With three small children, a moment alone is rare. There is always someone. Someone peeking over the toilet seat to check out the size of your poo. Someone asking for helping to dress their doll. Someone wanting to be held. Someone screaming at their sibling. Someone who needs their nose or butt wiped. It is constant however I am coming to recognize it as a season. A season full of running around getting seemingly nothing accomplished yet so much is getting done. Little ones are loved, fed, and sometimes clean.

You mommas out there get it. It doesn’t make it easy but it is the season. The season we are in.

A sweet friend of mine offered to watch my littles while I got out. Sitting on the cushioned seat free of crumbles and stickys from last nights meal I don’t even know what to do with myself. No food to cut or baby to spoon. Just me. Just me and Jesus. And this is where He takes me. On a journey looking and reflecting on my Father and His love.

So many have father wounds. So many do not understand the depth and intimacy of what it means for God to be our Father.

Absent dads. Rejecting dads. Hurtful dads. Disconnected and disengaged dads. Where does that leave a heart, a soul? It seems crying, aching, and acting out. The pain of a father wound runs rampant in our culture. How do we heal? Where do we find relief?

We hear God wants to be our Father but where do we even begin with that? How does He move in and take up residency in our wounded, aching heart?

I am not a theologian or Bible scholar. I am just a heart who has ached and hurt along the way. A heart that did not understand the meaning of God as my Father until recently. A heart that was bleeding and confused. That didn’t see God chose to be my Father. I just needed to reach back.

Much of any relationship is learning to reach out. To take the focus off yourself look up and reach out. Looking and reaching can lead to places you have never been.

But God so rich in mercy, and He loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, He gave us life when He raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) Ephesians 2:4-5

It is only recently that I am seeing how God is so rich in mercy and love. Looking back He could have left me in that cold sterile hospital lost in my achy heart and dark depleted mind. He could have left me over the toilet puking out my insides. He could have left me bleeding out my arms from repeated slices.

We all have them the ” He could have left me(s)”. But He didn’t. Hallelujah, He didn’t! Why? Because He is so rich in mercy and love. Because He chose you. He chose to be your Father.

A father doesn’t leave his children. A father is there for his children even if they mess up. A father makes a way back to him…always.

God, our Father has made that way. He has left the door open through Jesus. Jesus an atonement. Jesus rising from the dead so we can be raised from our deadening sins.

You have a Father. A Father that loves you. You may be busted up and hurting. You may be confused and sceptical. That’s ok. He doesn’t ask you to come to him as a pretty, clean package. The Bible doesn’t say come to me, you clean and tidy people. No!

Matthew 11:28 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. NIV

Luke 5:32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. NKJV

Mark 2:17 And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” ESV

Let’s stop walking around as daddy wounded, bleeding people. There is a better way. There is a salve. Your Father isn’t of this world. He is constant, loving, stable, rich in mercy and love.

I pray this scripture over you all today.

I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance. I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 1:16b-20 NLT