A Love Letter to the Fatherless

I have a photo of myself on the property my parents owned in the small country town where I grew up. In it, I’m six years old, excitedly looking down at the pad of paper and pen my father has loaned me. I’ve donned his signature fishing hat and an oversized jacket, which is zipped up to my neck. The sun is out, and in the background are a mop, an air conditioner, and a large green bucket, all nestled next to the off-white mobile home we live in.

That evening, as the sun made its way across the sky, my father walked me around our property as I made notes of the plants, grasses, and animals that filled our single acre of land. At sunset, I told him happily that I wanted to be a journalist, just like he’d been when he lived up north, doing one of the many jobs he engaged in as a young man—before he became a father. He smiled at my enthusiasm, but he didn’t encourage my writing pursuits. Instead, he said, I was to be a good girl, not a writer.

This was strange news. He claimed to be a feminist, yet he couldn’t find it in himself to offer encouragement to me.

This would become a growing theme during my childhood and adolescence, and before long, I realized that not only would I never please my father but that I was a burden to him. He told me so. Perhaps he resented having to raise me after my mother left. Maybe he just wanted to target his rage at someone. Your guess is as good as mine.

But I knew I wanted something that would lead me to life. My mother had come from a Jewish family, but I had friends who talked about Jesus, and they were kind and lived with such peace and tranquility that I longed for what they had. But my father never allowed me to engage in any religious practice. As the years wore on, I recorded my thoughts and feelings in journals, unaware that the writing practice I’d begun with him on that long ago evening would serve me well. It would, in time, lead me to the One who set me free.

***

Some people go to college and fall in love with other people. When I went to college twenty years ago, I fell in love with God.

It was a thrill to start engaging in religious practices, and I didn’t have to experience the ferocious anger my father had exhibited whenever I’d attempted to get involved with a church at home. I could simply enjoy all the religious traditions I could get my hands on—and I could write about them. I experienced many religions, but by my junior year, it seemed I was being courted by two: Judaism and Christianity.

I became fast friends with a girl I met during my sophomore year. She was Jewish, and I started attending Friday night services with her at a local synagogue. It was something of a shock to realize that during all those years of childhood, at least before my mother left, I could have been going to synagogue, attending Jewish school, and learning about the Torah–my mother had been Jewish, too.

I adored Friday night shul. The Torah reading. The way attendants kissed their prayer books and touched the beloved Torah scroll after the readings. The Oneg Shabbat with delicious food. The camaraderie experienced among the members of the synagogue left me reeling with possibility. I even loved the Saturday morning Torah study where the old Jewish men gathered to argue about Old Testament readings and welcomed me in.

But I couldn’t escape the allure of Jesus. I read the Gospel of Matthew in secret at my father’s home during a break from school, keeping the book under my mattress for fear he would see that I had a Bible. I was amazed at the story, at the teachings of a long-awaited and disruptive God who longed for people to be free of oppressive religious traditions that weighed them down rather than set them free.

Mostly, though, I was intrigued by the idea of a personal God who loved all of me, even the bits I kept hidden from others as well as from myself. And by the truth that wholeness is for all of us, including me, and that God wanted freedom for me and created me, a woman, for a purpose. I was not made in vain. I was not a burden to him. I was a delight and a joy to be loved by him.

The psalmist wrote, “My father and mother walked out and left me, but God took me in” (Psalm 27:10 MSG). During the time of my religious exploration, my mentor handed me this verse, and just like that, I fell for Jesus. The idea that pushed me over the edge toward Christianity was that God created me and longed for me to come home. I was welcomed into Jesus’s arms. I had never had that experience before because I’d so often heard about how I was a burden.

But Jesus didn’t think me a burden. What a scandalous notion is the idea that we’re born into existence because God loves us! I mattered to him; it said so in Psalm 27. He loved me no matter what, and I got to keep that relationship with him no matter what.

And keep it I did. My faith in Jesus has sustained me for more than twenty years. To be sure, I have had obstacles and challenges to overcome, but by God’s grace, I didn’t let my father’s wrath scare me from running headlong into the family of God. I made faith my own.

Jenn Zatopek is a lover of Jesus, people, and stories of hope and resurrection. A native Texan, Jenn is a writer and licensed therapist and adores deep conversations about God and life over small talk any day of the week. She loves empowering folks through compassion counseling, hiking out in God’s creation, and spending time with friends and family. Jenn loves connecting with others and blogs about faith, psychology, theology, and relationships at theholyabsurd.com.

Photograph © Pearl, used with permission