Connecting Dads and Daughters
Believe it or not, our 16-year-old daughter Hannah does not seem to enjoy going to the junkyard with me as much as our sons have. She’s not as interested in a fast-food breakfast biscuit as she is an ice cream or lunch date.
And even though the things she prefers doing don’t come as naturally to me, I still need to spend time with her in ways that are meaningful to her.
You Can Help Your Husband Understand Your Daughter
I need help with that sometimes, and Stacy reminds me over and over that my relationship with Hannah is and will be very different from my relationship with her brothers. She reminds me that she is tender, and I need her help to see things through Hannah’s eyes. As a daughter, you probably already know this and can be gracious in helping your husband with insights about how to connect with your daughter(s).
Trust me, it doesn’t come naturally to many of us, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want that same closeness with our daughters that we want with our sons. And it’s never too late for a father to work on his relationship with his daughter.
Healing Father Wounds
The reverse is true as well. It’s never too late to work on your relationship with your dad. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth talks about the father-daughter relationship in her book Lies Women Believe. The lie is that “God is just like my father.” Yes, our earthly fathers can give us a picture of our heavenly Father, but despite our best of intentions, we will still fail at times. Even worse, many have experienced a father who has inflicted wound after wound on their hearts – a father who wasn’t even trying to be good.
She points out three scriptures that can help us study and know the truth about the character of God as our Father.
Numbers 23:19 God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
Hebrews 1:3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Hebrews 12:10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.
We talk with men often about how to deal with their father wounds. We don’t know as much about how to help women with father wounds, but we know they exist, and it is important to deal with them in a healthy way. It may be well to spend some time processing your relationship with your dad to see if there’s any bitterness that could affect your relationship with your family.
God is a perfect Father. He can and will step into any voids left by your earthly father.
Show Me the Father, a new movie by the Kendrick brothers and their first documentary, comes out in theaters on September 10th. Consider going with some friends to see it. I can see it prompting conversations with your husbands to help them have better insight into fathering, with other women about their husbands and their fathers, and perhaps even with your own dad.