Father’s Day can be a ‘complicated’ holiday for many of us. We each have different stories.
Mine includes a father who left and came back, left and came back, then left for good. It also includes a husband who promised never to leave yet was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer and is now in Heaven.
I’m well aware of holidays filled with aching hearts, especially on Father’s Day. But just because it’s complicated doesn’t mean I want to skip it all. I have decided instead that complicated can be an invitation.
We can invite the Father into our memories, our grief, and even our disappointments. We can ask Him to show us where He has been in the midst of all those circumstances. I have, in fact, done this very thing and was encouraged by His response to my heart. We can also ask God to remind us of all the ways He desires to be our Everything.
So, this Father’s Day, I am binding up my wounded heart with these promises. And I pray, they might bind up yours too:
“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him” (Psalm 103:13, NIV).
“The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you as he did for you in Egypt…and in the wilderness. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place” (Deuteronomy 1:30-31, NIV).
“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23, NIV).
Dear friends, whether you have experienced the love of a father on this earth, or even if it’s complicated, we all have access to the love of God the Father—and the love He has for us is not dependent on us.
It is who He is, and He changes not.
