by Elizabeth

It was Holy Week when the breach happened. A seemingly small incident that tore something wide open in my heart. It was a wound I didn’t know I still had, and it ripped right apart. It was a wound I thought had healed. And actually, I’m not sure I had ever identified it as this kind of wound: a father wound.

It feels strange to say that, because it didn’t come from my earthly father. While no man is perfect, this particular father wound wasn’t inflicted by him.

Rather, it came from someone who was like a father to me. A man who promised me home and then ripped it away. A man who promised me love and then withdrew it. A man who accepted me and then turned around and took it all away.

The sun was shining, and then it wasn’t. And it never shone again.

I trusted this man. I believed in this man. I loved this man. And his change of heart was both confusing and devastating. It insidiously taught me things about a Father’s love that I never should have learned. Lessons like:

Someone can offer you love and then completely withdraw it. You are never safe in love.

Someone can offer you home and then kick you out. Home and belonging are never forever.

Someone can accept you at one point in time and then for seemingly no reason at all completely reject you.

You can be worthy of someone’s love and then suddenly unworthy of love, forever expelled from their life.

So you must always work to earn people’s love, because you never know what little inconsequential thing might trigger love’s loss.

This father wound of mine, it’s a situation I knew was unfair. I’d been angry about it for years, but I hadn’t let myself hurt too much over it. I just let myself stay angry. That was easier, more cerebral. Anger doesn’t hurt nearly as badly.

But the wound was there, always festering, never completely healing. Until something ripped it open this spring. I was shocked — I hadn’t thought it was still there. But when you cry so hard you can’t breathe and you begin to think the emotional pain might literally kill you, well, that’s an experience that begs for the healing power of Christ.

It was Holy Week, and I went to Maundy Thursday service. I went expecting to meet God. In fact, on the way there I told God, This thing hurts so bad it feels like I’m going to die, so if you don’t show up tonight, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

There was plenty of space to meet God that night, and God descended into several of those spaces with me. A couple different people prayed for me. The songs, the prayers, the sermon, they were all good. But the most important part for me was the Watch at the end.

The service closes in silence and allows people, as they feel led, to stay in prayer, in the same way that Jesus asked his disciples to keep watch with him. I planted myself in prayer. I was almost undone at this point, desperate, my head hung low.

I wondered if the place to start wouldn’t be in asking for healing, but in asking for the faith to believe in healing. Because what if I asked the God of the universe to heal my heart, and He didn’t come through? What if I asked Him to fulfill his promises, and He let me down too, just like the man who was a father to me? I didn’t want to be hurt by the Lord of everything, our true Father.

So I stayed and prayed. I stayed, and I stayed, and I stayed, until I heard the answer in the form of one of the evening’s songs:

O come to the Altar, the Father’s arms are open wide.
Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

I stared at the newly cleansed and stripped-down altar, with its small cross inscribed into the wood now visible, and it dawned on me that a father wound is healed through the love of the Father. That my Father’s arms are open wide. The man who inflicted my father wound held arms open wide at one point, and then closed them forever. But the Father’s arms are open wide, always and forever.

I had stayed and pressed in, until I heard some sort of answer from God. And when I received it, I knew I was free to go. I packed up my bag, smiled in thanksgiving, and stood up to leave. I turned around to find no one in the room – no one except the ministry team cleaning up. I had been in the front row. I hadn’t realized I’d stayed that long. Everyone leaves the service so quietly, and I’d been praying so intently, that I hadn’t noticed.

I wasn’t healed on Maundy Thursday. But I knew where my healing would come from – the Father’s love. The Father’s arms are open wide. “How deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure.” On that night, the knowledge of the source of my healing was enough for me. And I was on the watch for more healing.

A few weeks later I went to a special Saturday evening worship service, and God was so sweet to remind me of His truth. We sang songs about God’s goodness and faithfulness. It was good to remember everything God has done for me in my life, how He has always been with me.

That night we also sang Hillsong’s “Who You Say I Am.” It’s a song I’ve heard before but that hasn’t spoken to the deepest parts of me before. This time was different.

Who am I that the highest King
Would welcome me?
I was lost but He brought me in
Oh His love for me
Oh His love for me

Who the Son sets free
Oh is free indeed
I’m a child of God
Yes I am

Free at last, He has ransomed me
His grace runs deep
While I was a slave to sin
Jesus died for me
Yes He died for me

Who the Son sets free
Oh is free indeed
I’m a child of God
Yes I am
In my Father’s house
There’s a place for me
I’m a child of God
Yes I am

I am chosen
Not forsaken
I am who You say I am
You are for me
Not against me
I am who You say I am

In my Father’s house, there’s a place for me. I am chosen, not forsaken. The highest of Kings welcomes me. I needed to hear those truths over and over again.

A couple weeks ago we sang this song at church again. This time I sang it not through pain, but with joy. I sang, and I realized that the Father’s love had been busy at work in the undercurrents of my life, convincing me that there’s always a place for me, that my Father’s love will never fail. It will never run out, will never run dry.

The Father’s arms are always open wide. Earthly fathers may forsake, but we have a Father in heaven who never will.

The funny thing is, I thought I knew God as Father. As a child, I first learned of God as Father. “Dear Heavenly Father” is how all my childhood prayers were modeled. I was comfortable addressing God as Father. My dad was someone I could easily talk to, and God seemed like Someone I could easily talk to, too.

In the last decade I have explored God as Spirit and God as Son. This was healthy and healing, but I had neglected to keep pursuing God as Father. I thought I already knew God as Father. But I was wrong. There was more to know, more to learn. With our Triune God, it’s always that way. “Farther up and farther in,” right?

We’ve now lived all the way through Easter season and have even slipped past Pentecost. I’ve let the love of the Father wash over me the last few months, and I’m more sure of His love than before. I know that there’s a place for me in the Father’s love. I know the pain of a father wound will not kill me, even if it sometimes feels as though it might. And I know the love of the Father truly heals old wounds. Even the wounds we didn’t know were there.

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