Though my dad never disowned me or walked away from me, I did do a lot of my growing up without my father around.  He never wished for this, and I absolutely do not BLAME anyone for this life.  Blaming anyone is a waste of time because I could be using that time and energy healing from the hole I had and have.

I have done a lot of healing in my life, learning to be a man without having the constant input from a father.  As Donald Miller wrote in his book Father Fiction, “wounds don’t heal until you feel them.”  I began to feel the wounds years ago…probably in college.  I began to ask myself questions about how I saw the absence of my father affected me.

Now again, I have to clarify that my dad is not some deadbeat dad who I am just now blaming for anything.  He did his best to love me all he could from a distance.  Divorce is crappy, and he did his best to love me throughout my entire life.  That being said, truth still remains, I did a lot of growing up without a father, and of course that sucks…plain and simple.  In that growth, though, I have learned a lot about who I really am as a man, but that only happened once I allowed myself to feel my wounds and grow through them.

I mean look at me now.  I am a husband to my best friend, which is a fear [wound] I once thought I would never heal from. I am a father to 2 beautiful girls God has given to me, I am convinced, to wreck me each and every day. I am a man who desires to love my wife every single day with an integral outlook and dedication.  I am learning to accomplish myself as a wounded healer. I am always healing wounds as I discover them, but I am much more of a man even now than I ever dreamed when I was younger.  I can now resound with Miller:

“We are the ones who will wrestle with security who will overcome our fear of intimacy, who will learn the hard task of staying with woman and our children, who will mentor others through the difficult journey of life, perhaps rescuing them from what we have been rescued.”