Fathers form us.
Our fathers may have launched us into adulthood healthy, strong and confident having poured into us words of truth, love and life and surrounded us with the safety of strength and sensitivity.
Or perhaps our fathers left us emotionally shredded, grasping for something to staunch the wounds as we limped into the world to find our way.
Even if a father leaves the family, his children are formed by the hole that remains and by the future father figures who may seek to fill that hole.
Randy Carlson, in his 1992 book Father Memories, wrote, “Picture fathers all around the world carving their initials into their family trees. Like a carving in the trunk of an oak, as time passes the impressions fathers make on their children grow deeper and wider.”
Mark D. Roberts wrote a tribute to his father-in-law, Bill Swedberg, who recently passed away. Mark cited a passage from Colossians to capture the heart of the man who has left a strong impression on his family: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Col 3:12). Mark felt that his father-in-law lived out the virtues of “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” more consistently than anyone he’s known.
Mark included in another post some excerpts from a memory book that his father-in-law filled out, including an answer to what spiritual legacy he’d like to leave for others: He’d like to be “[a] man who loved God, who loved to help people from the Lord Jesus Christ through his words and actions.” Mark assured his readers that this is indeed how his father-in-law would be remembered.
Fathers—and fathers-in-law—form us, carving something permanent into us.
Ann Voskamp shared ways that her father has formed her … his impact continues to dig into her with an occasional barb, words cutting into her heart. When her father phoned one morning, she listened for “the nuances, signs of pain in his voice,” as he invited her to bring the kids over for a combine ride. A few days passed before she arrived.
[T]he relationship between Dad and I over the last string of years has wore like a barbed wire fence, line that holds us together rusted, twisted… sharp.
On the headland, Dad idles machine and children and I climb ladder into the combine. Dad smiles as the children cram into the corners of the cab, trying still to give Dad a clear line of sight to the cornhead. He hands out multi-colored swirled suckers.“Had these in here for days and days. Didn’t think you guys were going to bother showing up.”
Her post, culminating in a shift in perspective and a significant gesture of forgiveness and love, inspired poignant responses from people formed by their fathers.
Ann collected some of those responses here, where people told their own stories of how their fathers formed them.
One man recalls his farmer-father who attempted to pass on a love of working the land. “We would spend the summers working 2 acres by hand … Back then I hated it, now I look back on it with good memories. It helped shape me into the man I have become.”
Another man shared how, “God, my father, is able to look past my shortcomings, and see the good in me. The good I have done to others, the love I have tried to show…I don’t want to waste any more moments I have with my father because one day he will only be a memory.”
My mother and father stopped by unexpectedly yesterday afternoon. As I sat across the table from Dad sipping tea, I thought of this very post. About fathers and how they form us.
The high calling of relating to my father comes with challenges.
But I thought of the man who wrote to Ann Voskamp with the reminder that our heavenly Father looks past our shortcomings and sees the good in us.
Verbal barbs caused me at least one wince of pain in my brief visit with my father. But I want to try to see the good.
And I hold on to another reality I have seen over the years: our fathers do form us to some extent—often a great extent—carving something into us for life.
But our heavenly Father can do much more.
He can overcome what needs to be reformed as He conforms us to Christ.
Post by Ann Kroeker of annkroeker. writer. and Not So Fast. Photo by Ann Voskamp, used with permission.
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Ann Voskamp’s post on her father brought tears to my eyes when I first read it. Rereading just now did the same thing.
And Ann K., you’re right — fathers shape us in ways seen and unseen. My own father shaped me more by absence then presence; he was there, part of the family, but always somewhere else, usually work. I have to battle those same ways of being there but not there.
Thanks for this.
I like your blog and the other one you have that connected me to this one. I came from your random acts of poetry entry. There need to be more blogs with such a positive tone.
Check out my blog and see what you think.
Heard this song recently by Sandra McCracken
In the arms of a good Father
You can go to the deep water
Where the questions, we have left unspoken
Come out in the open
We will find shelter here
From my album called Live Under Lights and Wires
Says so much about how fortunate we are if we have good earthly fathers as well as our loving heavnly Father.
Glynn: You have a humble response to your father’s impact … or lack thereof … as you seek to avoid repeating the patterns you came to know as a child. Thank you for sharing.
Amy: Thanks for sharing these lyrics–we are indeed so fortunate if we happen to grow up in the shelter of a loving, safe, good father on earth. If not, however, we do have the perfect shelter of our heavenly Father. It’s wonderful to read and ponder in poetic form.
I used to be so hard on my father (in my head) for all that he didn’t do. Now I think about all he did do. I used to wait for him to be different. Now I enjoy him for who he is. We seem to have such outlandish expectations for our parents; as we age we may discover they are human after all… just like us.
I can remember a moment when I was in High School where I suddenly saw my Dad with different eyes – not the one who seemed sometimes so hard to please, but just a real person trying to do the best he could. I have had to go back to that moment – when the barbs you and Ann speak of occasionally come.
Our fathers do have a profound influence on us. I think that, to some extent, they shape our image of God. It is when we learn to see our heavenly Father as He really is, I think, that we can extend grace to our earthly fathers.
You did a wonderful job on this Ann.
LL: Well put, and a very healthy way to enjoy not just your dad, but everyone.
Linda: Good reminders all around, Linda, to offer love and grace to people who are just doing the best they can.
My father died 20 years ago, in front of me within the 10 minutes that followed my coming home from work. He died just at the time I was finally beginning to understand what his life had been like, having been orphaned at age 4 and made to work for the little he received. He had completed only 8 years of schooling, and his happiness when I became the first of his children to attend college was undeniable. He was a first-generation American who came up from nothing and received medals for his service in China, Burma, and India as a Merrill’s Marauder (almost none of the MMs came back). He worked all his life, and, like Glynn’s father, was more absent than present even when with us; work was what he had to do to support 7 children (originally, 9). I look back and try to remember how he was with us when we were children. I don’t have memories or presence or absence so much as memories of a man always trying to do what was right. He loved us. That was enough, I now know.
Maureen: Your story–your father-memory–is so powerful. To understand and appreciate *his* story has given you great insight and compassion.