Happy Father’s Day, Every Day

Ever meet someone that is adopted and wonder what it was like to be them on days like today?

Being “Father’s Day” there is much that is implied with the word Father.

The true definition is “ a man in relation to his natural child or children.”

So if you were born into this world and abandoned by your biological father, should you not celebrate “father’s day?”

There are many men that happen to have a biological relationship with their children that come nowhere near being a father. They just happen to have played 50% in the creation but not always the development of the child.

In my case, 100% of my biological relationships walked out on me as a child. After spending the first few years of my life in foster care, finally, I was adopted. Adoption is not all that it is cracked up to be through. Even then I really never understood what having a father meant. It was the relationship a boy looks for in his father, that was still something I sought.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a dad and a mom, who both took care of my necessities like clothing, food, and shelter, things many people take for granted.

Yet, a father seemed to still be something or someone that I was missing.

I can remember clear as day when I had acted up and spouted off and talked back to my dad. The words rang in my ears for days, months, years after. “I am your father, not your friend.”

I was crushed, not in the way Luke was when Vader told him he was his father, but crushed in a way that this was my dad, but never my friend.

I began to lean into the relationship with my maternal grandfather, looking for a father figure, still unsure what that meant. He taught me how to fish, how to respect and honor others, and what it meant to be a man.

I also spent a great deal of time at church, befriended by a priest there, he became another father for me. He helped me when things were rough at home, he taught me discipline, loyalty, and honesty.

Like my first father, whom I never knew, these men also left me, abandoned and longing for the father I did not know I had.

It was not until many years later, as an adult, that I began to realize that I had a father all along. These men were figureheads, spokespersons for the father I longed to know.

No matter if you are an orphan, abandoned, lonely and scared in this world, your father is always patiently waiting for you to come home. He waits for each one of us, he knows us by name. He is love personified, he is Papa, Dad, Father, and Abba all in one.

Once I found my Father and He shared His Spirit, I too became a father. Not a father in the sense of the biological, but one that leads the children. He has asked me to take care of his children on this earth. Whether it is through mission or compassion, we are all called to be fathers. Fathers to those He has placed in our lived to look after.

To quote a dear friend on mine, who share words of wisdom with me just the other day, “ You have an amazing father’s heart and I love how you share God’s love with others!”

So it is with that that I say, Happy Father’s Day. Every day a father answers his Father’s call to share the love of their Father with the world is a happy day.