Overcoming Father Wounds a 7-Day Reading Play by Kia Stephensናሙና

Day 1: Believe we can be healed.

Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief! Mark 9: 24 NIV

“What was the name of your blog?” she asked me in the parking lot. We had only met the day before when I casually mentioned I had a blog for women with father wounds. I gave her the website and then asked if she knew a woman who would benefit from the content. Inwardly, I assumed it was for someone else when she replied, “Me”.

I was struck by her courageous honesty: sharing her pain with a woman she just met. That seems to be one of the responses you get when mentioning you write about father wounds. Women are either curious, indifferent, in denial, or all in.

For some, hearing the phrase father wounds is the equivalent of ripping a bandage off an unhealed place in our soul. Although, merely words, they function as an irritant agitating what would otherwise remain undisclosed. This was the case in my freshman year of college.

“I made that bookshelf with my dad.” a friend innocently said as I sat in her dorm room. Minutes later the words “with my dad” continued to bounce off the walls of my brain signaling, I was not okay with the absence of my father.

As I left her room, my eyelids bulged like dam walls holding back a great flood. My concept of father had been limited to a few court-ordered visitations, gifts left on the front porch of my grandparent’s home, and television dads from 80s sitcoms. I craved what she had - a relationship.

Every woman who has father wounds knows this ache well. A father wound is synonymous with father absenteeism. This can be caused by a myriad of reasons: divorce, abandonment, abuse, incarceration, drug addiction, alcoholism, premature death and a physically or emotionally absent father. The question, however, is not so much what are father wounds. Most women know if they have been wounded by their father. They know what he did or did not do and what he said or did not say. The question women want to know is, “Can I heal and will I ever be free? The answer to both of those questions is yes and in this 7-day devotion we are going to walk through practical steps every woman can take to overcome her father wounds.

It is tempting to believe we will never heal, but God is able to do what seems impossible. Remember the boy who was possessed by an impure spirit in Mark chapter 9. The boy’s father desperately wanted his son, who had been possessed since birth, to be healed. Courageously he admitted he was struggling to believe Jesus could heal him. In spite of this man’s doubt and unbelief God healed his son. He is able to do the same in the lives of women with father wounds. If you are struggling to believe that you can overcome your father wounds tell God, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

What would it look like for me to live healed? Do I believe that it is possible? Why or why not? What does the Bible say is possible?