When I think about Father’s Day, I can’t help but to think of the only father I ever knew. He was a man so loved by the women and his family. He was highly respected by everyone. He had a natural charm that would make you want to be around him especially when he would speak. His voice would make you want to listen to every word he spoke. With that voice, he had intelligence and wisdom. But when you looked in his eyes, they always seem to be fighting back tears.

Often times my father and I would take my sons and go to his favorite park and talk for hours about life. The things he shared with me gave me a deeper understanding of life and people. One thing he always told me: “Don’t ever let anybody into the sanctuary of your mind because that is how people take possession of you.” I never forgot those words as I faced the world and began to see the truth about the nature of humanity. He was so right in so many ways. I only wished I understood what broke his heart so early in life. He didn’t trust anybody outside his family.

I learned later on in time, he was molested by his uncle and his family was known for incest among themselves. Also, his trust in women went down the drain when his bride to be, a minister’s daughter, had taken all of his money he sent home while he was fighting in the war in Korea. He told me himself, he would never trust women.

But he always told me he loved me and he would do anything for me. He found no wrong in molesting me as a child. In fact, he swore he could not help being in love with me. When I became a teenager, he approached me as a lover and I shook and cried so hard, he promised to never approach me again. That night just before midnight, my father was shot in the back and paralyzed from the waist down. Of course, I felt it was my fault. If I had not made him speak those words, maybe he would not have been paralyzed.

My father died about twenty years later as a paraplegic. Even on his death bed, he found no wrong in loving me the way he did. In my heart, I always felt he couldn’t help who he was; anybody for that matter, who distorted the true meaning of love. Though I wished I had a father who knew how to be a father and to teach me those things in life a father should teach through the eyes of God, I found what my father gave me was a heart, burden and urgency to assist in the healing of the broken hearted and the misguided victims in the world.

Most victimizers are victims themselves. God made it plain to me to love all His children and to not judge them for their lack of love and understanding of what is best. But instead, plant seeds that will eventually choke the weeds that vex the spirit of freedom. To this day, I love my father and wished he could have experienced the understanding of parenthood through the eyes of God. In his absence, I do the will of God.