A Note to Fathers That Are Having a Hard Time

I know what you carry. I know what it costs.

To the fathers reading this today.

I know what you carry. I know what it costs.

You wake up before the house wakes up because somebody has to. You go to work tired because the work is what feeds them. You come home and you have nothing left and you give it anyway, because that is what fathers do, and you do it whether anyone notices or not.

Most days, nobody notices.

I know about the mistakes. The ones you replay at 2 a.m. The sentence you should not have said. The patience you ran out of. The moment you were not there for. The thing your father did that you swore you would never do, and then you did it once, and you have not forgiven yourself yet.

Brothers, hear me. The fact that you replay those moments at 2 a.m. is the evidence that the heart in you is working. A man who did not care would sleep. You do not sleep, because you care. The waking itself is the proof. Hold that. The shame is not the verdict. The care underneath the shame is the verdict. A man who has no conscience never lies awake. You lie awake because the conscience God put in you is doing exactly what He designed it to do.

I know about the under-appreciation. The bills paid that nobody thanks you for. The repairs made. The rides given. The advice they did not want and you gave anyway because somebody had to. The decisions made in silence that nobody will ever know you made. The years you held the floor steady while everyone walked across it without knowing the floor was you.

I see you. I value you. I appreciate you.

So does Yeshua. Not because anyone valued Him in His own day. They didn’t. He was the man of sorrows, the one acquainted with grief, the one His own people did not esteem. The carpenter’s son who knew what unappreciated work looked like in His own home and in His own town. He worked with His hands. He served His mother and brothers. He was rejected by the people who watched Him grow up. He stands with you on that ground specifically. The one who was not valued for the work He was doing knows the exact shape of the cost you carry.

Keep doing what you are doing, with an honest attempt to become a better man. Put the Torah on your heart. Put it in your life. We will thank you for it.

That is what it means to become whole this Father’s Day. [this may help]

That is what Yeshua means with His very own name of salvation: yasha, to be made whole. Yasha does not mean escape from punishment. It means to be brought into a wide-open place, to be restored, to be healed, to be made what you were always meant to be. Yeshua IS the wholeness. The desire underneath your fathering, the desire to do the best you can for your children, is the desire He put in you. That desire is Torah on the heart, brothers. Not a rule that constrains you. An instruction that lives in you. The wanting itself is the inscription. The Father who put it there knows it is there. He values it. And so do I.

This is my prayer for you. My prayer to Abba on your behalf. That the same God who wrote the desire into your heart would honor that desire and complete it. That the days of unseen work would not feel like nothing. That your children, in the years to come, would understand the floor they walked on. And that you would know, in the quiet moments at 2 a.m., that you are seen.

Never forget it. Torah on the heart.

And to the fathers reading this who are already whole: God bless you. Be a light for the brothers still walking the road.

Happy Father’s Day.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, make His face to shine on you, and give you shalom, shalom, shalom!

Sergio