Crossroadscommunity’s Weblog

I’ve been thinking about how much “fatherlessness” plays into orphaned thinking. When I say “fatherlessness” I’m not saying we don’t have a father, but rather we had fathers who were absent, unloving, or just too busy. As a result, we have a generation crying out for the love of a father.

A father’s love and approval means so much to us. Orphan-hearted people are like little kids playing and saying, “Look at me, daddy!”, but they are adults still looking for that approval. Since they don’t have a father to give them the approval their hearts crave, they go through life doing everything they can to be noticed. They feel the pressure to be perfect, so that they will be accepted. They feel that if they don’t perform perfectly, then they won’t be noticed, respected, or valued. When no one seems to notice, they retreat back into themselves. They come out once in awhile – only to be disappointed again. The orphaned heart just wants to be celebrated as someone who is significant…someone who matters.

The hurts of a fatherless generation are many, and they affect so many of our choices. The only answer for a fatherless generation – a generation of men and women who are emotional orphans, who can’t connect with the world – is the love of our heavenly Father. His love is an unconditional love, not based on our performance. He loves us just as we are, imperfections and all. We have His undivided attention, every moment of every day. His love for us is just the same on our worst day as it is on our best day. Thank you, Father God, for loving this orphan.

Last week I blogged about having an orphaned heart. I’ve been thinking about how much orphan-hearted thinking affects the way I view the world and the people in the world.

There are three basic needs of every human heart: the need to be loved; the need to be accepted; the need to belong. The orphaned heart has a hard time thinking there is anyone who could possibly love and accept them, and a hard time believing that they could possibly belong. Our very souls have been poisoned by orphan-thinking. We cry out to belong but recoil from the opportunity because we can’t take the chance of being hurt again. So as a result, we put up walls to keep everybody at a safe distance and justify our ‘cold love’ as ‘protection’. What really started out as walls to keep our hearts safe ends up becoming a prison that we cannot escape.

So what is a person to do? Friend, you must realize that people are neither the problem, nor the answer. The problem – and the answer – both lie in changing our wrong thinking. I want you to know that you have a Heavenly Father that loves you unconditionally. It is hard for us to really accept that sometimes because our distrust of people translates into a distrust in God. Your idea of what a ‘father’ is may not be a very good one, but God is not a man. He is not like us!

God loves you so much that He sent His Son to die for you and me. God does not give His love based on our performance. It is an unconditional love that is extended to us no matter how much we’ve messed up. We can come to Him with all of our weaknesses and insecurities, and He will accept us just the way we are.

Friend, you are valuable and important to God, and He loves you very, very much. You may be wondering if anybody cares about you…and I am telling you that God does, and that your life matters. You are not alone! Stop listening to the voice in your head that is telling you that nobody loves you and nobody understands you. That is just your orphaned heart crying out for an answer to its pain.

God chose to create you – that is how important you are to Him. He wants to be your Father! Climb up into His lap and let Him be your Father. He will fill that empty void.

I’ve been struck by the sheer loneliness that seems to grip so many people. They can be in a crowded room and still seem so isolated and ‘alone’. They would like to connect, but they really can’t seem to do it. I really believe that  so many of these lonely folks have what I call an ‘orphaned heart’.  I don’t mean they don’t have parents, but life has caused them to think and act like orphans.

The legal definition of ‘orphan’ is someone bereft through death or disappearance or abandonment, desertion, separation,  or loss of both parents. You may still have both of your parents, yet you feel abandonment or separation which makes you suspicious of people and relationships.

A person with an orphaned heart gets up everyday feeling they don’t belong and are not accepted. An orphaned heart will cause you to control the relationships that you can, and reject the relationships that you can’t control. Orphan-hearted people put unrealisitic expectations on every relationship. They marry people and expect that person to be perfect and fulfill every need, and then feel disappointed when that doesn’t happen. An orphaned heart will blow a relationship over unmet expectations, then justify their actions because they are hurt. No wonder people are isolated and lonely. No one could ever live up to those standards.

Because orphan-hearted people feel they have to perform to be accepted, they put that same performance expectation on every relationship. You can spend an entire lifetime looking for a place where you are accepted and celebrated, but not offering the same to others.

I have found that place of love and acceptance in the heart of my heavenly Father. The bible says I am ‘accepted in the beloved’. It has taken awhile but I have learned how to rest in His love for me. Instead of looking for people’s acceptance, I am receiving God’s approval. It has helped me not to be so isolated. My expectation is in God and not in people. It frees me to really love people and to trust them more.

Friend, God didn’t create you to live in a world all alone, with your nose pressed up against the window watching everyone else at the party…and you left outside looking in and blaming everybody at the party for your being left out. God said in the book of Genesis that ‘it is not good for man to be alone’. Listen to the voice of God. Go to Him and He will begin to heal your woundedness. He loves you more than you’ll ever know.