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Journeys To Mother Love

~ Encouragement and healing in mother/child relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Tag Archives: fathers day

What Was Written in Father’s Eyes

15 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in childhood memories, emotional needs, generational patterns, Parenting, reach out and touch, the healing journey

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authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Expressing feelings, fathers day, giving and receiving, relationships

Ships on the Sea

Today on Father’s Day I’m thinking about family relationships. I believe we all have a strong desire, perhaps a need, to know and be known by significant others in our lives. But so many things can get in the way of really knowing someone (and letting them know us). I’m talking about knowing who we really are inside: our dreams, our disappointments, our hopes, our memories, our beliefs, our motivations.

Even the people we live with, including those who gave birth to us and raised us, and have lived with us day and night for years, can remain largely a mystery. The pain that comes from being practical strangers to those we are closest to, is a pain that people can carry even into old age.

A.R. (Alice) Cecil describes this type of relationship with her father and mother when she was a little girl. In her story “Run, Run as Fast As You Can” from the book, Journeys to Mother Love, she writes:

In recent years, I have learned my father saw unbelievable atrocities while overseas and came back a different man than the husband of four months, who left when Pearl Harbor became his call to bear arms. He never spoke of the war, but its effect must have been what was written in his eyes. There was a far-off look that I noticed when he thought no one was looking. Was the look in his eyes a result of what he left behind on the front or what he returned to find?

In my mother’s heart were sorrows he could not have understood. My parents belonged to a generation that did not talk about their feelings. So, my father did what he could and lived by reading seed catalogs in the winter and planting tomatoes in the spring. My part was to simply trail along, not asking any questions or breaking into wherever his thoughts had taken him. As I was my mother’s companion for TV’s “Guiding Light,” I was my father’s silent confidante, ever ready to pour out words of encouragement and comfort whenever he chose to turn and acknowledge me. If he ever had, I would have told him, “I know you work really hard and you don’t have time for fun, but I just want you to know how much I love you.” Instead, all I could do was trail along behind him…

Instinctively, I knew my role in life was to be good. How could I possibly add to my mother’s or father’s pain?

It’s not too late. Today let’s “turn and acknowledge” those around us, listen to them, find out what makes them tick. Let them know “where our thoughts have taken us.” Take “time for fun.” Say “I love you.” And let them see windows into our souls.

~Catherine Lawton

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My Father’s Devotion

16 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in childhood memories, leaving a legacy

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Father, fathers day

Father and child

My father holding me as a newborn

This blog is about mothers, but today is Father’s Day and I want to affirm the importance and influence of fathers. We wouldn’t be mothers or daughters if it weren’t for fathers!

Daddy preaching on the radio

Daddy preaching on the radio

Here is a passage from my biblical novel, “Face to Face.” The main character, Joakima, is musing about her father. I’m sharing this on Father’s Day because I’m sure I had my own father in mind when I wrote this:

… My father was often called a devout [man]. He would sit at night at his cobbler’s bench while the smell of burning lamp oil permeated the room and the flame cast grotesque dancing shadows on the stone walls, and he would pore over his treasured copy of a portion of the prophet Isaiah. Early mornings he prayed alone on the housetop. He talked quietly with the people who came into his shop during the day. They came as often to see him as to buy his products. Often the men who came troubled and frowning, left looking resolute and calm. It just seemed the natural thing for my father: listening, nodding, speaking a soft word here and there.

And how he prayed! As a little girl, I would tiptoe up the steps to the roof and see him there on his knees, hands raised toward far-away Jerusalem. He fervently repeated the prayers of his fathers. Sometimes I knelt beside him and closed my eyes and tried to say the words with him. He didn’t seem to notice me, so enrapt was he….

(from Chapter Four, Face to Face : A Novel)

~ Catherine Lawton

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