“Our father who art in Nairobi, remember us this month.”
I remember making that sacrilegious sounding ‘prayer’ when I was a nine-year-old boy. My dad who lived in Nairobi then had not showed up home for two years. Usually, he would visit us once a year for half a day! What would have driven me to make such an impious irreverent ‘prayer’? Could it be the near destitution resulting from dad giving minimal and intermittent financial support to our-twelve-children-housewife-mom family? Could it be the derision, mockery and cutting comments by neighbors blinded by green hearts? Or could it be love unrequited for a dad too busy, too drunk, and too self-absorbed to hear my heart cry? I made it anyway and it made me feel okay!
My dad worked with the airline industry and was and is still an alcoholic. He came of age when jobs went looking for anyone with the least formal education; the joy of life in immediate post-independence Kenya. He rose quickly to senior management in the airline industry and like many young people of the crazy 1960s wanted to ‘enjoy life’. A wrong choice made, possibly without much thought given to consequences, ensured that my dad led a life of bondage to the bottle and the ungoverned living of alcoholics – regardless of the pain it causes their families.
My growing-up years were marred with neglect, verbal and physical abuse, disrespect, pain and betrayal. My mom endured this much more than we did. She bore the brunt of the pain. Many were the times when one or other of my siblings had to be rushed to hospital. We all nursed injuries from beatings given in drunken stupor. That is not counting the emotional pain that we lived with. Mom believed in families physically staying together; yet the abuse was killing her and her children. She could not endure further, and she opted to relocate to our native home upcountry and left my dad in the city. The separation was painful, we missed our dad. We had little to live on. However, we were glad that we did not have to endure the pain of emotional and physical abuse at least as long as he was away. It was not until I was an adult that I saw the other benefit in moving upcountry – we remained family, dysfunctional but resolutely family. How she kept us so secure in the joy of family is something I am yet to understand.
I carried a lot of bitterness and pain all my high school years. I was diagnosed with severe hypertension a few months to my 19th birthday, something that baffled the doctors – a young man with an old-people’s disease! That is what bitterness does: eat us up! I had grown up church-going, got saved in Form One and served in CU leadership all my high school years. Yet, there was a lack of depth, a lack of growth. The absence of adult mentors and models of Christian living and there being no systematic discipleship in the CU I was in partly explains this anomaly. Not forgetting, the burden of bitterness and pain that strangled my heart. However, as I became more self-aware I realized that I struggled connecting to God: He was a man just like the most important man in my life who had turned me away and consistently kept a healthy distance between us and his drunken self-absorbed life. My confused mind told me to keep healthy distance from God for that was what I had learnt from the only model of relationship I knew: that of my father. I had no close friends in high school and made no effort to have any – they would only hurt me, my rejected self reckoned. Was it possible to think family? No! Marriage was what had caused me (and my beloved mother) all this pain. And I was not going to have any of it! No, not at all! Or so I thought.
To cut a long story short…. Today I am 38 years old, married and working as a high school teacher; enjoying my marriage and ministering to students where I teach and the environs. My wife and I are missionary teachers in Northern Kenya and we are excited at the work God is doing in us and with us.
1. Re-birth: The Father’s Love
It finally hit me; I needed and had to have a father, a father I connected to and one who loved me, just as I am! And Psalm 68:5 was my love letter – “A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation” (KJV). I embraced that truth and asked God to be my Father – literally: peace flooded my soul! That was in 1996. I had never felt so much love as I did when two years later he filled me with his Holy Spirit. I found joy in the word, in singing songs of Zion, in the fellowship of the brethren, in talking to and about MY Father. And he gave me peace with my conflicted self and with my father who lived in Nairobi. Up till then the only emotions I had ever felt free to express were negative ones. I also received divine healing for the hypertension I struggled with.
2. Renewal: Change
The way I saw myself had to change; I had to be renewed in the attitude of my mind (Ephesians 4:23). I had not known that bitterness had just ruined me and made me withdrawn and selfish. I had to take time to forgive my dad and repent of the disrespect that I had showed him. I had to release him to God’s judgment and allow God to minster to me. I had to learn that though my dad had failed me and not been a good role model, I had to make up my mind and trust God to teach me from scripture true Fatherhood from his heart. I had to resolve that I would be a committed husband and a true dad, present for my wife and children.
3. Re-dedication: True Love
Life-long habits take time to change. For a while I retained a sense of detachment but as I got to enjoy His love my wounded self thawed and I found myself connecting to other people. I may not have made friends in my teens but I sure made up in my late twenties and today.
4. Restoration: Making Amends
I had to restore and nurture a relationship with my dad. I had to make a decision to honor him as the scriptures command me to. My relationship with him may not be at its best but it is not because I hold anything against him. I love him and keep praying that God will deliver him from alcoholism and that He will use his life to Kingdom glory. I overcame the fear of marriage – my wife and I enjoy a close and tight friendship, a growing love for each other and a love for God that we happily share with the young people we minister to.
Drunkard, abusive or whatever else he is – your dad is your dad, period. You are commanded to obey him and honor him for that is pleasing to the Lord. You cannot change him. But you can change how you think about him, you can change your present and your future, by choosing to know that you are special to God and by obeying Him and living for Him! Your life is precious and you need to stop weeping that it is not working at home and move on. The lessons and the hardships at home are preparing you for a better future. Persevere and press on!
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