I Didn’t Have a Father

He said the words without prompting, as if to explain the current state of his life: “I didn’t have a father.”

I knocked on his door by mistake, looking for a friend living next door.  We had not met. Kevin was sharp-looking, young, articulate, and pleasant. He told me that our team had connected with him the previous week and how grateful he was for it. He invited me in, eager to talk. 

I started with a question I often use: “What brings you to a motel room on Colfax?”

He fumbled for words, but essentially said that he had lost his way and was trying to push the reset button. I probed, asking if he was struggling with addiction. Again, he fumbled for words but I got the sense it was part of the struggle. 

Now 21, he has been on his own since he was 16. He has two children, living with their mom whom he described as “psycho”. He sees them regularly but it is clearly a broken part of his life, part of his longing for a reset. He talked about work, about needing to learn how to handle money. He has other family around but little contact with them. 

Then, as if to explain both where he was and the mess of his life,  he simply said: “I didn’t have a father.” 

While we talked, my mind went to hundreds of other conversations I have had along Colfax, deeply aware of the pervasiveness of fatherlessness. Sometimes, our friends can articulate that loss and its impact. Sometimes, I just observe their current mess, listen, and hear their stories of absence and abuse: They didn’t have a father.

A few years earlier, at this same motel, I ran into a young man I’d met, dealing drugs at a different motel. Tommy was now dealing out of a room here. He invited me into the room to talk. We talked for a while, catching up, then I went back out to the parking lot. Interestingly, for the next while, he would come back out to talk to me between deals. A young 20’s drug dealer, eager to talk to an old guy about life! Usually, what drives that is a yearning, a father hunger. 

His story was common—didn’t know his dad but thought he was probably in jail. I asked about other adult males in his life, wondering if a grandfather or uncle had stepped into the gap.  The only male he could come up with was his drug-dealing brother, a year older than him. That was his only role model. Small wonder his life looked as it did. He didn’t have a father!

Boys growing up without healthy fathering—real or surrogate—typically struggle in life. No one to love them, bless them, and teach them how to be a healthy adult man. Some rise above that deficit, often due to a heroic single mom. They build good lives. But most often, fatherlessness leads to dysfunction and brokenness. That is true for both rich and poor. But here, in the hood, the wreckage is more extreme, visible, and palpable. Many men lead lives of addiction, violence, and cycles of imprisonment. 

There is more to say than I have time for. The issues of growing up—parenting, moms and dads, boys and girls— are large and complex. The absence of moms is devastating. Fatherlessness for girls is also destructive. Today, I simply want to highlight the impact on males.

I see that impact further down the years, often in men who are in their sixties and older. Here, the energy and hutzpah of young fatherless men has turned into the sad path of addiction, dysfunction and loneliness. Yet they still hunger for a father figure. 

I remember running into two friends while visiting another motel. Both 60ish, their lives a wreck. As always, I gave them a hug. Both shorter than me, each did the exact same thing. They turned their head sideways and laid their head against my chest and just stayed there for a moment. Like a small boy would do on his father’s chest. They didn’t have fathers. 

What do we do with all of that, here among fatherless men? First, we teach them there is a Heavenly Father who will, if invited, step into their lives with perfect fathering that makes up some of what is missing. 

However, we sometimes are too spiritual to be helpful. They also need a dad with flesh on, a real live man who can love, bless, teach and encourage. Someone who can fill the hole fatherless men have, no matter their age. I do that as best I can, as do other men on our team. But the need is overwhelming and I find myself dreaming of other men, followers of Jesus who know a bit about being a dad. Men who would be fathers to the fatherless here along Colfax.

Please, please, please pray with me about this. And ask yourself what your role might be.