 NASB
“I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand
and says to you, ‘Do not be afraid. I will help you.’”
Isaiah 41:13 NASB
“When you fall, you will not be hurled headlong,
for I am the one who is holding you by the hand.”
Psalm 37:24 NASB
Papa God picks me up and carries me
when life seems too hard for me
When life gets too hard for a young child, he needs to have his earthly father
pick him up and carry him.
This caring intervention from a loving father allows a child to relax inside.
It gives him the confidence that he can make it.
The problem is that once we grow up, no one can
meet this need except Papa God. As an adult, He is the only one who can
scoop us up into His arms whenever we need a Dad to hold us and comfort us.
He can do this for us because no matter how old we get, we are still just a
child to the Father. Throughout all the days of our lives, He longs to
pick us up and hold us close to Him heart when life is too difficult. In
these words He expresses that this is His heart…
“I lift you and carry you through all the years.”
Isaiah 63:9 NLT
“I carry you the way a father
carries his own son or daughter.”
Deuteronomy 1:31 NASB
“Each day I carry you in My arms.”
Psalm 68:19 NLT
If you will let Me…
“I will carry you in My arms and hold you close to My heart.”
Isaiah 40:11 NLT
Papa God wants me to feel safe
Every child has a serious need to feel that his
father is protective of him and cares deeply that he is safe.
My father never treated me this way. An incident
that occurred when I was in late grammar school illustrates why I felt
this way…
We were among the few white families in a black project. Our apartment had red
cement floors that were always damp and cold. My room was actually an old
kitchen with a bed in it and the top part of the door into my room from
the outside was made of glass. The project was a dangerous place. Crime,
violence, screams and screeching sirens were a way of life for me.
Late one night I heard the footsteps of
someone running. The steps came closer and closer. A fist smashed the
glass panel of my door. It shattered. A man’s gloved hand groped through
the opening. I watched in horror as his fingers fumbled for the lock. At
first I was too frightened to make a sound. I wanted to scream, but the
sound wouldn’t come out I was so terrified.
“In another moment,” I told myself hysterically, “he’s going to be in my room.”
“Help! Help!” I finally yelled out in a piercing scream.
My family rushed into the room. The man ran away and disappeared into the
darkness outside.
“What’s going on?” Pop mumbled sleepily
from his bed at the other end of the house. They told him what had
happened, but he never came to me to make sure I felt safe.
After everyone left, I wondered if that man would come back to hurt me.
Long after my family returned to their beds I lay trembling under my blankets.
I was too afraid to move.
That was the night when the haunting nightmares began of a man always coming back to
kill me.
After that traumatic night, fear consumed me. It controlled my every waking moment and
terrorized me during the night.
If we grew up without a father who cared that we
felt protected, we can spend the rest of our life looking for someone to
give us that sense of security.
We go on this futile quest because we need to feel
safe before we have the courage to face life without constant fear.
Driven by this relentless, unmet void, we establish
relationships with people who are willing to try to meet this need. But
anyone who is unhealthy enough to be this protective can turn what we
thought was a good thing into a sick, stifling control. And abuse is
always just a heartbeat away from control.
The healing truth is that Papa God longs to impart
to the core of our being that in His love we are protected and safe. And
once again, when we are an adult, He is the only one who can give this to us.
Through His Word, my kind and protective Father taught me that He is this kind of Dad.
He helped me to understand that I can run to Him whenever I am afraid and His sheltering
presence will calm my worst fears. I learned that His love is bigger and
stronger than any anxiety that can attack my mind. No matter how old I
get, in His strong, reassuring arms I can always hide whenever I am frightened.
He is such a safe refuge from any evil that comes against me that He even hovers over me as
I sleep so that I can relax. In the safety of His loving presence I can
close my eyes and peacefully rest.
As a result of these revelations, a stability came into my emotions that had always been
impossible.
A peace began to calm my spirit.
I felt such awe that I could actually begin to feel this new way about life…
I wasn’t troubled. I wasn’t scared.
I was at peace.
In the midst of this transformation, the tormenting nightmares stopped. I realized that I was
no longer a frightened little girl inside. For the first time I was a
secure, sheltered daughter of the most wonderful Father I could ever hope
to have. Papa God extends this same fatherly protection to each of His
children. It is of the utmost importance to Him that we feel safe. His own
words make this powerfully clear…
“Don’t be afraid or discouraged, for I go before you.
I am with you and I will not fail you.”
Deuteronomy 31:6 NLT
“I am your refuge. My everlasting arms are under you.”
Deuteronomy 33:27 NLT
“I am your strong fortress. I make your way safe.”
2 Samuel 22:33 NLT
“I am your hiding place. I protect you from trouble.
I surround you with songs of victory.”
Psalm 32:7 NLT
“I surround you with a shield of love.”
Psalm 5:12 NLT
“While I watch over you, I never get tired. I never go to sleep.”
Psalm 121:3-4 NLT
“If you make Me your refuge, if you make Me your shelter,
no evil will conquer you.”
Psalm 91:9-10 NLT
“When you lie down, be at peace and sleep.
I will keep you safe.”
Psalm 4:8 NLT
“I will keep a protective eye on you so that
you may dwell with Me in safety.”
Psalm 101:6 NLT
“You will pass safely through your sea of distress
because I will hold back the waves of the sea.”
Zechariah 10:11 NLT
“I, the Lord, am your Keeper and you are My vineyard.
I water you every moment, lest anyone damage you.
I guard you night and day. You can rely on My protection.”
Isaiah 27:3,5 NASB
“I alone am your refuge. I am your place of safety.”
Psalm 91:2 NLT
Papa God will never abandon me
If our earthly father abandoned us, we don’t have a chance to know him at all.
This abandonment can be the result of an absent father or it can come from
having a dad who was physically present, but distant emotionally. This
rejection leaves a scar in a young child that makes it extremely difficult
for them to establish healthy relationships as an adult.
They will see rejection when it isn’t actually intended. They will invite
rejection because they expect it to happen to them.
Papa God’s never changing love for us is the only way this terrible devastation
can be healed. He is the only one who can restore all that someone has
lost by not being wanted by their earthly father.
He alone can give us the gift of freedom from this damage because He is a Father
who really means it when He tells us…
I will never turn My back on you.
I will never walk out of your life.”
He is also a profoundly caring Father who keeps these promises…
“Even if your father abandons you, I will hold you close.”
Psalm 27:10 NLT
“Do not be afraid or discouraged, for I go before you.
I am with you wherever you go.”
Joshua 1:9 NLT
“I have chosen you to be My own special treasure.”
Deuteronomy 14:2 NLT
“I will never desert you.”
Hebrews 13:5 NASB
“I never abandon anyone who searches for Me.”
Psalm 9:10 NLT
“When you go through deep waters and great trouble,
I will be with you. W hen you go through rivers
of difficulty, you will not drown.”
Isaiah 43:2 NLT
“You can say to yourself, with confidence
‘My Father is my helper. I will not be afraid.’”
Hebrews 13:6 NASB
“Others may hit you when you
are down, but I will stick by you.”
Psalm 18 MESSAGE
Papa God can be trusted
If we had an earthly father who didn’t keep his word, we eventually learned that
we can’t trust anyone. To trust meant that we would get our hopes up, only
to have them shattered by a crushing disappointment.
It was easier not to trust at all than to keep having our heart devastated by
broken promises.
An incident when I was eleven years old is a vivid example of how I learned
that I could not trust…
“Do you want to go with me to the movies?” Pop asked my older sister and me on a rainy
Saturday afternoon.
“Yes!” we said excitedly.
“Will you stay with us, Pop?” I asked him tentatively because I still remembered the day
he broke his promise to me and left me in the park until late at night.
“Yes, we’ll have a great time together,” he assured me. I smiled happily at the thought of
spending time with Pop and trusted him to keep his word to me this time.
Moments later we boarded a bus to take us to the movies.
The ride took much longer than I expected. We traveled to a theatre far from where we lived.
I didn’t mind being so far from home because my father was with me and that made me feel safe.
When we arrived, we found seats very close to the front. Pop sat down next to me and I
smiled contentedly as I snuggled close to him.
The lights went out and the movie, The House of Wax, flashed on the screen. Not long
after it began, I realized that it was a scary movie. I never watched that type of movie
because I was so easily frightened and I already had so many horrifying nightmares.
I pulled away from Pop and stiffened in my seat. I gripped the sides as hard as I could
with both of my hands. The dark sounds of the music filled me with dread. I gasped as
a man’s face cracked into pieces. Underneath was a grotesque corpse.
I screamed and turned to bury my face in Pop’s shoulder, but he was gone.
I desperately wanted to run out of the theatre and look for him, but I was too afraid to
move. So I covered my eyes with my trembling hands and forced myself to stay in my seat.
“I wonder where Pop went?” I said to myself with such a troubled heart. “He promised he’d
stay with me this time. He promised…”
The movie finally ended and I rushed up the aisle to search for my father. But he was nowhere to
be found.
My sister and I waited and waited. Once again we were hungry and tired and we wanted to go home.
But this was not possible. We were too far away to even know how to get there and we had no
money for the bus fare.
I pressed my forehead against the large, cold window inside the theatre entrance and
anxiously stared at the cars as they whizzed by outside.
“Where are you, Pop?” I forlornly wondered to myself. “Please come back…”
Hours later he returned.
“By the way,” Pop said rather guiltily. “I couldn’t stay. I had something I had to go
take care of…”
“But you promised,” I said with a hurt voice.
He merely motioned for me to be still and follow him as he walked briskly toward the bus
stop.
We sat a long time on the bench without saying a word. I wrapped my arms tightly around me in a
frantic effort to keep warm. But no matter how hard I tried to help myself, I could not stop
shivering in the harsh, cold wind.
Finally a dimly lit bus pulled up in front of us.
I sat by a window next to Pop in strained silence and turned my face away
from him. This time I was too hurt to even cry. My already fragile hope
that I could believe what my father said to me died within me.
I knew I could never trust my father again.
There were other times when my father didn’t keep his word to me and each incident made it more
and more difficult for me to believe him. The damage from this wounding disappointment affected all my
choices about relationships as I grew older because I ended up choosing to be close to men who were
just like my father. I should never have trusted them, but I mistakenly did. Even though they hurt
me the same way Pop did, I kept being drawn to men who betrayed my trust.
Only as I began to understand that Papa God is a Father I can depend on did the cruel wounds from
Pop finally go away and never come back.
As I let God love me like a Dad, I experienced that He never makes a promise to me and then breaks it.
He never builds me up, only to let me down. As all of this became a part of me, I had the courage
to begin to trust others who were worthy of being trusted because my new Dad had given me back my hope.
“Hope deferred does make the heart sick, but when dreams come true, there is life and
joy” (Proverb 13:12 NLT). Now I had much joy because my dream to have a Father I could
trust did come true!
I also was so comforted by the realization that my
new Dad “will never snuff out the last ember of my fragile hope. He will
never crush me when I am weak. He will never destroy my smallest hope”
(Isaiah 42:3 NLT).
As these truths pierced my very soul, my Papa God “transformed my Valley of Trouble into a
gateway of Hope” (Hosea 2:15 NLT). He saw my “hopes when I was helpless and He listened to
my desperate cries and comforted me” (Psalm 10:17 NLT).
Ever since I let God become my Dad, I have never been the same because I was able to say
with absolute confidence…
“I know my Papa God.
He will never let me down.”
His own words are what birthed this desperately needed healing deep within my soul where all the
destructive heartache used to be…
“I am a Father who cannot lie.”
Titus 1:2 NLT
“I do not tell you to ask Me for something that I do not plan to give you.”
Isaiah 45:19 NLT
“I love you, dearly.
Just because your father broke his promises to you,
does that mean that I will break My promises to you? Of course not.
Though everyone else in the world is a liar, I will stay true to you.”
Romans 1:7, 3:3-4 NLT
“Not one of my words to you will fail.”
Joshua 23:14 NASB
“I will not let any of My promises to you fail.”
Psalm 89:33 NLT
“I will never lie to you, nor change my mind.
I am not a man, that I would change my mind.”
1 Samuel 15:29 NASB
“Without wavering, you can hold on tight to the hope you have in Me,
for I am a Father who can be trusted to keep His promises.”
Hebrews 10:23 NLT
“I will not take back a single word I said to you.”
Psalm 89:34 NLT
“Take new courage, for you can hold on to
what I promise you with confidence.”
Hebrews 6:18 NLT
“If a child asks her father for bread, he does not trick her with sawdust, does he? If she asks him
for fish, he does not scare her with a live snake, does he? As bad as you are, you would not do that
to your child. So do you think that I, Your Father, who conceived you in love, will do that to you?”
Matthew 7 MESSAGE
Papa God is kind and never harsh
If we had an earthly father who expected too much of us, we learned to be too
hard on ourself. If our Dad was quick to get on our case whenever we made
a mistake or whenever we didn’t live up to his expectations, we grew up
feeling like a failure.
We either decided it isn’t worth trying or we went to the other extreme and
constantly tried to excel. In that case, we could never completely relax
inside due to all the pressure we put on ourself to achieve, to perform
and to even try to be perfect. We were driven to do whatever it takes to
earn our father’s approval.
My adult daughter, Mary, shares a sad example of how it feels to never live up to a
father’s harsh expectations.
Her story makes the Father’s heartache for every child who has ever suffered
in this way…
From as early as I can remember, I felt defeated by my dad expecting too much from me.
When I couldn’t measure up to what he wanted, I felt so crushed by his disapproval.
I remember when I was nine years old. I clutched my report card proudly in my hand all the
way home from the last day of school. As our house came into view at the end of the street, I
told myself, “I can hardly wait to show Dad my grades. I know he’ll be so
proud of me for getting all A’s and just one B.”
The B was in math. I hated math, but I had worked my very best all year long to earn a good
grade in it. I was especially proud of that B because I worked so hard to get it.
“Look, Dad,” I told him with a beaming smile as soon as he walked through the front door
later that afternoon. “Look at my report card. I did real good. I know you’ll be proud of
me.”
I happily handed it to him, but my smile quickly faded. I anxiously watched as he examined
my report card in stony silence and with a serious expression on his face.
“What’s this B all about?” he finally blurted out disapprovingly.
“You could have done better than that in math if you had tried harder.”
“But I tried so hard in math, Dad. I tried my very best. And the A’s. Aren’t you happy…?”
I didn’t get to finish what I was saying before he interrupted me.
“The B is not good enough,” he harshly told me as he continued to completely ignore all of
my A’s. “I expect an A in math next time.”
My Dad acted like I hadn’t accomplished anything at all. All he focused on was what he
considered a negative. Without another word he handed the report card back to me and walked
away.
I stared at him in disbelief as he walked down the narrow stairs and disappeared into the
shadows of the garage below. Crushed by his disappointment in me I ran into my room, threw
myself on the bed and buried my face in the pillow to muffle my loud sobs.
“I’ll just have to try harder,” I told myself through a torrent of tears that stung my
cheeks. “That’s all I can do. Somehow I’ll have to try harder.”
I was too young to understand that my father’s expectations were impossible to live up to.
So I blamed myself for never being good enough.
That scenario occurred every time I brought a report card home from school.
By the time I got to junior high, I had given up on school. I just didn’t care anymore.
I knew that no matter how hard I tried to please my Dad, my very best efforts would never be
good enough for him.
“So why bother trying,” I eventually concluded.
Mary did give up. Her tragic decision to not try anymore is a sobering example of why the Bible
tells fathers…
“Don’t provoke your children.
If you do, they will become discouraged and quit trying.”
Colossians 3:21 NASB/NLT
Gratefully, Papa God is a very different kind of Dad.
He isn’t a stern taskmaster who peers over our shoulder and closely watches us so
that He can criticize us the minute we make a mistake. He doesn’t demand
perfection. He won’t crush us with discouraging expectations that we can
never live up to.
He is a Dad who knows us inside and out. He sees our every weakness. Yet He
affirms us so that we have the confidence to face the difficult challenges
of life. He does this because He understands our need to be encouraged so
that we can keep on trying.
When we blow it, He extends a father’s compassion to us because He knows we need
His reassuring love the most when we have failed…
“I made your heart, so I understand everything you do.”
Psalm 33:15 NLT
“I understand how weak you are.”
Psalm 103:14 NLT
“I know you inside and out.”
Psalm 139 MESSAGE
“Others look at your outward appearance,
but I look at your heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7 NASB
“I look deep within your mind and heart.”
Psalm 7:9 NLT
“I see your heart and I understand.”
1 Chronicles 28:9 NLT
“I bend down and listen to you.”
Psalm 116:2 NLT
“Just as a father has compassion on his child,
I have compassion on you.”
Psalm 103:13 NASB
Papa God only corrects me
because He loves me
If our earthly father abused us when he corrected us, we learned to fear his
harsh discipline. We equated being corrected with pain and we dreaded
being around our father when we made a mistake.
If this is how we grew up, we never experienced that a caring father corrects his
child out of love and never out of anger or with a cruel disregard for his
child’s feelings.
My daughter’s life illustrates the damage that a father’s harsh discipline inflicts
on a child.
Here is Mary’s story…
I always felt growing up that my father’s motivation for disciplining me was to control
my opinions and feelings. No matter what I talked to him about, he was always right and I
was always wrong.
What I had to say or how I felt was never valid to him. If I didn’t immediately agree with
him, he grabbed me, hit me or said cruel words to me.
He demanded my respect, but he never treated me with respect and he never tried to
understand me.
“You are the child and I am the parent,” I remember him telling me whenever I objected to
him being mean or degrading toward me.
“God doesn’t tell me to respect you, but He commands you to respect me,” he always
insisted.
By the time I went into junior high, I felt that no one wanted to understand me. I turned
my anger toward my father against anyone in authority who came down hard on me.
I rebelled if I ever thought an adult was making a judgment about me
without listening to my opinions or feelings. I couldn’t handle it at all
if someone didn’t treat me with respect.
The suffering my daughter experienced is repeated in the life of any child whose father abuses him
through harsh discipline.
Papa God is a very different kind of Father. He wants the best for us. That is the
only reason He ever corrects us. He doesn’t beat us over the head with His
Word and His correction doesn’t destroy us or frighten us. His presence in
our life as a Dad doesn’t leave us feeling degraded or abused. He never
tries to control us.
Papa God only encourages us to seek Him and be close to Him so that we will be able
to make the right choices. He does this so that He can bless our life.
He warns us when we are going in the wrong direction, but only to protect us from
doing the things that will end up hurting us. With the true heart of a
Father, He only wants to help us have a happy life. For this reason He tells us…
“Don’t be discouraged when I correct you. I only discipline those I love.
I only discipline those who accept Me as their Father. As you endure My discipline,
remember that I am treating you as My very own child.” Hebrews 12:5-7 NLT
“My child, don’t ignore it when I discipline you. Don’t be discouraged when I correct you.
I only correct those I love, just as a father corrects his child in whom he delights.”
Proverbs 3:11-12 NLT
“My discipline is always right>
and it is always what is good for you.”
Hebrews 12:10 NLT
“I discipline you only to help you.”
Deuteronomy 8:5 NLT
Papa God will never hurt me
He is safe for me to love
My daughter shares about being abused by someone she trusted not to hurt her.
When any child experiences the pain she describes, it grieves the heart of our
tenderhearted Papa God.
He weeps because He is such a loving Father and it breaks His heart when one
of His precious ones suffers such terrible hurts.
This is Mary’s sad account of what she experienced…
When I was thirteen years old I was arrested for stealing candy from the convenience store
across the street from junior high school. Mom had to pick me up at the police station.
I knew she was upset and I felt bad that I had hurt her, but dad was the one I dreaded seeing.
By this time he already had a history of being abusive toward me and I was scared he would
beat me up for this incident.
I sat tensely on the living room couch, anxiously waiting for him to come home from work.
As soon as I heard his car in the driveway, I panicked.
“Look at what you’ve done now,” he screamed at me as he stormed into the room and stopped
angrily in front of me.
He towered over where I sat on the couch and glared at me. His face was contorted with the
revulsion he felt toward me.
“I….”
Before I could finish he spit on my face.
Instant rage welled up inside me as I wiped his spit away with my sleeve.
“You have no right to do that to me!” I yelled at him. “You have no right!”
“You’re a loser,” he screamed back at me. “That’s what you are. A loser!”
“And I have every right to treat you any way I want. You got exactly what you deserve.
God is just as disgusted with you as I am.”
He then quoted Scriptures that proved God supported him treating me that way.
I ran out of the room and into my bedroom as he shouted at me, “You get back here right
this minute. I’m not finished with you yet!”
I slammed the door behind me and slumped to the floor by my bed and sobbed. I was relieved
that he didn’t come after me and force me to go back into the living room.
“I feel like scum under his feet,” I told myself as I buried my face in my hands and
rocked back and forth, trying unsuccessfully to stop crying. “I’m nothing to my father
but a piece of dirt.”
At that Moment I wanted to die. I would rather he had taken a knife and killed me than
live with how degraded I felt from his spit that I could still feel on my face.
From that day I wanted to hurt my dad as much as he had hurt me. I also tried many times
to kill myself. I remember thinking a lot…
“If I have to hurt like this all of the time, what’s the point of living?”
Mary had witnessed her father’s violence toward me as a young child. When I remarried,
the cruelty from her second father now crushed her even more in the tender places of her
heart.
Anger and hatred now consumed her.
She turned to drugs to stop her pain.
In her late teens, she lived with different men who used and mistreated her. They always
ended up discarding her as if she was a worthless piece of trash. Eventually she lived on
the streets of the town where she grew up, troubled, scared and lost.
No matter how much I wished it were possible, I couldn’t change the past and erase all
her suffering. I couldn’t undo the damage. I could only pray that some day God would make
it up to her for the years that had been destroyed in her life (Joel 2:25).
When Mary lived on the streets, God often awakened me at night and warned me to pray for
her safety. Then days later she inevitably appeared at my doorstep. Underneath the heavy
makeup and hardened countenance, I saw a frightened little girl who was desperate to know
that she still had family who loved her.
“You were praying for me the other night, Mom,” she would say with a haunted look in her
eyes.
“I know you were praying for me. It’s your prayers that protected me. I would have been
killed, Mom, if you hadn’t been praying.”
Then just as quickly as she had come, she walked away and disappeared down the street. I
ached for her, but all I could do was trust God to protect her until she found her way
back to Him.
When Mary was twenty-six years old, God answered my prayers.
She became so scared by what was happening in her life that she chose to enter Teen
Challenge and return to the Jesus whom she had been running away from
since early high school. She was delivered from drugs and the deadly
anguish in her soul began to heal.
The days of being consumed by hatred were over. Mary forgave her father and she
forgave herself for all her choices that had caused her and the people she
loves so much pain.
Then she returned home and began a new life.
Our new friendship helped to heal our regrets for all the years we missed out on
as mother and daughter.
Mary found a job, enrolled in college and immediately excelled in both. Layer upon
layer God restored to her the self-respect and family relationships that
she had lost.
When a child grows up with the kind of abuse Mary experienced, the word father is
an ugly word. The very mention of it stirs up the painful thought…
“If that’s what having a father feels like,
I don’t need it!”
If a person is this damaged by their earthly dad, it becomes extremely difficult for
him to want to have anything to do with God as his Father. My son John’s
troubling story further illustrates how a father’s abuse can turn a son or
daughter away from the Lord…
John was seventeen when one of his best friends was killed in a car accident. Dave was a
straight “A” student who was active in the youth group in his church. Even though he was
only seventeen, he was a strong Christian and John admired him immensely. Dave
was what my son would call “a really good kid.”
Many of John’s other friends ditched school and partied. Dave was the one who always stayed
out of trouble and tried to do the right thing.
Then one day the phone rang. John was shocked by what the voice on the other end of the
line was telling him.
“He’s dead, John. Dave’s dead,” his friend told him.
My son hung up the phone and sat down in a chair across from his father.
He was shaken and stunned.
“Why Dave, dad?” he said in a loud, hurt voice.
“Why did God let him die? He was such a good person…such a good Christian. Why did God
let this happen?”
His father listened in silence.
“If anybody deserved to die, it’s me or all my other loser friends who are always pulling
stuff,” John blurted out.
“I hate God for doing this. I hate Him for letting Dave die.”
Without any warning, his father jumped up out of his chair and lunged at John. He was a
tall, solidly built man and with all his strength he slugged our son in the face.
“You don’t talk about God like that,” he told John with livid indignation.
John had been saved since he was a young boy. In his right mind he knew very well it was
wrong to talk about God in that way.
But when he poured out his pain to his father, John needed him to understand his
overwhelming grief and confusion. At that moment he needed compassion from his dad,
not an abusive, self-righteous slug in his face.
John was never the same after that incident. He already had been struggling with how he
felt about Christianity because of all the times his father had used the Bible to condemn
him. He didn’t want anything to do with the God his dad believed in.
I am so thankful that isn’t the end of the story for John. He did forgive his father and
now he is a wonderful man with a passion for life and a bright future ahead of him. I
thank my Papa God for setting my special son free from the past and giving him a new life
that is rich with his dreams and his destiny.
To all the sons and daughters who don’t want to give God a chance to be their Dad
because of hurts they suffered from their earthly father, Papa God longs
and even aches for them to know that this is His compassionate heart toward them…
“I will not crush you when you are weak.
I will not quench your smallest hope.”
Isaiah 42:3 NLT
“I do not enjoy hurting you or causing you sorrow.”
Lamentations 3:33 NLT
“I will rescue you and you will no longer be abused and destroyed.”
Ezekiel 34:22 NLT
“Never feel like you have to hide your feelings from Me.”
Psalm 34 MESSAGE
“I show compassion to you according to the
greatness of my unfailing love for you.”
Lamentations 3:32 NLT
“Open up before Me and keep nothing back.
I’ll do whatever needs to be done.”
Psalm 37 MESSAGE
“I will never let you down. I’ll never look the other way,
when you are being kicked around. I will never wander off and do My
own thing. I’ll be right here, listening to you.”
Psalm 22 MESSAGE
Papa God wants to heal me
If an earthly father leans on his son or daughter for his emotional or sexual
needs, the scars go deep. Troubled, confused feelings come into the heart
of that child because the dad he trusted to love him ended up violating him.
My brother is a tragic example of the damage this betrayal inflicts on a child…
When Joe was born I was nine years old. As soon as he came home from the hospital he was
left alone in his crib most of the time. I couldn’t stand to see him lying there with no
one caring about him. So I tried as hard as I could to give him the love he was missing,
but I could never give him enough affection to make up for Mom and Pop’s neglect.
As Joe got older, my father developed an unhealthy bond with him.
The more distant Pop’s relationship was with Mom, the more he turned to my brother for
his need for companionship. Joe was also starved for love, and they grew increasingly more
dependent on each other. Each day they spent many hours alone together.
When Joe was in late grammar school, Pop’s health deteriorated and he leaned more and
more on my brother for his needs. This was a heavy burden for such a young boy. Joe felt so
responsible to be there for his father that he rarely went outside to play. He was robbed
of many of the experiences a boy his age usually would enjoy because of the unfair burden
he felt to take care of Pop.
“Could you stay home with me?” my father asked Joe early one morning just before he walked
out the door to go to school. “I don’t want to be alone today. I really need you to be with
me.”
Joe struggled. He was visibly torn. There was a party at school that day and he didn’t want
to miss out on it, but he also didn’t want to let Pop down.
“No,” Joe finally said as he hung his head down guiltily. “I really want to go to school.
My teacher is doing something special with us today. We’re having a party and I want to be
there.”
With those words, my brother shrugged his shoulders and left.
Pop died a few days after that, and Joe never forgave himself for not staying home with
him. From the moment of Pop’s death, guilt tormented him.
When Joe started high school, he tried to escape from his unbearable pain by getting into
drugs and heavy drinking. He failed all his classes and one day in a fit of rage he
attacked Mom. She called the police and they took Joe away.
From that point, my brother deteriorated rapidly. By the time he was eighteen, he was in
and out of mental hospitals. Now his violence could only be controlled by potent drugs. He
was subjected to numerous shock treatments that permanently stripped him of his original
personality.
Slowly I watched the brother I loved become someone I no longer knew. He was alive
physically, but the real Joe had already died.
“I can’t get over that I let Pop down,” he explained to me one day when I visited him in
a locked hospital ward. “I can’t get it out of my mind that I left him when he needed me.”
Whenever I was with him, Joe never sat up straight enough to look me in the eye. His head
hung low in shame. His shoulders were stooped over under the weight of his overwhelming
guilt. I grieved over the tragic direction of his life. But no matter how much I loved my
brother, I couldn’t help him. His mind was gone and insanity had overtaken him.
He became more and more dangerous to be around and was committed by the courts to spend
the rest of his days locked up in high security psychiatric facilities.
Joe never came back to the person he was before Pop died.
If a father violates his son or daughter by using him to meet his sexual or
emotional needs, that child may not end up as disturbed as my brother,
Joe. Nonetheless, the scars that are inflicted will leave him seriously
damaged in vulnerable places in his soul.
No human effort can remove this damage.
The only one who can set a soul free from such horrible pain is our merciful Papa
God. He fully understands our shame and guilt. He has a tender compassion
for how much we are suffering. He longs to take all the troubled feelings
out of us and give us a new heart.
He not only wants to do this. He is the only one who can.
For this reason, Papa God offers His healing love to each of His children who are
in desperate need of being set free from the wounds of a father who wanted
to be close to them in an unhealthy way. Many have tried so many things to
get well, but the Father says…
“Cry out to Me and I will heal you.”
Psalm 30:2 NLT
“I will bind up your fractures and heal your bruises.”
Isaiah 30:26 NASB
“I will rebuild the ruined places in your life.”
Ezekiel 36:36 NASB
“I will restore you to health and heal your wounds.”
Jeremiah 30:17 NASB
“I will give you a new heart.”
Ezekiel 36:26 NASB
“I will set your heart free.”
Psalms 119:32 NIV
“I will put your life back together.”
Psalms 18, 19 MESSAGE
“I will make your life complete, if you place all the pieces before Me.
I will give you a fresh start. I will rewrite the text of your life,
when you open the book of your heart to My eyes.”
Psalm 18 MESSAGE
“I will pull you up out of the grave and
give you another chance at life.”
Psalm 30 MESSAGE
“Only throw open the doors of your heart to Me.
Then you will discover, at that very Moment,
that I have thrown open My door to you. You
will find yourself standing where you always
hoped you might stand, out in the wide-open
spaces of My grace and glory, standing tall and
shouting your praise.” Romans 5 MESSAGE
Papa God wants to make it up to me
for all the lost years
Our kind and caring Father doesn’t want us to spend the rest of our life grieving over
what we never had in our relationship with our earthly dad.
He wants to make it up to us for what we missed out on through no fault of our own.
I know this is how the Father feels about us because He tells us so in His own
compelling words…
“I will restore your soul.”
Psalm 23:3 NASB
“I will make it up to you for the years
the locusts have eaten.”
Joel 2:25 NASB
“I will give you back what you lost.”
Joel 2:25 NLT
“I will make you even more prosperous
than you were before.”
Ezekiel 36:11 NLT
“I will renew your lost youth like the eagle.”
Psalm 103:5 NASB
“I will turn into good what the enemy
has meant for evil against you.”
Genesis 50:20 NLT
“Comfort, comfort, My child, I say tenderly to you,
Your sad days are gone.”
Isaiah 40:1-2 NLT
“I will transform your Valley of Trouble
into a gateway of hope.”
Hosea 2:15 NLT
“I will rebuild you.
You will again be happy.”
Jeremiah 31:4 NLT
“When you walk through the Valley of Weeping,
it will become a place of refreshing springs
where pools of blessing collect
after the rains.”
Psalm 84:6 NLT
“I will open rivers on your bare heights and
springs in the midst of your valleys. I will make
your wilderness a pool of water and your dry
land fountains of water. I will even make a
roadway in your wilderness and rivers in your
desert.
I will comfort you. I will comfort all your waste
places. Your wilderness I will make like Eden.
Your desert like My garden. Joy and gladness
will be found in you. Thanksgiving and the
sound of a melody.” Isaiah 41:18, 43:19, 51:3 NASB
The love of my new Father restored me completely.
He washed away all of the emotionally crippling pain from my troubled
relationship with Pop.
For the first time in my life I had the courage to put my life-long grief about
Pop behind me. The tormenting sadness left. The dark cloud of emotionally
crippling rejection stopped dominating my thoughts and controlling my life.
With my whole being I thirstily drank in the realization that I was an exceedingly
loved child by a very real Dad. At last I knew that I had a Father who was
tremendously proud to call me His daughter because He thought I was so special.
I lost so many years going from one destructive relationship after another
because I was always searching for someone who would make me feel special.
But none of these efforts ever worked. They always ended in heartbreaking loss and
made the pain in my heart hurt even more.
Only when I let God become my very real Dad did this suffering stop.
That is when my life-long pattern of choosing to be close to hurtful, abusive
people finally ended as well.
Now it’s as if none of that suffering ever happened. All the ways Pop broke my heart
don’t matter anymore because now I have the most wonderful Dad in the whole world. And
He never scares me. He never abandons me. He never takes away my hope. He is so safe
for me to love that I can run to Him the minute I am ever afraid.
When I do, He always assures me…
“You can relax inside because everything is going to be alright.
I’m right here.
I’m taking good care of you and I always will.”
Every day of my life I am secure in knowing I have
this kind of Dad. In that solid knowing, I have the strength and peace to face life.
Now I rest in the life-changing truth that…
Abba Father is my healing.
The shelter of His father’s love is my strength and my peace.
| 