How important is a father's relationship to his daughter? What effect does the nature of that relationship have on the minister's wife? Can it affect her functioning in life and in the church?
Cindy Blake found that her relationship with her father affected every area of her life, including her activities as a minister's wife. Outwardly Cindy functioned successfully at her job as personnel director at a large hospital. Her marriage was happy and fulfilling, and she was active in her husband's church. Yet inwardly she lacked confidence, felt depressed, and seemed unable to grow unable to experience the depth of relationships she wished to have with the church members, with her friends, and with her God. As a result, she decided to seek help from a Christian counselor.
After several months of counseling, Cindy became aware that she was sub consciously harboring resentment and sadness because of her father's severe lack of nurturing during her childhood. She wanted the father she'd never had.
Is Cindy's experience unusual? Not really. Dr. James P. Comer says, "From an early age, the father-daughter relationship has considerable influence on the daughter's sense of female identity and her relationships with males later in childhood and adulthood." 1
A good father-daughter relationship contributes greatly to a woman's potential for success in life. According to Newsweek, a study of 25 top women managers revealed that every one of these successful women had an extremely close relationship with her father. 2
That same article told about women like Cheryl Miller, a 20-year-old basketball star from the University of Southern California and the most heavily recruited female athlete in history. The article quoted Ms. Miller as saying of her father, "He played my coach, my trainer, my father, and my best friend." She recalled how he often told her, "You're my little princess." 3
Ideal fathers, the article implied, en courage their daughters to establish goals, and then they voice their confidence in their daughters' abilities to achieve them. Dianne Feinstein, former mayor of San Francisco, said her father "believed that whatever I reached for was attainable, while I did not always believe it was."
These women--a mayor, an athlete, businesswomen--all testify to a near ideal father-daughter relationship.
I recently sought out several ministers' wives whom I consider self-sufficient, resourceful, and confident in their work in the church. I asked these women what their relationship with their father was like. Without exception, every woman possessed a very strong relationship with her dad.
One said, "My dad took me places. We played ball, went fishing, read books." Another said her dad asked for her opinions and ideas and listened to her as he would to an adult.
In an article in the New York Times Magazine, David L. Dworkin, the president of Neiman-Marcus, described the attitude that goes into establishing this kind of relationship: "I have tried to instill a sense of personal dignity in my daughters. And I hope I have not neglected to instill an idea as well: that they are unique individuals, ones who are loved and who are worthy to be loved."
Because of the many demands placed upon their lives, ministers' wives need this security of feeling loved and worthy to be loved. I believe the lack of such a relationship when they are growing up may adversely affect their work in the church and their relationship with God.
In her book The Wounded Woman: Healing the Father-Daughter Relationship, psychologist Linda Leonard writes of this reverse side of the coin the negative impact a poor relationship with her father can have on a woman: "Every week wounded women come into my office suffering from a poor self-image, from the inability to form lasting relationships, or from a lack of confidence in their ability to work and function in the world. . . . For many of these women, the root of their injury stems from a damaged relation with the father." 4
We often think of physical abuse as adversely affecting a parent-child relationship. And it does. But research is showing that emotional abuse may have even more long-term effects than does physical abuse. This is the type of abuse Cindy had experienced. She told me that she could remember only one instance when she felt really close to her dad as she was growing up. If he had spent time with Cindy more frequently, she might not have become the insecure (self-deprecating woman that she was.
Several months ago I read an article about a woman who felt so cheated by her unhappy childhood that she continued in psychotherapy for many years. "I keep going every week," the woman con fessed, "so that I can vent my anger over the happy childhood I will never have."
I sympathize with the woman. But I don't believe she had the right answer. Ministers' wives with a less than ideal relationship with their father need to be freed from their past, not trapped in it. They need to grow--not only in spite of their childhoods but because of them. As Emerson put it: "Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you."
But how is this possible? What can a minister's wife do who has grown to adulthood and finds she has had a less than ideal relationship with her father?
As minister' wives we often feel a bit selfish if we indulge in introspective analysis of our self-esteem or female identity. But simply stifling our feelings will allow our insecurities to continue to limit both our personal and our spiritual potentials. I believe that, as minister's wives, we have a special calling and that God wishes us to be as strong emotionally as we are spiritually. Sometimes it takes a little introspection--or even professional help--to accomplish this.
A minister's wife can also endeavor to understand her father and the pain he has experienced in his life. This understanding can give her freedom to forgive and the courage to grow beyond the disappointment of her childhood. An experience I recently had with my own father strengthened my relationship with him.
My husband and I live 400 miles from my parents' home, and we don't get to visit my parents as much as I'd like. On this visit I wanted to talk about something relevant with my dad: I wanted to get to know what made him the man he is. I knew that my dad's father had deserted his mother and their four small children when my dad was a boy, but I wanted to understand better the pain this had dealt him. And so, in the quietness of the living room, my father traveled back to his boyhood.
"Although Dad rarely came to see us after the divorce," he began, "I do remember one visit when I was about 5 years old. For some reason Dad decided to spend the night, and he shared my bed."
"Did you talk with him much?" I asked.
"I can't remember talking," he said slowly. "All I can remember is that I trembled all night."
Perhaps it was nervousness or fear or perhaps both, but as a little boy Dad could not reach out into the night and be held by the father he so desperately needed. For this little boy there was no such thing as a real father. He had not known a father's love.
God's plan is that the relationship between a woman and her father be filled with mystery and magic. But our world is not perfect, and our fathers are the products of their imperfect childhoods.
Cindy, the minister's wife with whose story I began this article, is gradually realizing complete personal and spiritual healing. She told me of a recent incident that gave her much comfort in her pain. She was scrubbing her bathroom floor on her hands and knees when tears began to spill onto the gray tile. The void that the lack of appropriate intimacy with her father had left in her heart seemed Grand Canyon-like in size. She ached for that close, counseling relationship that only a dad can provide.
"How can I handle this, Lord?" she prayed aloud. "I want to grow and forget and forgive. But what do I do with this intense desire for a father? How can I accept the reality of being fatherless?"
Then, despite the surroundings, God's words came to her, sweet and strong: "I will be your Father."
And she knew He didn't just mean a heavenly Father—someone high and distant who must keep His royal robes and jewels between them. He meant He could be everything an earthly father could be. He could be wise and wonderful and full of laughter.
A poem by Madison Cawein tells of one little girl's eagerness to greet her father each day when he arrives home from work. You can feel the restless excitement of the little girl:
"When from the tower, like some big flower,
The bell drops petals of the hour
That say, 'It's getting late,'
For nothing else on earth I care
'Cept wash my face and comb my hair,
And hurry out to meet him there—
My father at the gate.
"It's—oh, how slow the hours go!
How hard it is to wait!
Till, drawing near, his step I hear,
And up he grabs me, lifts me clear
Above the garden gate." 5
I hope that as fathers become more active in child rearing, more daughters will be able to greet their fathers with such sweet enthusiasm—more little girls will have dads who will sweep them up, high above the garden gate, into a special father-daughter world.
But for those ministers' wives who aren't so fortunate, there is a Father-God whose love is not limited by human weakness or past experiences. And if they will draw back the lace curtains of their minds, they will see Him there waiting patiently at the garden gate.
