Growing Up Critical of My Dad
When I was growing up, my parents fought often. I was close to my mom. She would talk badly about my dad to me. (She profusely apologized in her old age and was so deeply saddened that she did that.) So, I grew up not liking my dad much. I was critical of him.
He was an only child who was pampered. (He just told me that yesterday!) He was a loner. He didn’t talk to us much growing up. When he was home, which wasn’t often, he was in his room. He worked long, hard hours as a doctor.
I didn’t speak well of him. My best friend in college rebuked me for it. She watched her dad beat up her brother. Debi Pearl’s dad was angry and even cussed at her. My dad never did any of that.
He worked hard and insisted that Mom be home with us full time. We lived in a nice home. He built my mom a cabin in WI so she could spend summers with all of her friends and sisters. He took us to church faithfully every week. He read us Bible stories once in a while and told us he loved us often.
I have a great dad. I am sorry if it took so long to see that. So, what if he wasn’t the perfect dad? Who is? Dwell on the good in others.
Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.
Ephesians 6:1,2
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2 thoughts on “Growing Up Critical of My Dad”
I have had the same experience but with my mother. She was absolutely cruel and verbally abusive but also incredibly stressed out because of our family situation. I’m not trying to excuse sin but as a mother I can see where all that came from and how I could treat my children the same way if I am not careful.
My husband’s father we don’t have relationship with because he is a convicted child molester and has 0 repentance. While there is no such thing as the perfect dad, there are also terrible abusive dads that don’t get access to us just because they are blood.
Wives slandering their husband to their children is all too common. And the resulting alienation of children from their fathers is all too real. Once a child joins their mother in treating their father poorly as a result of the mother’s misgivings, the child is even less likely to ever respect their father, because then the child would also have to admit their own guilt for treating their father poorly based on slander.
The Old Testament ended by calling for restoration between fathers and children:
Malachi 4:5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: 6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
Luke’s Gospel records that John the Baptist would complete the first half of that restoration by restoring the hearts of the fathers to their children:
Luke 1:17 And he shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
But to avoid the planetary curse the hearts of the children still need to be returned back to their fathers. However, Satan doesn’t want that to happen. He’d rather work through women to indirectly causes our earth to be cursed a second time.
Every wife can either choose pride or to reverence her husband in front of his children.