Reflections on Fathers Day: Not Just a Hallmark Holiday

We all have fathers, and about half of us have the ability to become fathers. I have three teenagers, whom I have helped raise as a single dad for almost the past decade. Your relationship with your father can be as unique and the person that you have become. We often fail to realize how many variables interplay in that relationship. The physical and mental health of your dad is a major determining factor of what kind of relationship you have. Too many dads have fallen victim to addiction, physical and verbal abuse, or chronic disease such as Alzheimer’s disease. Economic factors such as a person’s job impact their availability as a dad. Your dad may bring home a healthy paycheck, and he may provide all the comforts of life, but if he is an absentee dad, then there is a trade off that is hard to calculate. We often take these factors for granted, loving or hating our dads without thinking about what made him the person he is today.

Families take many forms in today’s modern culture. The traditional nuclear family has given way to a plethora of variations that include blended families, adoptive relationships. Step-dads have an especially difficult job as they walk the balance between becoming a member of the family by marriage without attempting to replace or exclude the biological dad. Knowing what level of involvement they should conduct can be a contentious element in any family. Either way, all dads deserve respect and appreciation for the contributions they make in our lives, even if we don’t see what those contributions are in the immediate short-term.

Father’s Day gives us all a chance to say “thank you” to the man in our lives. Hopefully, he is a loving, caring, and involved male role model who reflects the same love that God has for His children in his temporal relationships within the family. We all make sacrifices for our children while offering them guidance and direction in the lives of our children. Sometimes, all we can do is model what we want our children to become. We may have to show our children how to forgive, how to accept, and how to make positive choices that sometimes put the self last in an example of service to others. For Christians, the Heavenly Father acted out those virtues in his relationship with His Son. For those of other faiths, there are numerous examples of fathers who demonstrated love for their children. From Abraham to Zechariah, the Old Testament and New Testament contain stories of father’s who exemplify God’s love.

No father-child relationship is completely free of conflict. Disagreement is part of the letting-go process that turns us into thinking adults. But as we grow into the people we become, let us take pause to reflect on the importance of fathers in our lives. If he is still in your life, give him a hug and say  “thanks for all you’ve done, dad.” If he has departed this world, thank God for the person he was and how he helped give you life in this world.

Image by George Cassutto
Copyright 2011
Used with permission