“Honor thy father and thy mother: that the days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” (Exodus 20:12)

In my last Blog, I shared about how we honored my mom for the holidays. Now I’d like to share how we are trying to honor my dad. Dad lives in Eastern Washington, about a 6 hour drive from us. Dad and mom divorced when I was three years old. I lived with mom after that. There were 5 of us kids (I’m the youngest), so you can imagine the challenges of visitation. I visited dad on breaks and during the summer, and we had an ok relationship as I grew up. I didn’t realize, however, that I was always seeking my dad’s approval until I was a senior in High School. I was class speaker and nearly had a 4.0 GPA with the exception of one B that I got in P.E.! I was pretty driven to succeed and I believed this success would fill the void that was left when mom and dad divorced. Of course, it didn’t. As I became an adult, I got angrier and angrier with my dad. I told myself it was his fault that I had problems with relationships, his fault I was hurting inside (of course it wasn’t, but it was easier to blame him than look at myself). When I’d visit him, my anger would come out and I’d become very cruel in my words…he had hurt me, so I would hurt him more.

But dad didn’t give up. He kept loving me and welcoming me. When I was 31 years old, my world came crashing down. I separated from my wife and now I had no choice but to look inward for the source of my problems vs. outward. I decided I wanted to have a counseling session with my dad. When I called him up, he agreed to it, so he came to Seattle for a counseling session. My counselor asked me to listen while dad told his side of the story. He shared how hard it was for him to divorce, how hard it was for him to not see his kids. He shared his regrets. Then he did something that would change my life and the lives of my kids and their kids. Dad asked for forgiveness. I broke down in tears as I accepted his forgiveness. Before that day, I was an extraordinarily driven man. If you’ve ever seen a pressure cooker with the water boiling inside and the spout on the top whistling from the pressure…this was me. When my dad asked for forgiveness, it was like the lid to the pressure cooker was taken off and the pressure that had built up inside of me was relieved after 31 years. That day was one of the best days of my life.

About 5 years ago, my step-mom asked me to come to Eastern Washington and see how my dad lived. I went over for Memorial Day weekend and we spent the time together. He has a small house and a fire pit in the back yard. We enjoyed talking and watching the fire well into the warm evenings in Eastern Washington. I told dad I’d be back with my family that summer. We came back as a family and camped in Dad’s backyard. We went swimming in Lake Roosevelt where I swam as a kid. We went and got ice cream at the drive inn that I went to as a kid. We went boating and bike riding….just like when I did as a kid.

Debbie and I decided that weekend that we were going to be more intentional about honoring our parents. We decided at a minimum we’d visit dad twice a year and when we visited him we would honor him in every way we knew how. We’ve done that, and I’ll share more about it in a future blog.

In closing, I want to share how lucky I believe I am to have a father that pursued me…even in my anger. The experiences in my life have created me to be the man I am today and I hold no resentment or regrets. I have the utmost respect for my dad, and am certain his decisions have significantly contributed to me and my family being emotionally healthy. Furthermore, I believe these decisions will result in stopping the generational curses with my kids.

Here’s my question to you. Do you have any unresolved issues with your father? If so, I want to challenge you to work them out. I guarantee you won’t regret it!