20 Jun A Father’s Love
Father’s Day is a day worth celebrating. It’s a day when men who have taken on the mantle and responsibility to sacrificially love their wives and children, to model what honor and integrity and commitment should look like for the next generation to hopefully emulate. Or, at least that’s what I think Father’s Day ought to be. In reality, it is something far different for many. For some, it is exactly what I mentioned above. For others it is an annual reminder of what they wish they could celebrate. It’s a painful mirror that reflects the physically present but emotionally absent father, or the father that is absent in both arenas. This is the case for the children of Casa Vallado, and it was that precise scenario that I stepped into during our most recent trip to San Luis Potosi.
This trip in early June was the first trip in 11 years that we have not had a single person sign up to travel as part of our team. Initially, I was frustrated and a bit bewildered by the lack of involvement, but I did not want our friends at Casa Vallado to feel like we [Mosaic Church] had decreased our commitment to them, so I hopped on a plane and traveled solo to spend a few days hanging out, playing, tutoring, and catching up the Casa Vallado Directors. As it turns out, God had a very different agenda in mind, and it had everything to do with a kind of father’s Day.
There are 16 children living at Casa Vallado. None of them have a father in their lives, and that has consequences in the life of a child. For girls, it creates a void and a need to know they are loved, protected, pursued, worthy of affection. For boys, it creates the questions of what it means to be a man, what does true strength look like, and if he has what it takes to make it through life. In the absence of a father, girls will look to fill that void through the physical touch of another, and boys will look to fill it by being the one who provides that touch. As many of the Vallado children are now in their pre-teen and teen years, those voids are in the process of seeking fulfillment, and without a father in the home to provide guardrails in that pursuit it is only a matter of time before the wreckage begins to pile up.
As I arrived at Casa Vallado I was met with the news of a number of situations that clearly illustrated some of the kids had already experienced a crash of some sort. Knowing the relationship I have with many of the children, the Directors asked me if I could sit down with them and have a fatherly heart-to-heart to discuss God’s design for relationships, marriage, and sex, and talk about what is considered appropriate and inappropriate when it comes to physical touch. Immediately, I realized why God had kept anyone else from signing up to participate on this trip. Had I been leading a team and managing a schedule I would have never had the opportunities to have the conversations I ended up having.
I had lunch in the girls’ house one day and then spent 2 hours talking with them, through my translator, telling them about God’s design for their lives and how worthy of love they were. I told them God had a prince somewhere waiting for them who would treat them with respect, and love them with a sacrificial kind of love. I answered questions they had about boys and relationships. Then I prayed for them. I prayed for the girls who had already been exposed to things no child should ever have to experience, and I prayed for the girls who still had their innocence in tact, that God would protect them and allow them to experience His best when it comes to marriage and relationships.
The next day I did the same with the boys. Over lunch I shared my own story with them, how I had been exposed to stuff as a kid and how that had lead to my own consequences and relationship failures in the my teenage years. I talked to them about the strength God has given them and how God meant for them to use that strength to protect and serve, not to take and demand. I told them that God had made them to be men who committed themselves to honor and cherish the women in their lives, be it their biological moms (even if they had failed at being what they needed to be), there house moms at Vallado, or their foster sisters in the other house. I talked to them about the opportunity they have to reflect the love of Christ to their own wife someday and what an amazing gift that would be. I answered even more questions they had regarding girls, marriage, appropriate and inappropriate behaviors towards women and then I prayed for them as well. It was quite a moment with these 7 young men huddled around me, with arms around each other’s shoulders, praying for God to make them strong.
The question that rolled through my head in anger and frustration over the course of those few days was this, “Do their biological dads know the amazing moments they have missed with these kids?” “Do they even care?” But, as I prepared to board the plane on my way back to see my own wife and children, the Lord answered those questions. He said, “Brett, what matters is not whether those men know what they have missed, but that those children know they are loved, both by a man and by a Father.” I know that is true, because it is that same knowledge that brought healing and deliverance in my own life as Christ saved me in the midst of my own perversions and struggles. The night I came to faith, at the age of 19, the first thing God ever spoke to me was, “I am going to be a Father to you.”
Over the years the Lord has surrounded me with men who have been able to speak the definition of manhood into my life, to teach me how to be a husband and a father. I am forever grateful for that Father heart of God revealed through other men as it has shaped who I am today. I was once again reminded of God’s grace in this area as I read two cards this past Father’s Day, one from my oldest daughter and one from my oldest son.
My daughter wrote, “Dear Daddy. I am sooo honored to have you as my prince, my hero and my amazing, loving father. Every day I learn something new from you, and every day I feel more loved. Over these 14 years you have truly made me feel like a beautiful daughter of the King.”
My son wrote, “I am so blessed to have such an amazing dad. Thank you for teaching me the love of Christ. You make me feel so special and loved. Thank you for being the best dad a son could ask for.”
Now, I am nowhere near as great as they make me out to be. Trust me, I have as many moments where I am apologizing to my kids for being a jerk as I do where they are thanking me for loving them. The point I’m trying to make is that the words and actions of a father, or a father-figure, carry tremendous weight in the life of a child. My kids need that kind of presence, your kids need that kind of presence, and the children of Casa Vallado need that kind of presence. So…men out there, let’s be for them what their own dads could not, or have not, been. In additional to our own children, let’s show up in whatever ways we can for the kids of Casa Vallado and remind them what a father’s love is really all about. It only takes one word, one moment, one blessing to alter the course of a generation. After all, isn’t that what God has done for us when we heard Him call us by name and declare that we are his children?
Happy Father’s Day.
– Brett Millican, The Vallado Project