How God Won Me Over After My Dad Abandoned Me
The narrative explores the profound impact of childhood abandonment and emotional isolation on the author’s life. The author reflects on a past marked by loneliness due to his father’s abandonment, leading to feelings of rejection that persisted into adulthood. He struggled with self-worth, questioning why anyone would love him if his father did not. This sense of loss extended to his relationship with God, creating a conflict where he felt abandoned by both paternal figures in his life.
despite periods of skepticism about God’s existence, the author eventually found solace in the idea that his suffering coudl serve a purpose, as exemplified by Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. This realization helped him cope with his childhood trauma and social anxiety. He experienced a critically important change through faith, culminating in his baptism surrounded by loved ones, which marked a turning point toward clarity and relief from anxiety.
The author concludes his story by emphasizing that those who have faced abandonment are not alone; God has always been present. He reminds readers of the freedom to choose a relationship with god,and reflects on the signs of divine purpose that had been evident even in his early years. Ultimately,the author communicates a message of hope and redemption,encouraging others who have experienced similar pain to recognize that they are never truly alone.
There is a reason why solitary confinement is considered a form of punishment in prisons; it’s a torturous existence and can drive the most hardened men off sanity’s cliff.
As a child, I had no say about my loneliness. My father abandoned me and left me to figure out the world alone. As a result, throughout most of my life, I felt rejected. That feeling of rejection was an unpleasant yet familiar emotion that latched onto me from childhood and followed me into adulthood.
For so much of my life, I didn’t believe that I deserved the unconditional love that all humans deserve and crave. I would ask myself: If my father, my own flesh and blood, didn’t love me, why would anyone else?
Childhood abandonment is a socially accepted and rationalized form of solitary confinement, a punishment for living and inconveniencing the adults responsible for our births.
What makes your torment even worse is when you get old enough to know about the potential existence of God, you’ll deny His existence or hold contempt for Him for placing you in this predicament.
Why would God let me suffer such a long, tragic, and painful death by the blade of loneliness? If God loves me so much, why couldn’t He convince my father to do the same?
If God is so powerful, why couldn’t He call my name when He heard me crying alone in agony?
We’re told as kids that His presence is all around us, but why did I feel so forgotten if that were true? Hell is supposed to be the place of eternal suffering, and I started questioning if I was already there.
Even still, I remember feeling like God was with me before the age of six. I have a faint image of myself watching something Christian-oriented on television and feeling His presence. I remember Him loving me when my father didn’t.
But then life took over; everything became extraordinarily complicated and scary for me, and I lost touch with Him. The relationship I had with God was severed, and I didn’t know who initiated the disconnect between us: Him or me.
I was a child who lost touch with both of his fathers, and I didn’t know how to bring either of them back.
Without that fatherly presence in my life, I spent years reacting to the fear of being alone. I was always worried about being left behind by someone, whether a friend, an employer, or a girlfriend. When you don’t receive unconditional love from those who made you, you’ll blindly accept conditional love from anyone who’d briefly acknowledge you. You’ll put up with mistreatment, abuse, and disrespect so that you don’t experience the same rejection that your missing parent brought upon you.
I hated the boy that I was because no man ever comforted me in my journey toward manhood, setting in motion my sin of hatred and ambivalence toward God. Throughout those years, I was riddled with social anxiety, failed relationships, and unresolved childhood trauma.
It took time to reconcile my previously held skepticism of God’s existence. I had translated my suffering as being a punishment rather than something of purpose. My suffering became much easier to bear when I thought about how Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. His suffering served a purpose. I survived so much in my childhood and overcame many obstacles in front of me, yet I am here today, using my suffering to help others.
My life changed when I learned I wasn’t alone and never will be. Finding out I wasn’t alone pulled me away from the self-inflicted hell I was burning in on earth.
On June 15, 2024, I was baptized in a lake in Stone Mountain, Georgia, surrounded by family who love me and are proud of the man I’ve become. I am deprived of anxiety and live my life with clarity, thanks to Jesus never giving up on me.
The purpose of telling my story of fatherlessness is to let you know that if someone abandoned you, you’re not alone, and you never were. You’re not alone because God was and is always here with you.
God gives us the freedom to choose a relationship with Him. It is a gift we can accept or deny, and like any choice, both have consequences. We have free will, which is why bad things happen to good people and why men like my father can walk away from their children.
A couple of months after my baptism, my mother and sister told me about something that I had completely forgotten. When I was around four or five years old, I would walk around with the Bible in a tiny suit, proselytizing His word to anyone who would listen to a child speak about God’s wisdom.
They told me that I had said I wanted to grow up to become a pastor and tell people about Jesus Christ. His Holy Spirit was always with me, and God never gave up on me.
I may not have become a pastor, but now you know about the God I love, the Father who never abandoned me. This was His plan all along.
This article is adapted from the author’s book “The Children We Left Behind: How Western Culture Rationalizes Family Separation and Ignores the Pain of Child Neglect.”
Adam B. Coleman is the author of “Black Victim To Black Victor” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing. Find his Substack here.
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