Father – Aspirational Adventures

The story focuses on Faye, a five year old girl, who climbed Ben Nevis in a blizzard to raise money for Glasgow Children’s Hospital. But if you read this and other articles they says how her dad, Craig, is an experience ice climber, meticulously planned the route and made sure he had all the necessary kit needed. This does not detract from Faye’s amazing achievement but she couldn’t have done it without good fathering. And I suspect a father she trusted, who encouraged her and who she’d done lesser climbs with beforehand.

This, to me, seems to fit in with the last two posts of mine. If we “yoke” ourselves to Jesus and trust God knows what’s going on we can scale any difficulty. God has done all things before us. Like with Craig, God isn’t surprised when bad things come our way. We just need to tuck in behind our perfect Father/Parent and know they will not let us come to any harm.

Looking at Faye’s face I suspect she wasn’t worried at all because she knew she could trust her Dad not to let her come to harm. I am suspecting Craig gave her words of encouragement to keep her going; words she could hear because she knew he meant it. Even though it was an arduous climb in bad weather Craig knew they had the right kit and the right stamina and knew they could do it and so he passed this on to Faye.

Too often we get to a place where the going looks too tough and we stop listening to the voice of God encouraging us. Some of that, I suspect, comes from parenting we’ve received where we haven’t been encouraged, where at times our parents are the ones who’ve put the limits on us, passed on their fears and worries, not walked that path so don’t want us to because we might get hurt.

I know as a parent I was guilty of doing that but that came from me not listening to God as I parented. So I put in my fears, my limitations, my expectations, etc on my children instead of trusting God with parenting my children and letting myself take on that easy yoke that Jesus promised.

We could all do with being more like Faye with our heavenly Father and trusting that they know the route, have got the kit that is needed, and hear their words of encouragement so we can make it to wherever we are meant to be going without fear.

Which parent?

To stop arguments with my children as to which one of them I love best I always say I love the dog best. May cause more issues than picking one of them but …. And here are some lovely pictures of my dog.

I have been watching BBC’s “Woman in the Wall” based around the awful things young girls and women went through in Ireland with the Magdalene Laundries. What really struck me was the importance of knowing the character who is a child of this period wanting to know who his mother is. It is all about the mothers, all about them wanting to know their children and the children wanting to know their mothers. Who one’s mother is is the important factor.

I understand this is because it is easier to find out one’s mother as that is the name on the birth certificate. I know as a single mum I couldn’t put down the father of my child unless he came to the registrar’s office too. Interestingly a man can go to the registrar’s alone and say who the mother of the child is!

But what struck me as I pondered this after was how in most monotheistic religious, be it Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, God is the father. In Christianity we pray to “Father God”, talk about finding the “Father heart of God”, etc. In some progressive denominations the Holy Spirit is mentioned as the feminine part of God but never the “mother”. There are more more alternative denominations who are talking about “Mother God” but until recently it was only the pagan-type religions who talked about “Mother Goddess” or “Mother Earth”.

It made me wonder if this is why we can struggle with religion. We all know it is male top heavy but maybe it is “father” top heavy too when actually what this TV program, and other places where people search for their birth parents, is that people are looking for a mother.

Yes I know in psychological studies having an absent father can have a huge impact on, especially, a girl’s sexuality as well as on a boy’s way of being in the world. And an aggressive father can lead to a son being aggressive. But I wonder with this how much is affected by the way the mother reacts to the absent father.

This is not a blaming mothers, because I am one, and was a single one for nearly 10 years of my children’s upbringing. But it is more opening up the question of why does it appear that people who are adopted want to know who their mother is yet in Christianity we talk so much about God the Father?

Would be interested to hear other thoughts on this.