A Father to the Fatherless: Healing for the Heart

Our next five years in Oklahoma were ones of deep healing. Healing from many diseases, but mainly healing from the loss of Nepal and all that meant in my body and soul. The next blogs will show lots more photos and tell of significant events, but this one will highlight the biggest thing God did for me.

Through God’s Word He showed me His view of fatherhood. Through the gift of my husband’s tears He showed me His view of fatherhood. Through the gift of being fathered and cared for by our pastor, Dow Robinson He showed me His view of fatherhood. I learned and rested in the fact that God IS my Father and He was all I needed. This brought healing to the fear of fatherhood I had experienced in childhood. Here is my recounting of how that healing happened and how I began to rest in my Father's love.

I then saw that through many men He has shown me a father’s love and care. But I never knew it was Him. Only now have I seen Him. Only now have I known the truth—that HE is my dad and will always provide for me and be there loving me: to let me sit on His lap and to be a child with all my faults and immaturities—forever loved by my eternal Father. He alone is “a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling” (Ps. 68:5). How grateful I am for His constant care of so many years.

So how did God change my heart and fill that empty spot? He saw that it was time and laid in place our first big move in 6 years—from Oklahoma to Kentucky. I was pleased and excited. And I got sick. One Sunday morning as I was struggling with the delay we were having in moving, and with being sick, I began to weep. As Bill began to pray for me, he too touched the pain. And THEN God touched my heart and I knew that the pain of moving was the pain of a 6 year old girl whose father had left her, whose father didn’t love her. It was the pain and sickness of a 6 year old who had blocked out her relationship to her father as unreal and superficial and that it didn’t matter anyhow. BUT IT DID.

And slowly God touched the pain and opened my blinded eyes and I saw that my father had loved me and that I loved him. Memories came back of the relationship we did have and the only love he was able to give. And I wept—this time for gratefulness, because this time I knew it was my Heavenly Father who had come to me and healed my heart, and the heart of a six year old.

And over the weeks that followed, as God showed me His provision of father throughout my life, I began to wonder how my mother fit into all of this: my mother who was always there and always caring. Then one day as I was being prayed for, and God was bringing to a completion my physical healing, I received a hug from a dear friend, Kay Camenisch, who was praying for me. She was a mother of four. I knew the hug was special and that God had imparted something new. I asked her if she knew what it was. She said it was the Father’s love. And suddenly I knew, and said to her with a deep assurance, “Yes, it was the Father’s love, but He sent it through a mother.” And the circle became complete, as I saw how God had so richly provided His love through both men and women in my life. And His provision was perfect and complete.

So now I know that my Heavenly Father loves me deeply and tenderly. And I recog­nized Him as my dad, both then and now, and that only in Him will my heart ever find rest. The rest comes in knowing that I am a child of my Heavenly Father. And like Jesus, my birth was really not a human decision or a husband’s will (John 1:12-13). But it is my Heavenly Father who has called me into life. Indeed, He is a Father to the fatherless, and the lover of my soul.