Guest Blog - Father's Day Reflection
The following was contributed by Jennifer Becker, founding member at New Hope regarding her journey into coming to terms with what Father’s Day represents. Read to the end to find a few links if you want to learn more.
Introduction
Father's Day is here again, and I've been bracing for it. If I am honest, I feel angry. And underneath that, I feel sad and grieved. I know I’m not alone in having a complicated relationship with my earthly father. So I want to share some of my story, including how God and others are helping me.
I was born in the late 1960s to a mom and dad and a brother 5 years older than me. Growing up, it always felt like my immediate family was falling apart. Well, that wasn’t just a feeling, my family truly was falling apart. My parents separated when I was around a year old. Mom seemed to be always angry with Dad; everything was his fault. He was a presence in my life, and my brother and I would get together with him on holidays and some other times. But to be open to a relationship with Dad felt disloyal to my mother. I was close with my dad’s mother, my Grammy Deal. She died in 1979 when I was 11. That was a bad year for me. Grammy died, and then my mom divorced. Yet 1979 was also a good year because in the midst of that very dark time in my life, God reached out to me through a classmate. One of the girls at a slumber party brought a Bible, and when she shared about Jesus, I believed. So I started going to church with that family, and through my teen years, various families would “adopt” me at church services and events.
Getting to Know My Dad Better
I started to develop more of a relationship with my dad, too, because he had complained to my mom that my brother and I never spent time with him. I was pretty resentful about this because he had been so absent from our lives. “But he’s your father!” said my mom. I begrudgingly obeyed, And it ended up being a good thing. I remember meeting Dad at the local bagel shop and I always ordered a garlic bagel with butter and honey. (Strange combination, I know, but try it sometime!) Dad was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, a good conversationalist with a goofy sense of humor. I’m really glad I got to know him better. By the time he died 23 years ago, we had developed a much better relationship. And since he died, I’ve learned more about him. Things like…he went into the army before he finished high school to fight in WWII. Then soon after returning from war he took the phone call when his older sister died suddenly. More recently I learned things like…he was not able to have children. My Dad was not my biological father.
Dealing with the Shock and Pain
That was an enormous shock, and it is still shocking to me at many levels, even 4 years after I found out. My Dad was not my biological father. How do you integrate that truth into your life when you’ve been led to believe a lie for over 50 years? Nobody in my family told me this. I found out when I did a DNA test and connected with a half-sister who already knew her parents used a sperm donor. It was a “big, dark secret” in my family. That’s what my mom said when she finally acknowledged that her fertility treatments included sperm donation.
So, I continue to wrestle with being a “donor-conceived” person - the shock, the questions, the emotions, the new relationships, and the old relationships in a new light. I told Pastor Scott earlier this week I can’t get through the song Good, Good Father without crying. It’s a great song, based on scripture! Yet that song also brings to the surface my feelings of loss, betrayal, abandonment, rejection, grief, and anger. Yes, in my head I believe God is a good, good father and I am loved by God. But the difficult feelings which rise up from the depths of my heart reveal parts of me that remain distrustful, angry, afraid…and unloved.
I know I’m not the only one. No parent is perfect, and our hearts all long for love. I am thankful for the ways the Bible and the body of Christ speak truth to those deep wounds. We all need to hear it over and over again. No matter what has happened to us, God is safe, God is trustworthy, God cares, and God is love overflowing.
As someone who is trying to follow Jesus, I have been focusing on discipleship in my donor-conceived context. A whole new world opened up in FB groups with other people who have experienced an MPE (misattributed parentage experience). It helps to connect with others who are having similar experiences. At the same time, church small groups, one on one meetings with an accountability partner, and frequent intensive prayer have helped me “fix my eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” as Hebrews 12 urges us to do.
Support for the Journey of Discipleship
There are four areas I have focused on in particular for discipleship: identity, forgiveness, gratitude, and honoring our parents. First…
Identity
Before I learned this about myself, I was already a Christian on a long-term journey to better understand myself as a dearly loved member of God’s family. It’s so grounding to have my primary identity be in my relationship with God. It has also been very helpful to learn as much as I can about my biological father’s family. My life makes much more sense with a better picture of where the other half of me comes from. Second…
Forgiveness
God is forgiving and wants us to forgive one another. To do that we first have to acknowledge that we have been hurt. And we don’t always want to feel that pain. Growing up I had the attitude that I don’t need a father. But if I’m able to be honest I missed out on a lot without a father in the home. Before she died, my mom asked me to forgive her, and I said I would. When my anger comes up I keep bringing it back to God instead of holding on to resentment.
And Forgiving often leads me to greater compassion for those who have hurt me. I’ve been more able to withhold judgment and more willing to try to understand. I have never experienced the pain of infertility, but I can try to imagine what it was like for my Mom to want children so badly and not have any for the first 11 years of marriage. I can imagine that my Dad probably felt shame in the 1950s about infertility and then felt unable to connect well with us kids. I can have more compassion on my brother who ended up with a lot of responsibility at a young age after our parents separated. Then, in addition to forgiveness …
Gratitude
It does help me to consider what I can be grateful for. There are a number of big ones:
I’m grateful for fond memories of my Dad
I’m grateful to know the truth about myself
I’m grateful I was able to get some details from Mom about her fertility treatment experience
I’m grateful for the continued connection with my brother and new Connections with my half-sisters
I’m grateful I was able to identify my biological father and have a few photos of him
I know gratitude is good for us on so many levels so I will keep working at it. Lastly, I want to mention…
Honoring our parents
“Honor your mother and father” is in the 10 commandments, and it’s the only command with a promise: "so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.” This has always been a challenging commandment for me. I continue to work on how to honor my mom and dad. And, painful as it is, right now, honoring my biological father means accepting that he does not want to be known.
Conclusion
This is definitely a journey, and I have not arrived in these four areas of identity, forgiveness, gratitude, and honoring parents. I really appreciate all the prayers and support I have received at New Hope. I want to end with this Bible verse in 1 Peter, chapter 1 from The Message paraphrase. Starting in verse 13 it describes God as a good and responsible father, then it goes on to say: “Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. ... Now that you’ve cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. Your old birth came from mortal sperm; your new birth comes from God’s living Word. Just think: a life conceived by God himself!”
It is a Happy Father's Day, y'all, because God really is our good, good father.
Jennifer Becker
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