Fatherlessness

Adolescent education expert Bill Jennings said the growing epidemic of "fatherlessness" – where dads were increasingly absent either physically or emotionally – had led to negative patterns in young men, such as suicide, violence and drug abuse.

-- Herald Sun, Better Dads Better Lads

It didn't quite come as a surprise to me, when I came across this article in the Herald Sun. But it did make my heart sink, as I pondered the quandary of the state of our generation: many of us fatherless, not just in the physical sense, but in every other sense too.

Fatherhood was something that was always awkward with dad. Beneath the starched shirt and handsome suit, hid a boy that was still wrestling with the irrevocable void left behind by his father who died from disease when he ventured out from China, Indonesia and then to Singapore, as an enterprising youngster.

A steely and fiesty woman, my grandmother raised him up single-handedly. Her strength and resolve brought security, safety and stability, but it was as big a part of the problem as it was the solution.

There was no initiation rite for dad as an adolescent boy to be ushered into manhood. Alone, he stumbled into marriage, family life and fatherhood. The responsibilities weighed upon him like lead, the expectations that came along with it, he found suffocating. The inner turmoil he knew not how to articulate grew like cancer, and his drink and drunkeness eventually claimed his life some thirty years later.

Perhaps this is what we hear spoken of as the 'generational curse'. The shortfalls and less than favourable circumstances that leave us feeling somewhat handicapped and disadvantaged.

But may the curse of our forefathers be broken as we stop and listen, and allow the blood of Christ to wash over us, as we contemplate His purpose and what He is seeking to accomplish in our world and through our lives.

All things work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to the Creator's purpose. May His strength be made perfect in our weaknesses.