Had my parents known the love of God as I have experienced it over the past 45 years, I believe that my childhood and their lives could have been vastly different. But their strained marriage ended when I was very young, and I have no memories of a two-parent home. When my father left for his assignment in Vietnam, I doubt my mother realized that he would never return. Their relationship had been unstable long before I was born, but this two-year military separation was the prelude to a cold divorce and total abandonment. Looking back, it is beyond my understanding how my father (or any father) could simply cut his family out of his life, moving on with no intention of any further relationship with either of us.
I didn’t have much chance to be a child and grew up feeling intensely lonely, longing for a real family. Like many children from broken homes, I wrestled with a sense of responsibility for my parents’ divorce, as well as the sudden end of mom’s life of military travel and adventure. She was physically present but still absorbed in her own pain and loss and very busy working to support us as best she could. Nurture did not come naturally to mom, and it was challenging to share small living spaces with a single parent dealing with deep unresolved grief. Though we never talked about my father, I was often pulled in as her emotional confidant and was caught in a confusing codependent relationship that took years and much emotional strength and perseverance to understand and untangle. In her attempt to project a controlled and perfect image, she never reached out for help to process her intense anger and hurt and seemed convinced that no one else could fully understand her situation.
After mom retired, she finally took time for personal reflection and wrote her memories, which she felt the need to share with me. While they only represent one parent’s perspective, these writings revealed things that no child should ever know, other than to add to their own testimony of God’s mighty hand of deliverance! Seeing all of this on paper did, however, confirm many of the emotions I had sensed and felt for years. As I had imagined, she was not especially called to motherhood, and expecting a child didn’t help the critical situation of my parents’ relationship. My father’s immediate response was to suggest abortion, and though, thankfully, my mother did not agree, it made the atmosphere even more tense. Simultaneously hoping for a miscarriage, mom also believed that a child could bring positive changes to a husband who hadn’t previously been especially responsible or reliable. As I imagined such a scenario, I wondered if any child would want to be born into my home. After extensively processing my upbringing over many years as an adult, the most accurate expression I have found is to call myself an emotional orphan.
In stark contrast, when I encountered the Lord in a deeply personal way as a 17-year-old, I discovered a heavenly Father who had known and loved me from before I was conceived, One who wanted a relationship with me, and the One who intentionally gave me life through a dying marriage. Children with absent fathers sometimes have a great deal of trouble with the concept of a heavenly Father, but this has not been my case as I had no real memories to shed, rather more of a vacuum. Lacking an earthly father for as long as I could remember made me even more ready to welcome Him into my life. I was free to fill in all of the earthly blanks with my heavenly Father, and I began to pattern my life after Him. Following His lead, I walked on, listening for His direction and finding Him to be faithful every step of the way. As Michael Hosea says in the movie, “Redeeming Love”: “Sometimes you have to leave behind what you were born into to become who God meant you to be.” How astounding what God has done in my life: He raised me up and gave me the courage and strength to embrace this life, and then, even more miraculous, blessed me with a wife and family of my own!
I wrote my own song just prior to my mother’s passing, followed directly by both of my parents’ songs in the next year. Set in my favorite key of D-flat major, “You Belong to Me” expresses my true feelings: abandoned, forsaken, alone, and rejected. Yet, since they are sung in the voice of Jesus, the emotions are acknowledged and there is comfort in the fact that He sees and understands. In the second verse, Jesus reminds me/us that He fully experienced all of the same earthly emotions, and I can “find myself” in Him. Psalm 27 is my “life psalm,” and verse 10, quoted in the middle of the song, is my “life verse”: “Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.” Or in The Passion Translation, “My father and mother abandoned me. I’m like an orphan! But You took me in and made me Yours.” All believers are spiritually adopted into God’s family. Galatians 4:4-7 says, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are His sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are His child, God has made you also an heir.” In the song lyrics, God says, “I will receive you,” (Psalm 27:10), “I will never leave you, nor will I forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:6), and “I will never leave you as an orphan” (John 14:18).
Our deepest and most painful emotions are difficult to face, but we are never alone when we walk with Jesus, and He is well acquainted with loneliness, rejection, abandonment, and estrangement. There is, in the end, no better traveling companion than the One who walked through this world often completely unrecognized as the God of the universe. Though you may not feel orphaned by your earthly family, you may feel wounded and alone in many other ways. Take heart in how deeply your Father loves you, the price He has paid for you, and the length to which He has reached to claim you back to Himself. Rest in His truth: you are “...rescued, loved, redeemed, nevermore alone...healed, secure, complete.” He is calling you back to your true identity: “Find yourself in Me... you belong to Me... forever find in Me your home, My child.”
Blessings on you today and always. Rest in Him!
("You Belong to Me" can be found on the album, "The Wonders You Have Done")
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