Who is your father?

Ann Voskamp writes at A Holy Experience that

a Father is the seed of your beginning, he is the catalyst of your being, the genesis of your becoming.

Because sometimes the only way to silence the voices in the back of your head is to stand face to face with your Father.

...That is what makes him your Father: He is your beginning.

Every child, every man, every woman, has these Esau Moments when everything in them wants to beg a blessing from their father.

Sometimes what you want most is your father to give you the greatest gift anyone can give someone: for him to believe in you.

“Dad — I need you to say that I’m enough of a man.”

I need you, Dad — to say that I am yours and you aren’t ashamed of me.
I need you, Dad — to say that I am loved and nothing I can ever do or fail to ever do will change how you forever love me.
I need you, Dad — to say that I am enough of a man.

...I felt it like a slow thrum around the tender places —- how there is nothing stopping me from being the voice that reaches across the chasm of generations, from me being the whisper of what he never heard from his own dad —- but he could hear now from his own child.

I could be the one to say the words he’s always longed to hear:

“I love you. And nothing you’ve ever done or ever failed to do will change how I forever love you.

You’re mine and I’m not ashamed of you but I acclaim you for the battles you fought and won, for every struggle that counts as a win because you stayed in the game, you kept breathing and kept wrestling and kept getting up again.

You’ve never lost if you’ve learned. You’ve never failed if you’ve let your feet find the floor again come morning.
And if I’ve loved redemption and grace and mercy for the likes of me, how can I love anything less for the wounds of yours?

Love is patient and patience is a willingness to suffer — and simply, I choose to always love and suffer with you.”

And there you are —

You can exhale the relief of the awed grace of something you’ve longed for….

You have your Father and all you’ve ever really wanted —

the tenderest miracle of a redeeming Fatherhood at the core of the universe… at centre of all our seeking hearts.