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What comes to mind when you think about your father? Is it joy, pain, or indifference? Whatever it is, it can reveal deeper wounds that still affect you today. In this journey of healing, Zach Garza invites you to explore topics like generational sin, emotional scars, and the transformative power of forgiveness through the lens of his own story of growing up without a father in the home. By confronting the past, you'll discover how to break free, embrace your true identity, and experience the unconditional love of God.
Chapter 14, the three legged stool. The apostle Paul was no theological lightweight. The guy knew his stuff. Not only was he a massive contributor to the New Testament, but he was an Old Testament scholar who was fluent in Greek, Hebrew, and possibly even Latin. Despite his knowledge of the depths and complexities of the scriptures, we can reasonably boil down his message to three simple words, faith, hope, and love.
Speaker 1:These are the three legs of the stool that keep the whole thing balanced and standing. If you remove one, the stool falls. All three are necessary to be upheld and on track. Paul instructs the Corinthians saying, and now abide, faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. First Corinthians thirteen, thirteen, and 14.
Speaker 1:He continued this theme in his letter to the remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor, of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father (one Thessalonians one:three). In the process of dealing with my relationship with my Father, I felt like I had the exact opposite of these verses. My works and actions were produced by fear, not faith. My labor and the things that I did were prompted by a feeling of having to earn love. I did not understand unconditional love.
Speaker 1:I pressed on in endurance, not because I had hope in Jesus, but because the root behind my hope was to create my own sense of security. I had to earn my spot at the table, or else God would give my spot to someone else. In conversations with people who have an absent father, they share about their past and how much it has impacted them today. But more times than not, they say something like this. Because I grew up without my father around, it has made me want to be the best parent I can be.
Speaker 1:Their pain has fueled their passion. The curse has turned into a blessing. I have found that people who grew up without a father figure in the home typically either run away from their parental responsibilities just like their father did, or they do the opposite and take their job as a father extremely seriously. If you're reading this book, I'm assuming you've fallen into the second camp. I don't know if it's because of my wiring or because of my past experiences, but I've wanted to be a father for as long as I can remember.
Speaker 1:Concerning basically anything negative attributing to growing up without a father, I say in my head, I may have experienced that, but my kids for sure won't. I wanna give them the childhood that I never had and keep them from the childhood that I did have. Where I had little oversight, I make sure my kids have the highest quality education and a love for reading. I monitor what they watch and what they eat, and I make sure that they see my wife and I enjoy being with each other. All of these intentional acts are motivated by the knowledge of what I never had.
Speaker 1:While on the outside, this seems like a noble and intentional way of living, I have come to question the fuel behind my actions. I began to evaluate my motives when my responses to certain disappointments were out of whack. For instance, how do I handle myself when my kids complain during vacation? What's my response when they don't want to have deep philosophical conversations at the dinner table? What is my reaction when my kids watch too much TV or complain when we make them read a book?
Speaker 1:For me, the answer has been not good. From time to time, I overreact. I scream. I shout. I make them feel terrible about themselves.
Speaker 1:Why do I do that? Why do I get so angry when they don't do exactly what I say and value the things I know will lead to their best life? I'm sure that's a loaded question, but I have come to the conclusion that the root of why I behave the way I do comes down to one word, fear. Simply put, I am absolutely terrified that my kids are going to have the childhood that I had. I am fearful that I'm going to be a bad parent.
Speaker 1:I am scared that the past is going to repeat itself, and my hopes for producing a generational blessing will actually be a continuation of my generational curse. My orphan mindset says, God will fail you. He won't provide. You're on your own. As I follow my fears to assess where they're coming from, I realize that I had been scared long before I was married.
Speaker 1:As a single man, the fear of being alone for the rest of my life nearly drove me insane. In retrospect, it turns out that I was afraid almost constantly, even if I looked secure and confident on the outside. I was fearful people wouldn't like me and nervous that people would leave me. I was scared to be left out and scared other people wouldn't invite me to their parties. I was afraid I wouldn't perform well in school or in sports and afraid to take risks or try new things.
Speaker 1:The main fear that I had in general was that I would mess everything up, that I am going to lose it all. Naturally, a generic lie like this will find its way into the most consequential areas of life, marriage and family. I was genuinely scared that I would be a bad husband and a bad father, thus ruining the lives of my wife and children. It does not take a ton of imagination to see how it's possible to ruin a family. If I'm being honest with you, most of them don't seem too far fetched.
Speaker 1:What if I lost my job and couldn't provide financially for my household? How about drinking too much one night and making a terrible mistake? Perhaps my wife just gets tired of me and my antics and decides to up and leave. My grandparents had a terrible marriage. My own parents couldn't make it work, and the logical flow meant I should be doomed for a bad marriage.
Speaker 1:With no one to turn to and very little support, it seemed like the odds of having a good marriage were stacked against me. Outside the home, most of my friend's parents were divorced or had bad marriages as well. If someone was going to screw this up, I was a great candidate. Those are the paralyzing fears that went through my head on a pretty consistent basis. The rotten fruit was low self confidence, hopelessness, anxiety, and depressive thought patterns.
Speaker 1:In truth, people have had a hard time doing something they have never done before. Even fewer people like doing things that scare them. Safe to say that doing something scary that you have never done before is a terrifying experience. That was me when signing up to be a husband. When my father left, the example to follow went with him.
Speaker 1:What do I do when my wife needs words of affirmation? What about helping with chores around the house or working together to discipline our children? What about intimacy, supporting my wife during pregnancy, or dealing with marital conflict in a healthy way? Besides six week of premarital counseling, all of those topics were new to me as I entered marriage. It's like someone tossed me a tennis racket for the first time and said, by the way, you have a really long match tomorrow.
Speaker 1:It's actually gonna last the rest of your life. Also, it's probably going to be the most important thing you do in life. So good luck. My mindset going into our wedding day was not that I was suited to be a rock star husband. Instead, I felt like I would be a subpar spouse.
Speaker 1:I was starting from hopelessness. If marriage sounds hard, which it is, just wait until you toss a few little kiddos in the mix. As if selflessly serving my wife wasn't enough, now I have to do it while changing diapers, losing sleep, and trying to communicate with my wife over the sound of a crying baby. Also, you have to provide financially and emotionally for every member of your household. I stood in the shadows of this tall order, thoroughly intimidated.
Speaker 1:Living with the pressure to hold everything together was a big burden to carry, especially with little or no training. The stakes were high, and I obsessed over worst case scenarios. For instance, one day my son came home from school with a note from his teacher explaining the upcoming end of the year history project. This was the biggest project in his second grade class and would make up 25% of his final grade. It was a doozy of an assignment, but we had a month to prepare for it.
Speaker 1:The teacher wanted the students to do three things, create an art project describing the topic, dress up in a costume that represents the topic, and memorize a two minute speech describing their chosen subject. It was a lot, but I was excited to help my son ace it. I thought to myself, we have a month to prepare. We'll get to it later. Big mistake.
Speaker 1:A few weeks later, my eight year old came home from school with shocking news. Dad, my history project is due tomorrow. What? What are we gonna do? Panic ensues.
Speaker 1:To make matters worse, my wife was out of town, and it was my job to hold down the fort to take care of all three of our kids. I went into drill sergeant mode and started ordering my son around like this was boot camp. Go get the note cards. Grab the markers. Find the poster board.
Speaker 1:Get your books out. Let's do this. I continued on like this for hours. We made the poster. We wrote the note cards so that he could practice memorizing all of his lines.
Speaker 1:We found a costume for him to wear. As he was practicing his speech, I began to correct him relentlessly. Speak louder. Keep your head up. You're mispronouncing the words.
Speaker 1:After about ten minutes of that, my son burst into tears. Immediately, I realized what I had done. I let my fear get the best of me. I went into drill sergeant mode, not because I really cared a ton about his project, but because I didn't want him to fail. In my head, the spiral went something like this.
Speaker 1:If he fails this project, then he will get a bad grade. If he gets bad grades, he won't go to college and won't get a good job. Even worse, if he fails this project, he will make a fool out of himself on stage, and everyone will laugh at him. Then he won't have any friends. All of this is my fault.
Speaker 1:My son won't be able to get a good job, and he won't have any friends because I dropped the ball on this project. I knew it. I'm a bad dad, and my son is gonna suffer for it. As I look back now, I ask myself, what's the worst that could have happened? This is a great question to ask yourself when you find yourself stuck in a fear cycle.
Speaker 1:That single question is like a shock treatment to get you back into reality. Worst case scenario, my kid failed a second grade history project and got embarrassed in front of his friends and teacher. His life would not have been over. He would be okay. In fact, it probably wouldn't even been that big of a deal to him in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 1:However, fear can motivate some intense responses. Hero or hermit. Fear, taken to its ends, usually plays out in one of two ways. You will either play the hero or hide as a hermit. The hero is the one who looks like he or she has it all together and has no weakness to speak of.
Speaker 1:When I play the hero, I try to be the all star on the sports team or the wild man at the party. I volunteer for everything, and I don't show any weakness whatsoever. I never ask for help, and I'll do whatever you tell me to do. The hermit is the one who knows they don't have it altogether, so they don't even bother to try. They do nothing because they have already presumed failure as the outcome.
Speaker 1:To try something new? No way. I know I can't do it. Attempt a romantic relationship? Why would someone wanna be with me?
Speaker 1:They have come to the conclusion that life is just so much easier if you just hide. If you find yourself not feeling loved, the easy thing to do is to check out completely and live a risk free life of isolation and despair. The problem is you actually risk everything. Others take the opposite approach and chase the nonsolution of earning love through performance. This falls apart sooner or later because genuine love is not grounded in what people do, but in who people are.
Speaker 1:In my insecurity, I oscillate between hero and hermit often. One moment, I'm pretending to be Superman, and the next, I'm in my room isolated, drowning in lies. Both the hero and the hermit are built upon shaky foundations. The hero hears, just hold it all together. If they find out you're fake, you're done.
Speaker 1:While the hermit believes, it's just best if you don't do anything. We all know how this is gonna end. The hero is often wrapped up in self promotion, and the hermit is caught up in self deprecation. But God calls us to healthy self worth. Rest assured, God does not want you to be torn between hero and hermit, but instead to find yourself as a humble child of his.
Speaker 1:Perhaps your father gave you a bad stool to sit on. Your life has been anything but balanced, and stability is a pipe dream. That was certainly the case for me. The enemy would like to maintain a twisted three legged stool in your life made of fear, hopelessness, and self hatred. God, though, is interested in in flipping the script and replacing fear with faith, hopelessness with hope, and self hatred with love.
Speaker 1:Tell me. Seeing myself as an orphan is something that rears its ugly head often and causes me to walk in insecurity. What are some ways you may find yourself walking out in insecurity? Do you relate more with the hermit or the hero? Tell me why.
Speaker 1:How has your relationship with your father impacted your view on faith, hope, and love?