All the Broken Fathers

All the broken fathers who fell short of what we needed and all the faltering mothers who chose their own needs over ours,

they follow us, long after we’ve moved past them, into adulthood, into our own parenting, into our relationship with God. It is the first failing we own, our inability to heal our parents’ brokenness.

Before we even form a sense of ourselves we know, somehow, we’ve failed because our existence isn’t enough to make them whole. Our portal into this world,

the first voices we hear,

first eyes that drink us in,

first hands that receive us,

are also our introduction to its fragile nature, its bondage to sin, its fallen state.

We gaze into the eyes of these sinners falling deeply in love. As we grow in the shadow of their brokenness, we beam that love in their direction like healing rays, like spiritual laser treatments, as if sin was a form of TB and our love was the sun; willing them to be what somehow we know they can, projecting behind them a brilliant shadow, their perfect selves, even as we avoid the blows raining down on us from the darker reality of those on whom we rely

for nurturance, provision, and instruction in this life.

We’re stubborn in our love, even if they break us, walk away, tear our hearts from our chests, or neglect us, leave us lying hungry and bleeding, still we love them and will them to love us with the perfect love we know by faith exists and is our birthright.

Much of our adult lives is about seeking redemption for failing to love them into perfection, into wholeness, into their greater selves. We brace against the howling in the wind, screaming about apples that don’t fall far from trees, about the sins of the fathers visited on the sons, about generational curses and spoiled inheritance. But there is a greater voice that whispers pure truth into the gale and we strain to receive it where we stand,

“The word of the Lord came to me: “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.” Ezekiel 18:1-4 (ESV)

For even the children of broken fathers and babies abandoned by wandering mothers find wholeness, hope, a home in Jesus Christ.

“For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.” Psalm 27:10 (ESV)

And it is within His love we find our perfect Father, and beneath His wings we know a mother’s unbroken soul and from within His great heart, we discover the power to heal ourselves and those we love, through forgiveness, mercy, and grace.

And so, we receive the remedy for our own brokenness so that we can be the answer to the prayers of our own children, so our offspring will be freed from our failings and healed of the brokenness that would be our legacy if it weren’t for Jesus.

It’s in this way we stand, no fall to our knees beside our broken fathers and our fallen mothers and cry, “Mercy, Lord, have mercy on us all.” “Abba, Father,” we cry, “save us, from our wounds and from our power to wound our children.”

The burden of this fallen planet is evidenced in the scars children bear from broken fathers and mothers with twisted souls and in this we bleed and weep but the One who lived, a perfect Son, and fulfilled a perfect Father’s will has secured for us a place where all wounded children find the answer to the perfect love they knew, by faith, existed all along.