KERNELS OF WISDOM: The arrow fired by your father

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A huge percentage of us have been emotionally wounded by our fathers.

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Some years ago I read a classic book by John Eldredge entitled ‘Wild At Heart.’ Eldredge asserted that many of us (and he was speaking from a male point of view meaning sons), in the course of our lives, are wounded by our fathers. He referred to those wounds as “arrows in the center of the heart.”

I sure can agree with Eldredge’s assertion. Both as a pastor and a jail chaplain I was often on the listening end of men recounting some of the most painful moments in their lives.

Take Robert for instance. He was playing in minor league baseball as a young boy taking a diving leap into home plate to beat the incoming ball, only to hear the umpire shout, “Out!” His spunky attempt to win the tied game left the 7-year-old with a bloodied chin as the red gravel cut into his face like number 20 sandpaper on ‘Cottonelle’ skin. “You could have won it for us,” screamed his Dad. “What a loser!” As tears began to trickle down Robert’s cheeks, they were met with a further expletive, “Big boys don’t f***ing cry!” Similar verbal pronouncements made throughout the formative years caused Robert to turn off the waterworks in his attempt to gain his father’s approval. Somehow he had adopted the erroneous belief promoted by his dad that real men don’t cry. Now in his late 20s Robert was a walking zombie, completely void of emotion.

Then there was Michael. He returned home from school one day to find his distraught mother clasping a piece of paper. It was a ‘Dear Joan’ letter. His father, a Sunday school teacher, had taken off and abandoned them both. Michael was in his prepubescent days at the time, beginning to navigate his way through the complicated maze of boyhood that eventually transitions into being an adult man. The abandonment could not have occurred at a more difficult time in his life. When I met Michael, now married with children, he was searching for love in all the wrong places. Playboy and Penthouse magazines were visibly stacked in cardboard boxes in his garage; the childhood wound of abandonment inflicted by his father had catapulted him into the world of false intimacy, the seamy world of airbrushed models who would never reject him, but would allow him to indulge in every sexual fantasy and express his self-love at a safe distance.

Never did I see as many arrows in men’s hearts as when I worked as a prison chaplain. Never will I forget the day a young man in jail received word that his father had just died. Sitting beside him in his cell I desperately wanted to comfort him and to assure him that we could make arrangements for him to attend his father’s funeral. “Attend the funeral?” he responded with visible emotion. “If I went to the graveside I’d spit on his casket!” In the aftermath of that remark he went on to tell me, with tears streaming down his face, that as a young boy his father had sexually abused him. For sure, as a pastor, I could write a book about men who’ve been wounded by their fathers.

Let’s not dismiss the truth, however, that there are good fathers around, but perfect fatherhood, I guarantee you, will not be found anywhere on this planet. And out of our imperfections as men we often wound our offspring. So many men today are the walking wounded, jaded images of authentic manhood.

If you’re one of these men, you need to know that there is a ‘Father’ who loves you. He is the ‘One’ who can heal every wound inflicted by your earthly father. He is God the Father! Can I ask you, are you a wounded man? Is there an arrow in your heart? As we approach this coming Father’s Day, do yourself a big favor, get in touch with a church where you can get some ‘spiritual surgery.’ Let’s face it, that arrow’s been in your heart for far too long!