Jim Govatos: A father's blessing

In honor of Father’s Day last weekend I've been doing some reminiscing about my own father, who died in 1975.

My father was born in 1895 in a small village in Greece. In 1909, at the age of 14, he was put on a boat together with his 11-year-old cousin. They traveled to America for economic opportunity and went to work for their much older brother.

On the first day of school my father's classmates taught him every swear word in English they knew. When his older brother asked him what he had learned, he obliged by repeating his vocabulary lesson and was soundly thrashed.

While I admire the adventurous spirit of my father, I often wonder what is was like for him to leave home at 14, never to see his parents again. He had brothers who supported him but no parents. For my father this led to the endless wandering of a 20th century Odysseus, always looking for his fortune, and always looking for home. It took him a long time to find home: not until he was 58 or so when he married my much younger mother. I'm not sure he ever found his fortune.

I believe his years of wandering made it difficult for him to finally settle into home, let alone make a home for his children. At best, he was distant and disengaged. Sometimes it was worse. At the time, it made me angry because it stirred up in me an unrequited longing for home. As a pastor I have encountered many people with similar struggles about fathers and home. Some stories were similar to mine; some, much worse.

By the grace of God, I was eventually able to experience God's father-love for me, which enabled me to overcome my deficit and learn to share a father's love with my children. Somewhere along the way of my healing I happened across a book by John Trent called “The Blessing.” The book's main thesis is that, like many people in the Old Testament, people today are looking for a blessing from their parents, especially their fathers, and if they don't get that blessing they can spend a whole lifetime looking for it in a frustrated way. Fathers especially need to remember the power in their blessing and the devastation that comes from withholding it.

The book acknowledges that it is much easier to give a blessing to the next generation if you've already received one from your own parents. However, in cases where the blessing has been missing, it is easier to get it reactivated if we are willing to bless back up the generations: to offer to our parents what they could not give us. It seems counter-intuitive, but I discovered that it has a power all its own.

When I discovered the power of blessing, I offered it back to that little boy who got on a boat in 1909. Of course, it did not have any tangible effect on my father, who had long since passed away, but it changed my life and my ability to offer a blessing to my kids.

This Father's Day, I would want to ask, "Have you blessed your kids lately? Have you told them that you're proud of them and believe they will do great things?" It could make all the difference in the world. And if you are still looking for a blessing yourself, why not try speaking that blessing back up the generations to your parents? You just might find the blessing you were always looking for.