What Every Fatherless Daughter Needs to Hear

What All Fatherless Daughters Need To Know

I have been wanting to write this for some time now. Growing up without a father has been such a private place for me that it hasn't always been easy to express what is in my heart.

Father's Day has always been a difficult day for me, while others post their happy pictures with their dad and share their fond memories, I have no pictures or fond memories. I use to become sad, (sometimes jealous) when my friends had great relationships with their dad. But now that I am older, it warms my heart to see dads doting on their little girls (young and old) because that is exactly the way it should be.

Every girl desires to be a daddy's girl. Sadly, that just isn't the case for everyone. My father, for reasons only he understood, walked out on me, my mom and my two brothers when I was just a few months old. I wouldn't hear from him again for forty years which is when I found him and met him for the first time.

While I know that many girls have a different story than mine, I want those reading this to know that whether your father is absent voluntarily or involuntarily (perhaps he died when you were young or maybe he doesn't even know about you), that the emptiness and longing and the heartache is much the same. I lost my own father twice; first when he made that choice to leave and second when he passed from this world into eternity.

Over the past several years I have had many young girls sit in my office shedding tears over the absence of their fathers in their life and I began to understand the impact that my own father had given me to offer to these fatherless daughters. Growing up without a father figure will no doubt mark you but it doesn't have to damage you. I learned a long time ago that the love of a father doesn't define me, but rather, the love of my Heavenly Father does.

If you are spending this Father's Day as a fatherless daughter, please consider this:

1. You may have an increased need for approval from others. Many fatherless daughters look for love in the wrong places because they are trying to fill that void.  Look to God for His approval, His approval is all that matters in the end.

2. You most likely have built a wall around your heart, in a way to protect it from getting hurt again. That is understandable but when you give your pain and hurt to God and allow Him to crumble that wall you have built, you might find that you have a beautiful heart full of love and grace just waiting to be released!

3. You may be fearful that you will be alone. People will let you down and disappoint you, however, God remains at all times. The Bible says that He will never leave or forsake you. You are never alone!

4. If you are young and without your father, you will grief him over and over. The sad realization that you are not like other girls who have a father to walk them down the aisle on their wedding day or have a dad grilling a potential boyfriend of why he is worthy of his baby girls time will at times be overwhelming. I wish I could tell you that these moments aren't hard, they are, but somehow with the strength that only God can give, you WILL make it!

5. No matter how many Father's Days come and go, they never get easy.

6. It stings a little every time you see a beautiful father/daughter relationship but inside it warms your heart to see that such a love still exists in this crazy, mixed up world.

7. If you are a fatherless daughter because of a man's choice, know that it is not your fault. You are loved, cherished and thought of at all times. Your Heavenly Father not only created you but He loves and adores you. You are a sparkle in His eye and for that man who voluntarily walked out of your life...he is missing out on something awesome!

I don't know what your story is, but I do know that each of us go thru things that can either leave us bitter or better. I have chosen to reach out with my pain, my story, to make someone's Father's Day a little better.

You have been made for a purpose and it is a wonderful thing!

(Psalm 139:14) "I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

BLESSINGS. Laurie

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