Overcoming Father Wounds by Kia Stephens

Author:Kia Stephens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Living / Women;Abused women—Religious life;Adult child sexual abuse victims—Religious life;Christian women—Religious life;Fathers and daughters;Incest victims—Religious life;REL012130;REL012030;REL012070
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2022-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

The Truth about Forgiveness

Going against the current of popular opinion, our heavenly Father challenges us all to forgive. Despite mounting evidence backing our resolve to remain unchanged, God isn’t giving us a pass. Instead, He gently urges humanity to choose forgiveness.

Matched up against an inexhaustible list of wrongs, this will always be God’s response. Whether you were rejected, betrayed, abandoned, abused, or lied to, God says, “Forgive your father.” He knows unforgiveness sucks us into its tangled maze with unrelenting force. We struggle, unsuccessfully, to free ourselves but often end up back where we started.

Choosing to forgive is not desirable. It’s the road less traveled that Robert Frost talked about. And when we choose that less-traveled path, staying on it is even more difficult than choosing to take it in the first place. This path is narrow, dark, gloomy, and riddled with broken trees and falling branches. It’s not inviting at all, but what I realized is that the difficult path leads to the abundant life Jesus spoke about in John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

This life John talks about is one where I’m fully known and accepted by God. No mask. No faking. Just me and my imperfections. It’s in this place that God can begin to work on my ache.

Only when I make the decision to take my mask off can God meet the desperation of my wounded soul. So I selected the path of changing my thoughts about God. And when I did, I saw that in the far distance of this path, riddled with debris, there was a light of hope guiding me on my difficult journey to true healing. On this path, I realized masking our wounds is an easy out, and eventually it will prove ineffective.

A man can’t soothe an inner ache.

A bottle can’t drown a lingering sorrow.

Success won’t mend a broken heart.

These fillers hide and eventually magnify the crater-sized hole lurking within, leaving us longing for substance. And it’s not a substitute that we desire. We’ve had enough of those. What we’re looking for is the real: real advice, real peace, real answers, real hope, and a real relationship with God.

Some of us have tiptoed on the edge of forgiveness. Like a child timidly sticking her toe into the swimming pool, we flirted with it. We see women who have taken a deep dive into the waters of forgiveness and wonder if it could ever be us. Can we ever be free from the heavy weight unforgiveness places on us?

Part of what keeps us at the edge is our own personal failure with the subject. Many of us have tried to forgive and failed. Some of us have simply gotten stuck in the process because we were hit unexpectedly by yet another offense: a sarcastic comment, a triggering event, or perpetual rejection. Some of us simply refuse to do it, deeming our fathers undeserving of such a gift.

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