How Can I Forgive? Options

[Lyndis]

I will start with some background. My parents divorced when I was 6 or 7. Until I was 12, my father was around now and then, maybe not as much as he could be, but he tried. Anyway, in 2002 he moved away, deactivated his email, and changed his number so I had no idea where he had gone. He also stopped paying child support. A few years after that we found out where he was, and had to go to court to get the child support money, and he doesn't pick up the phone when I call. Obviously, this has hurt me deeply. I don't know why he did what he did, but still it has been many years and I want to forgive him. I just don't now how. I don't know what kind of answers I am looking for but anything that can help me to understand or to forgive my father for what he did would be appreciated. God bless.
-Linda

[Flailing]

Linda,
Your road to forgiveness starts with understanding. For understanding it is necessary to eliminate some false assumptions that you may hold and which are perpetuated by society. First of all not everyone can be a good parent or a parent at all. Society leads people to believe a parents love for a child surpasses all and this will lead them to be loving capable parents. Not everyone is capable of being a good parent. People range from great parents to those that are quite incapable. Secondly, there is the myth of happily ever after in a marriage. Marriage is a very challenging, takes great effort, requires unwavering commitment and even with both individuals best efforts may fail. Once there is a marriage failure there can be great pain of the ex-spouses. This pain is caused from the pain of loss of the spouse, loss of a family unit, loss of time with the children, and loss of resources as there are now two households. In divorce there is clearly a losser financially. The laws are set up such that the partner earning the larger wage must usually pay the other spouse a large percentage of their income. Results could take the form of living in a house to having to move to an apartment. There is also commonly a winner and loser in custody of the children. If there is great animosity between parents a single parent may receive very limited access to the children, such as a weekend or two a month. If this was the case for your father he found himself in a position where he was experiencing a great negative financial impact and limited access to you. You viewed it as going from loving parent to loving parent. He possibly found himself living in a shabby apartment, seeing you several days a month and wallowing in angst the rest of the time. This is very painful.

Possible emotions your father was feeling was sadness, anxiety, anger from the failed marriage, loss of the family unit, and loss of access to you. There was probably a great deal of resentment and anger toward his former spouse. These emotions are sometimes overwhelming they are hard to contain and can overshadow the love and concern the parent should have for the child. It is possible your father found these emotions too much to cope with. That in the situation he could not be the father he should be. Not everyone is capable of successfully dealing with every situation they encounter in life (even though society says love of a child can overcome all - MYTH). People have limited capabilities. Your father walked away from the situation and his lack of desire to communicate with you is most likely shame. It is not an absence of love for you as you may be believing. Your father may believe you are going to remind him of his inability to meet his obligations, that he lacked the capacity to overcome the situation, or you as a person may remind him of his former loss and pain. He may feel he does not deserve your love or the priviledge of having you in his life. IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU AS A PERSON. You have not done anything wrong, you were a child with no choices in the situation. You are in no way deficient or in no way not deserving of love, even though is easy to perceive it that way for you.

If seeking acceptance, love and approval from your father you may never get it. If you wish a relationship with you father a suggest you write him a letter telling him you don't know or care about what happened in the past. That you are currently (or turning into) a mature, capable adult and wish to have an adult - adult relationship with him, looking forward not back. He is likely a man deeply shrouded in pain and shame.

We do not choose our parents. Imperfect parents can be overcome. You have what you need inside yourself and with your faith in god. People can and will let you down. You were born alone and will die alone and then enter the kingdom of our lords. Don't let this situation cause you to start attempting to assess blame in the situation to your father or mother...and certainly not on yourself. Also don't seek relationships with men attempting to obtain the approval from them you did not get from your father. Don't numb your pain with physical pleasures or drugs. Deal with you pain through counseling, support groups and let your pain strengthen you. Remember Joseph's brothers betrayed him (they threw him down a well!) He succeeded in life through his faith in the lord and then forgave his brothers them when he could have executed them.

While I don't know your specifics, I hope these general concepts are helpful. I will pray for you.

Yours in Christ,
Dr. T.

[semi]

Linda -

Dr. T has said much of what I would have said. I will add to it this:

It is the way Courts address divorce involving children that exacerbates the problem. A good father is hurt the most by the system. It is almost as if he is being punished for having married your mother.

You mother has you most of the time and he has you very little of the time so usually the mother's attitude toward the father is what the child mostly sees and forms the child's understanding of the father. Often the wife now solely in charge of the family becomes dictatorial toward the father discouraging him from coming around as much.

Since the law usually awards the children to the mother, this has the effect of making it appear that the husband is unsuitable as a father and that he abandoned his family when many times it is the wife's decision to divorce and the father has little choice in it.

A divorced father would have no problem seeing to the needs of his children but that is not how the system is set up. It is set up for the husband to pay the wife. He then sees it as not the children getting his money but his ex-wife.

While there is I suppose some actual "dead-beat dads" out there, it is something of a fiction. What happens is that the husband loses his investment in the home - yet he has to come up with even more money in order to have a place to live. This is extremely stressful and it usually results in the father loosing his job.

Two things are the result of losing one's job: first there is usually a long period before he finds another job and so he falls behind in all his payments. What little money he has he MUST use to keep the place where he lives and for food. This usually means that no child support is paid during that time. Then when he finally finds a job it usually pays less than he was making when he was married. Now having less money, he has a difficult if not impossible time trying to catch up back child support.

In many cases where this happens, the State takes away his driver's license for non-support. THEN he cannot even get to his job and loses that job as well. Being forced to take whatever employment he can find within walking distance or a bus ride, he then ends up with a minimum wage job and cannot possibly pay child support.

If they “attach” his pay for child support, that makes it impossible for him to survive, so he is forced to quit that job.

Forgiving your father ought to be easy but what you need to do is forgive your mother for creating this situation because in most cases it is definitely not all the father's fault even though the system is set up to portray the wife as the victim.

Forgiving some-one is not easy. What you must do is tale the matter before the Lord and say the words; “I forgive…” even though in fact you might not yet forgive and then ask God to help you forgive (because you might not be able to do it all on your own).

Shalom.