Growing up, I always would get discouraged to ask my mama about my father. I wanted to know where he was, who he was, and why he wasn't around. I was only five years old and filled with curiosity. As a child, I would watch my classmates interact with their fathers during school activities, open house, and field days. I vividly remember staring off into the audience during awards day at my school with a ravishing pain in my heart. Many of my peers had their 'parents' and family members clapping and cheering for their accomplishments. I would watch many of my peers smile and pose for photos with their parents, while me on the other hand I often times didn't see my own mother at my school functions...
It was only in primary school when I realized at such a tender age the value of family. Watching families interact on t.v truly made me want to experience having a father figure in my life. I couldn't blame my mother for doing the best that she could have to raise three kids without the help from their fathers. I watched my mother struggle for many years to hold down a job with having little to no education. I suffered watching my little sister and brother yearning and eager to ask my mother the same questions about their fathers. Telling my sister and brother that their father's didn't existed wasn't a realistic thing for me to say. My mother use to get frustrated about us bothering her about our fathers.
She would say, "Don't worry about yo' daddies. I'm yo' mama and yo' daddy."
I would drop my head and tell my siblings once my mother would walk away that, "Jesus is our daddy. HE will take care of us and HE will never disown us."
Saying those words felt good. It even comfort us all when we had no food to eat and our mother couldn't provide for us. I would cry myself to sleep with thoughts of what my father would have been like. I use to wonder would he love me for the young girl that I was, and the ambitious woman I was becoming?
Thoughts of what my father could have been like flooded my imagination after I would say my prayers. But, even then I knew that my Heavenly Father was always with me.
John 10:30 KJV reads
I am my father are one.
I kept this verse close to my heart many holidays when I watched my little brother get dressed to see his father (who never showed.) My brother would sit on one the edge of the sofa in our tiny living room on his knee caps to see out of the screen window. He would patiently wait to see if his father's car would ever roll out into the driveway. My brother whose name is Louis, was so affected by not having a father in his life that he turned to the streets. My brother became rebellious and started to build resentment towards our mother for his father not being a part of his life. My brother started stealing and committed burglary that sent him to a juvenile detention school for six months and now he lives in a group home. He is only sixteen years old and no longer is being raise by the help of my mother.
I want you to know that if you are growing up without a father that everything will work out for the better. You don't have to become rebellious and filled with resentment towards your mother for doing the best that she can do. I wish I could have told my brother the same thing you are reading now, before he acted out. There is a God that thought you was worth saving, so he sacrificed his life on the cross for your sins and mines. Don't ever feel like just, because you come from a single parent home you are less than someone who doesn't. Your mother truly does love you more than you would probably ever know.
If you grew up with a father figure in your life be thankful. There are people like me who would love to experience what having a father would be like. Respect your father no matter how bad he may treat you or what he may have said to you. Life is too short to hold grudges with the man that helped created you with your mother.
Did you know that, In the African American community, 72 percent of Black children are raised in a single parent household? Therefore, that only leaves 28 percent of the remaining Black children to be raised in a two parent household. Studies also have shown that single parents in the United States were more likely to be employed — 35.8 percent compared to a 21.3 percent average — but they also had higher rates of poverty, the report found. In conclusion, being raised in a single parent household doesn't always have bad outcomes. The life that a single mother provides for her child or children can create a beautiful turn out. Just remember that, God made no mistakes when created a life that needs to be brought up the right way.
I am thankful that God knew our WORTH. Did you grow up without a father? Did you lose your father? Do you believe in OUR Heavenly Father? Feel free to comment below.
Remember, to keep God first in your life, and everything that you do and the results shall follow.
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