Fr. Bill Wigmore
CEO of Austin Recovery

Our country is facing “a father crisis.” More than 25 million kids are growing up in America today without fathers. Thirty-six percent grow up without their biological father present in the home - and that rate grows steadily each year. America is now the world’s leader in producing fatherless families – with all the terrible consequences:

• Our fatherless children are four times more likely to turn to drugs & alcohol than are other kids.
• Our fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school and suffer serious emotional problems later in life.
• Our fatherless children make up 70 percent of long-term prison inmates. But even more sadly, there are families where our kids might be better off if some of our fathers were not there. Child abuse, emotional, physical & sexual, leaves terrible scars.

My own father was an abusive alcoholic. But after I learned about addiction and family systems, I wondered: how could he have been otherwise? His father was an alcoholic who abused him - and his father before had done the same. In my family, none of the men knew what real fathering looked like – we had no role models to show us how it was done. Fathers are supposed to teach sons how to fit into the world around us. Fathers orient us into the life of our families and our community. Fathers play a huge role in passing on to us a sense of our own dignity and worth.

My father wounds cut me very deep. I remember what was probably the most meaningful conversation my father and I ever had. In his own fumbling way, he tried to bond with me and pass on a family tradition that his father had handed down to him. When I was 16 and showing signs of fitness to carry on our family’s drinking tradition, he took me aside one day and, instead of giving me the beating I expected, he said. “Son, if you’re going to drink, … drink scotch!” I never felt closer to the man than I did that day and scotch became my drug of choice. The torch was passed!

Mothers generally stick with their kids because the physical bonds between them are strong. But we fathers aren’t made that way. We fathers have a choice. We can walk away from our children – and many of us do. And when we walk away, be it physically, emotionally or even chemically - the wounds left behind are tremendous. Bill Wilson’s father abandoned him when he was ten. He left a hole in his son’s soul that no amount of alcohol could fill. My father never left; but emotionally, I did. I went away inside to a place where he couldn’t reach me. Only much later did I learn: neither could anyone else.

Mine was a pretty typical Irish-Catholic upbringing. Growing up, I was often beaten with my father’s belt, locked in dark closets, and confined to living in a war zone. No one thought to call Child Protective Services back then and many kids had it far worse than me. But when my own addictions finally drove me to a 12-Step Program and I first tried working Step Two, my father’s ghost rose to haunt me. Program people spoke of turning my life over to a loving Father-like God. I flashed back to the emotional image of God that I carried deep inside. It took me back to a well-intentioned nun who had tried describing God to us kids in religion class when we were a very impressionable age 6 or 7. She said, “Think of God as being just like your father; only he’s bigger, and stronger, and he knows everything you do.” I said, “Holy sh… I’m screwed!” The nun reported that to my old man who then promptly washed my mouth out with soap! The Big Book says that those of us who’ve had a lot of religious training may have a harder time with the Program. Maybe that’s because we have such difficulty letting go of those “old ideas about God” - old ideas that unconsciously link him with painful childhood memories. For me, I believe that’s true. Intellectually I can move beyond that and realize that I’m projecting my “father stuff” onto my own Creator; but emotionally it can still come back to haunt me. Now enter Jesus.

The Jesus I’ve come to know is a wounded man who went inside and found what I failed to find. Some modern scripture scholars point out that in the playgrounds of Nazareth Jesus probably wasn’t called “the Son of God” by his playmates; but was more likely taunted and derided as, “Mary’s bastard.” That may sound hard and even sacrilegious to religious folks, but maybe it speaks to more and more of us today who are bleeding internally from similar father wounds. Jesus too had a human father wound that cut him open and sent him searching to discover who he was and how he was being called by life to respond. He too went inside – deeper inside than any man had ever gone before – and there he found the Great Reality within – the One he called his Abba or his Papa. “Going inside” verses’ “coming down from heaven” is a paradigm shift that modern Christianity has now begun. There is no turning back.

Fathers are different than mothers. A mother gives birth being physically tied to her offspring but a father must acknowledge his offspring and choose to stay. The very heart of Jesus’ message was that God chooses us and chooses to stay with us on our life’s journey. Jesus called that: Good News. God chooses to stay with us no matter what we do, no matter where we try to hide. You cannot be where God is not; but gentle Father that he is - he leaves us free to choose him in return.