Father Wounds

Written by Danell Czarnecki, Oceans Board Member.

At the close of Saturday’s Discover Inner Healing Conference, Pastor Ryan, of Overflow Church, asked if anyone wanted to share something. The room was pretty silent for a short bit then a beautiful young woman from the second row walked to the front and began to speak through tears. She shared from a place of deep, dark wounding in her childhood at the hands of her father; things she had kept hidden from herself and others for years. Because of the root of those childhood wounds; she continued to be hurt by others and circumstances; and as a result, her current relationships seemed doomed to more pain and failure. The trauma of her past haunted her and was destroying her future. My heart hurt for her and her family.

I believe Satan’s biggest strongholds and weapon in this day is the attack on the family, particularly the father role; and then getting us to withhold forgiveness.

So many of us, like the woman at the conference, are walking wounded; wounded by our earthly father’s inability to fulfill the role God intended; likely carried on by his own woundedness from his father. The effect of a father wound is often low self-esteem, a deep emotional pain inside and a performance orientation that makes us “doers” rather than “beings.” These father wounds stunt us from being fully held by our Heavenly Father.

How do we, as children, grow to understand the role and love of our Heavenly Father in our lives if our earthly father didn’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t fulfill the role of father given to him by God? Our view of the Heavenly Father is often skewed when our earthly father fails to protect or provide; abandons us or is the one at whose hand we were abused and “planted” the root of the infection. If we can’t trust the father, then who can we trust?

Because we live in a fallen world, the vast majority of us seeking or in need of inner healing have been wounded by our earthly father and deprived of our father’s blessing. In ancient Israel they were consciously aware of the need a child had for their father’s blessing; it was part of their family traditions and lifestyle; not seen or done much in today’s cultures. And I think it’s sad that we have lost that very important passage in a child’s life.

We all come into the world helpless, dependent and needing acceptance, to be treated as worthy, and to be blessed. The father wound is the absence of this love from your birth father.

When we invite Jesus into the wounds created by our birth father; we start by asking Jesus to enter into specific memories; we renounce and reject any lies we accepted about ourselves at the time and we ask Jesus to reveal His truth about who we are; then we choose to forgive our birth father for hurtful words or actions, for not loving us or blessing us and for affecting the image of God the Father.

We must look to our Heavenly Father and come to know who we are as a child of God; He will set us free to let go of the pain and forgive our birth father; and give us a life lived in freedom!

Jer. 6:14 “You can’t heal a wound if you say it’s not there…”