Daddy Issues

For the next year, I will be serving as a chaplain resident at the Durham VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.   In my time there, I will help families and veterans walk through fear, grief, and loss.  My continual prayer has been that this be a time of healing.  

It is a blessing to serve as a chaplain. I'm able to focus on helping others and do a tremendous amount of personal discovery.  We have regular meetings where we spend time opening up about the emotional and spiritual wounds we carry with us into ministry.  One of the tenets of our chaplain experience is you can only go as far in someone else's pain as you've been in your own.  

I like to call this early unrecognized pain Daddy Issues.  "Daddy issues" represents emotional baggage from childhood that follows us into adulthood.  This can include abuse, disappointment, insecurity, and many other conditions.  Daddy issues can be harmful if they're not discerned and exposed.  Of course, these issues don't necessarily come from fathers.  There are many amazing fathers (Psalm 103:13 below) and there are many experiences in our lives that negatively effect us.   However, for me, this has been a helpful way to think about this because I didn't have my biological father in my life.  What I'm growing to learn is that his absence has impacted how I see God.  Whether I admit it or not, his absence has also shaped the way I minister to others.  If I'm not aware, I can be ministering to others out of my own needs rather than theirs.  


I believe this happens more than we think.  We serve others to fill some void in our own lives (the desire to experience validation, power, or love).  I pray we can expose these motives and the issues that birthed them.  I'm so grateful for chaplaincy giving me the space to help others through their healing.  But I'm also blessed to have a year where I can uncover and maybe even discard some of my own emotional baggage.  I don't want to use ministry to cover past hurts or relieve my own insecurities.  As I minister to others, I need to be doing the harder work of ministering to myself.  




Our Father, who art in heaven, Your name is hallowed.  Your kingdom is nearing, Your will is occurring.  Please help us to recognize our own emotional and spiritual issues.  The baggage we ignore reveals itself in how we care for others.  Please help us to minister as broken vessels who have discovered where our leaks are.



Sharing,
j.a.g.



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Psalm 103:13 

As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;


Colossians 3:21

Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.