A Father’s Day Message for Men about the Father Wound

Every June, I have the joy of celebrating Father’s Day with my wife and three children. I am so blessed that God has given me such a wonderful family, who for some unfathomable reason still love me despite the many missteps I’ve made along the way. My heavenly Father has so graciously chosen to guide and heal me as he has taken me on this journey of fatherhood and taught me what it means to cherish my children for the gifts they are.

Recently, I was invited to join the podcast of author Bob Kroll of With All Your Heart Institute to talk about his incredible book, The Father Wound…And Beyond. I met Bob when he spoke at the 2018 Connecticut Catholic Men’s Conference; and we’ve been close brothers and friends ever since. Bob had a tremendous influence on the men at the conference, not only during his talk, but in his personal interactions with them afterward. His was a message that came out of his personal experience of woundedness, and his deep desire to see other men healed from their broken relationships with their fathers. It is that message of woundedness and healing that is so appropriate to share during this month when we celebrate fatherhood and all that it means.

The Sins of Our Fathers

So many men have a wound in their heart, passed on to them by the abuse or neglect of their fathers. It is an unblessed injury, a burden inflicted on us by the man in our lives who was called by God to be our chief protector and teacher. Bob has lived out this story in his own life. His book begins and ends with his own recollections of his father and the journey from hurting to healing that took place in his life as he came to recognize and come to terms with his inner injuries – his father wound.

In The Father Wound…And Beyond, Bob does the difficult work of cutting to the heart of the struggles men face as a result of the pain brought into their lives by their fathers. Using Scripture, the Saints, and Church teachings, Bob spells out God’s original plan for men and the brokenness that sin brought into the world, the wound that has been passed on through the generations, but overcome through the cross of Christ. He so clearly outlines the pattern of deception that Satan has sewn into the hearts of the sons of Adam, allowing us to see clearly how this attack on fatherhood has damaged the hearts of men.

An Identity Issue, A Heart Issue…

In my life, I have struggled with my own father wound. My father was a caring man, a strong Catholic, and a good provider. However, for a good portion of my life, he worked away from home, out of state. When he came home on the weekends, he was too tired to spend time with me, and so I would sit at his feet while he watched television and tried to relax. Often, I would ask him questions about God; and since my father had degrees in theology, our conversations took on an intellectual character that was hard for a young boy to grasp.

Needless to say, this caused an identity crisis of confusion and self-doubt, and a loneliness I could not understand. It also served to shape my perception of God, and tainted my sense of worth for many years. I saw God as a loving, but distant and intellectually aloof deity, One I could please only through knowledge and quiet supplication. Such an image shaped who I was and left an empty hole in my heart I didn’t know how to fill.

This is the essence of the Father Wound. It is a heart issue, a deep hurt that comes from abuse, neglect, or poor parenting that can mute our identity and lead to confusion, and heaviness of heart, molding who we are and how we relate to the world. Ultimately, this heart wound becomes a bitter root that brings sorrow, resentment, addiction, and weakness that binds our hearts to unforgiveness. Bob shows in his book that understanding how unforgiveness blinds us and beats us down is the key to breaking this cycle of hurt and finding the healing we need to live as men – free and sold out for Christ.

Vows from a Prison Cell

In The Father Wound…And Beyond, Bob talks about the unholy vows we make with ourselves as a result of the wounds we have suffered. We consciously or unconsciously hold onto promises we make in our inner man; and these vows create the bitter roots that produce the fruit of unrighteousness in our lives. We may say to ourselves, “I can never forgive my father for what he did to me!” or “My father is a bad man, unworthy of my forgiveness!” We may also turn those vows towards ourselves: “I’m no good! I’ll never find peace in my life. I don’t deserve to be happy!” or “I’ll never be a good father – I don’t know how to do it!”

All of these vows place us in a prison of anger, shame, and unforgiveness. It digs a hole in our lives and leads to actions that draw us away from joy and push us into realms where we begin to pass on those bitter roots to our children. We are triggered by circumstances in our lives that remind us of the hurts we suffered at the hands of our fathers and we become incapable of living the life we were called to live. Helpless and hopeless, we see how the cycle continues and extends into the lives of all those around us.

The Hope of Forgiveness

But here is where Bob shares the secret of bringing hope out of hopelessness. He calls us to look to the One who experienced our hurts and offered his life fully for our redemption. Christ became a man so that he could take on our sins and show us the way to forgiveness and rebirth. He went to the cross, becoming totally vulnerable and exposed to the hatred and bitterness of the evil men around him. And yet, he offered himself to his Father for the world, showing us the power of forgiveness and the joy of restoration in love.

In my own life, I have made mistakes too many to count and too difficult to share. I have selfishly turned my vows of bitterness toward my wife and children, projecting onto them my own anger, shame, and hurt. But in Christ, I have learned the secret of vulnerability, of surrendering my heart issues to the One who has forgiven me in full. It has allowed me to find my strength not in my vain search for meaning in employment or accomplishment, possessions or position, but in my taking hold of the wealth of meaning and joy to be found in my family and my faith. By giving up those empty promises and forgiving my earthly father and myself, I have found the freedom in Christ to become the husband and father I have been called to be.

Storytelling and Steps to Forgiveness

Bob has a unique way of drawing his reader into the process of finding forgiveness in Christ. Not only does he masterfully set up the theology and methodology of understanding and overcoming the father wound, he does so in the context of his own story. Following the example of Christ, Bob knows that it is the power of story that helps to open men’s hearts to the possibility of forgiveness. In his book he relates how one day his father became so upset over Bob scratching the new floor that had just been put in his house that he slapped Bob hard across the face. Bob recalled how such a humiliation tore at the very fabric of his identity, for he knew, even as a young boy, how others perceive us through looking at the expressions of our face. This painful experience led to many years of hurt, self-condemnation, and bitterness for Bob.

Like the process of learning to forgive, however, the story doesn’t end there. Bob relates how he found the strength of peel away the layers of emotional damage during a time of spiritual counseling on a men’s retreat. His spiritual director asked him to share his strongest emotion about his experience with his father. Bob believed that it was anger; but anger was only the top layer of woundedness in Bob’s heart. As he dug deeper and deeper, he discovered feelings of hurt and humiliation, and ultimately the hostility of unforgiveness that had locked him in the prison of brokenness and bitterness that had distorted his identity and stifled his calling as a man.

Bob learned how to walk the path of forgiveness, moving through the steps he needed to take to walk his way out of the pit of despair into which he had fallen. He was able to use those steps to bring himself to forgive his father and himself, and to recommit his life to living as fully as possible for his Savior as the man, the husband, and the father Christ had called him to be.
These steps begin by asking the Holy Spirit to bring to mind who we are to forgive, move to the point where we ask God to forgive the person, and then challenge us to take that powerful step in forgiving not only the person, but ourselves as well. The steps ultimately lead in the end to blessings that draw us once more into a life lived unashamedly and wholeheartedly for the One who has shown us how to live free and forgiven and fully men after God’s heart.

Permission to Be

I am so grateful for having been given the blessing of spending time with Bob at the 2018 Connecticut Catholic Men’s Conference. This encounter has changed my life in ways I am still working out in my marriage and my relationship with my adult children. Perhaps the greatest takeaway from my time with Bob – the thing that impressed me the most about him and his ministry – was the way he gave the men of the conference permission to be – to be vulnerable to their hurts, to be forgiven in Christ, and to be strengthened by the knowledge that the father wound can be broken. By sharing his own story and the beauty of the process of overcoming this terrible hurt, Bob opened the door to men to be able to share their own journey of sorrow and suffering as well.

Bob, through his talk, and his time spend individually with so many man during the in-between times at the conference, made a safe space for the men to come to terms with the wounds they had been dealing with but had never fully understood within the context of their faith. His gentle approach and unashamed and uncompromising message of hope allowed these men to find the courage to bring their pain out into the open and share their stories, to accept their own woundedness, and to discover the strength they needed to begin their own journeys of healing and forgiveness. This was truly the essence of his talk and his book, lived out in the real world through the gifted ministry of a man who was brave enough and vulnerable enough to be touched by the Savior and healed.

…And Beyond!

As another Father’s Day comes and goes, I am struck with a nervous anticipation, a gloriously vulnerable hope that carries me forward with my family into the grace-filled days ahead. I see my father with a greater love, and see his struggles with new eyes. I look at my wife and children for the beautiful blessings they are, and tremble before my heavenly Father as I continue the journey of manhood as I walk with my family in the Kingdom. All this is because I have been moved by the words of a man who was given a vision to share and a passion to reach out to other men with a message of hope.

Men, as you continue to walk the path to perfection in Christ, I pray you find the strength to overcome the father wounds that have come into your lives. I pray you learn to break the demonic vows you have made and the lies the enemy has spoken into your hearts. I pray you can learn to forgive both your fathers and yourselves, and then take the healing that has touched your lives and pour it out onto the people around you, particularly your wives and children. And if you should need help in this, I pray you will pick up The Father Wound…And Beyond and begin the steps to recovery and rediscovery you will find in its pages. And, of course, I hope you will join us for this year’s Connecticut Catholic Men’s Conference on Saturday, September 21^st! Happy Father’s Day, and God Bless!

To learn more about Bob, his ministry and his book, The Father Wound…And Beyond, you can visit…

https://www.withallyourheart.org

https://www.youtube.com/@withallyourheart873

https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-father-woundand-beyond