As a woman, I have vast experience with mothering and childcare and babies and nurturing. I get when to dip in and when to butt out, even though my history is littered with mistakes on both of those accounts, I still basically understand the role of mother. My own mom and I were close and distant and conflicted and loving and generally a somewhat normal mother-daughter team. We weathered horrors and we sought shelter when we became those horrors. Through it all I either learned to do what she did or eradicate her behaviors from my repertoire. Alternatively, the “dad thing” has really always been a mystery to me.

Given the abuse at the hands of my father, I learned not to trust men, not to become vulnerable with males. Is it any wonder that when my children appeared I protected them from the danger in our own home, their father? But what if he wasn’t dangerous? I couldn’t comprehend the difference even though intellectually I knew he was never the monster that my own father was. Later after a divorce and remarriage, I was even more unable or unwilling to make room for Chef to have free rein with my most cherished gifts. Excluded from decision making, from special conversations, allowed in but only to the edges, I didn’t nurture that relationship, build in true dad trust. It is often only in the looking back that we can really see, isn’t it?

My faith walk has followed the same rocky stumbling path, how much easier would it have been to trust a God who was referred to as “Mother?” A Father God who loved and forgave and nurtured, was and probably is a bit beyond my comprehension, the language at the beginning of the sentence clouding all that comes after. The wonderful book by William P. Young, “The Shack” while critiqued by many, opened my eyes to choosing the form that God will take in order to reach me, to not frighten me. A God that would become a woman to draw me close and gain my trust, a mama God. I found my way in to the beginning of relationship. Harder yet though to trust the earthly men who cross my path, the one who lives in my home. I see that God is offering me opportunities to take what I have learned about mama God and offer up some grace to the man I have condemned wrongly unwittingly merely because of his gender.

The children are long gone, I cannot re-parent them, no do-overs will be forthcoming. Yet a special little boy appears in our home about every other day, has toys and a bed and clothes and a full life within these walls. I have another chance with this child to enforce listening to Chef, to follow what grandpa says. I have more chances to ask questions myself and to include him in the decision making. I have been given the grace to try out some trust and see if the horrors of childhood will be repeated or if that is where they will stay, just memories. Fully knowing that Plum requires no protection from Chef, I watch their relationship and know that I robbed my children of this gift. Plum leans on gramps, he lays on him, he has to be touching him all the time. They battle and laugh and learn and Chef pushes him to keep going when he wants to stop too easily. Chef has been the father to this child when no one else was showing up for the job. His performance has been outstanding.  As mama has taken over any need for my own mothering with this child and I am more and more just gran, I know that plum and Chef  will always have that deeper connection.

Father’s Day rolls around each year with the duty to honor those who have parented us. With each passing year I am better able to honor my own Father, who has not given up on me and is teaching me to honor the father in my midst. I might still have a shaky image of God as masculine, not entirely female either, sexually ambiguous is currently working for me. Progress, maybe, but the real growth is the trusting, the leaning. Like my Plum at bedtime when he wants his gramps to snuggle and I walk out of the room with confidence, we are all getting closer. Happy Father’s day to the One who lets me lean in, get close, who tells me not to quit. Happy Father’s day to the man who lives this out with our Plum. You make a great dad.