A Father to the Fatherless
A traffic accident. A gunshot wound.
A health issue. Abandonment.
There are many causes for
fatherlessness in our society and the epidemic is growing. In 2014, almost 24
percent of all children lived in a home without a father; however, the
statistic does not include homes where fathers are abusive, workaholics or absent
emotionally. Fatherless children and adults need hope.
In an attempt to answer this need,
Pearls of Promise Ministries is pleased to announce the release of The
Only Father I Ever Knew: How a Fatherless Child Finally Found True Love, by
Lisa Burkhardt Worley. Sharing her personal story, Lisa seeks to help the
fatherless understand that God is their loving Father even when their own
father has not been an active part of their life.
Each chapter in The Only
Father I Ever Knew represents attributes of God that are
“father-like.” Using a backdrop of Worley’s fatherless life, as well as the
lives of sixteen other fatherless men and women she interviewed, her goal is to
show that only God can fill the void left in a heart by an absentee earthly
father.
Worley’s father, a Jewish physician,
suffered a deadly heart attack at age thirty-nine while playing polo. She was
born two months later. For most of her childhood, Lisa lived with a mentally
ill mother who never recovered from the premature death of her spouse while
Lisa attempted to fill the void left by her deceased father. She searched for
love in all the wrong places and made a numerous mistakes until she discovered
the unfailing love of her heavenly Father. “This book has been on my heart for
many years,” said Burkhardt-Worley. “However, it took many years of a
relationship with my heavenly Father before I could adequately describe his
attributes.”
Lisa Burkhardt Worley is the founder
of Pearls of Promise Ministries; helping women overcome past and current dysfunction.
A former national sports reporter and anchor, award-winning author, co-author
and co-editor of eight books, including the four-time award winning If
I Only Had…Wrapping Yourself in God’s Truth During Storms of Insecurity, and The
Most Powerful P: A Child’s Introduction to the Power of Prayer. Working
with Roaring Lambs Ministries, she co-edited and compiled Stories of
Roaring Faith, Volumes 1, 2 and 3. Lisa earned a Masters of
Theological Studies Degree in 2008, graduating Magna Cum Laude from Perkins
School of Theology. She is also the co-host of international radio show, A
Time to Dream.
Q&A
with Lisa Burkhardt Worley
1. One
of the reasons you wrote this book is because you were fatherless all of your
childhood. Can you tell us what happened in your own life?
Lisa- My father was a well-liked
physician in San Antonio, Texas who was a competitive polo player on weekends.
Every Sunday afternoon, with my mother and other family members watching, my
dad would compete in polo matches against teams from all over the country and
Mexico. One Sunday afternoon in early December, my dad suffered a massive heart
attack, and died before he reached the hospital. He was only 39 years old. I
was born two months later. My mother never recovered from that day, struggling
with addictions and mental illness the rest of her life. My half-sister went
through years of counseling to overcome what happened, and moved to
Pennsylvania to live with her mother. Years later, when I worked in New York
City, and lived a few hours from my half-sister, I reached out to her and tried
to have a relationship with her but she refused. In my life, I ended up being
an over achiever, and learned about life through trial and error because I had
very little instruction at home. I made many of the same mistakes fatherless
girls make when they are looking for a father figure to love them.
2.
Surprisingly, you entered a male-dominated career, television sports, before it
was common for women sportscasters to be on television. You had some success in
this field, making it all the way to national television on HBO Sports, and for
a short time, ESPN. Without a dad in your life, how was it that you chose this
career?
I always had a natural interest in
sports even though I really didn¹t have a male figure in the household most of
my life. (My grandfather was a competitive amateur tennis player). I watched
NFL football every Sunday afternoon. I was a loyal Dallas Cowboys fan. I also
faithfully tuned into televised NBA basketball games and favored the New York
Knicks. Little did I know that I would one day be doing televised sports
updates on the Knicks broadcasts when working for the Madison Square Garden
Network as an anchor. I also loved professional golf and later ended up playing
recreational golf myself. In addition, I was overall very athletic. I started
the girls basketball and volleyball teams at our high school and played small
college basketball at Texas Lutheran College (Now Texas Lutheran University
(TLU)). When national sports commentator Verne Lundquist, a TLU grad, came back
to Texas Lutheran and spoke to our Homecoming Sports Breakfast, he talked about
his career. A light went off in my mind, and it was at that point I decided to
pursue sportscasting, even though there were only a few women, mostly former
beauty queens, active in it at the time. I went on to graduate school at the
University of North Texas because they had an excellent Radio, Television, Film
program, then landed a paid internship at WFAA-TV where Verne Lundquist worked
at the time. I was later offered a job at the ABC affiliate in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, then worked in my home market, San Antonio, two different times,
with my national work and job at the Madison Square Garden Network in between
those two stints in San Antonio.
3. Did
you have a turning point in your life where God, the Father became real to you?
Yes, I was at the top of my
television career, working for HBO Sports¹ ³Inside the NFL² and the Madison
Square Garden Network when I lost both jobs in the same week. I blamed God for
this, even though I had not had a close relationship with him for 17 years. We
ended up moving out of the New York City area to Connecticut where we joined a
church. I participated in a Bible study there, and began praying and reading
God¹s word for the first time in a while. It was during this time of seeking
God, that I felt like he said, ³I gave you a national platform to glorify me
and you didn¹t do it. I had to take it away from you to get your attention.² I
was very repentant. It was at this point, with tears flowing, that I said, ³I
am so sorry. If you give me another opportunity to be a sportscaster, not only
will I give you my career, I will give you my life.² The next week, I received
a call from ESPN, asking if I would do some freelance reporting for them. I
ended up staying with ESPN for about six months, when I received a job offer to
return to my old job at the CBS affiliate in San Antonio. I had a different
mindset now. I prayed about decisions, and felt like I was supposed to go home.
As it turned out, my going home was not about covering the Dallas Cowboys¹ run
to the Super Bowl, nor was it about reporting from the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer,
Norway. My return to San Antonio was about honoring and forgiving my mother,
who by that time lived in a group home. My relationship with my heavenly Father
also began to grow for the first time, as I continued in Bible study and began
serving, first as a Sunday school teacher, and later in evangelical ministries
where I spoke and led small groups. Eventually, I answered a call to attend
seminary and transitioned into full-time ministry.
4.
About one in four homes are without a father in the household. How does that
affect children?
According to The National Center for
Fathering, ³Children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become
involved in drug abuse, drop out of school and suffer from health and emotional
problems. They are also more likely to be sexually active, compared to
adolescents living with a father in the home. For little girls, a father is the
one that encourages a girl to be confident and to have strong self-esteem.
Without a dad in the household, girls will likely be more insecure.
As a little girl growing up
fatherless, my mother and I were extremely poor. My father did not prepare for
his untimely death and there was only life insurance on the house, so it was
paid off, but there was no other money. Mother didn¹t feel she could work so we
lived off Social Security checks. We lived in a big house that was thread bare,
and because of my mother¹s early drinking and Molotov cocktail of three
different anti-depressants, she was emotionally absent when I was a little
girl, so I definitely lacked confidence, and my self esteem was almost
non-existent. When I entered college, I was looking for love and because I had
no teaching on the birds and the bees, I became very sexually active and found
myself pregnant in my junior year of college. I ended up aborting that baby
because of something derogatory that the father said about me. I still regret
that decision.
4.
In The Only Father I Ever Knew, you clearly want the readers to
understand about the various attributes of God as Father. What are some of the
attributes you included?
I first want to emphasize that these
are all attributes that I have experienced over the years. I include chapters
about our heavenly Father¹s love, his provision, and his plan‹altogether 24
chapters describing our Father in Heaven. However, one of my favorite stories
is in the chapter, ³My Father¹s Discipline.²As I told you, I didn¹t have much
supervision at home, so my heavenly Father had to step in occasionally to keep
me from going down the wrong path. In high school, my friends and I decided to
go swimming at our community pool, after hours. We had heard that a lot of kids
had done it, so around midnight, we climbed the wall of the pool to take a late
night swim. We were wearing bathing suits under our clothes, but before we
could shed our outer clothes, we heard someone shout, ³Freeze!² As it turned
out, the police, led by well-known area policeman, Officer Roger Terry, were
staking out the pool because there had been vandals there the night before.
There was no mercy. The local police took us into the jail, and scared the wits
out of us, threatening to lock us up overnight. I cried the entire time. They
eventually called our parents to pick us up. I¹d never seen such stern faces in
all my life. Even my mom, who struggled emotionally, was stone-faced.
This story has an interesting twist.
Years later, I was sponsoring a couple of confirmation students at my church.
There were two services that I had to attend with them and sat with the parents
of one confirmand at one service, the other parents at the second
service. The second service was on a Sunday morning and the mother of my
confirmand, Caitlyn Terry, introduced me to Caitlyn¹s dad, Roger Terry. I
realized it was the same Officer Terry who had arrested me in high school. During
this unlikely scene that only God could write, I realized that my heavenly
Father had turned my life around 180 degrees, so much so that I was now praying
for the child of the officer who arrested me in high school. As I sat in the
pew, singing one of my favorite hymns, Here I Am Lord, Officer
Terry saw me weep again.
6. InThe
Only Father I Ever Knew, you showcase sixteen other stories of
fatherless people besides your own. Why did you include these other testimonies
and can you share about a couple of the people you included?
I thought it was important to share
other people¹s stories of knowing God as Father, because I don¹t want the
readers to hear it only from me. As I was preparing to write this book, God
placed numerous fatherless people in front of me, and most agreed to share
their testimonies because they had experienced the love of their heavenly
Father in different ways. I featured one of my friends, Dr. Lynnette Simm, in
the chapter about forgiveness. She had a stepfather who sexually abused her for
five years, starting when she was nine years old. His secret life was
eventually found out, and he was arrested and sent to prison. It was in prison
that Lynnette¹s stepdad became a Christian. He came out of jail, repentant and
a changed man. He sought counseling. Lynnette also went through counseling and
now Lynnette and her stepdad have a loving, normal relationship.
I featured another friend, Mary Ann,
in the Strength chapter. Mary Ann¹s father committed suicide when she was only
three. In the little town where they lived, everyone knew the story about Mary
Ann¹s dad and never asked Mary Ann or her sisters and brothers to participate
in sports or any activities because they knew they could not afford the
uniforms. Mary Ann¹s mother protected her children from the truth about their
dad until Mary Ann found out about her dad¹s suicide from some inconsiderate
kids on the playground. Mary Ann¹s mom decided she¹d had enough, moved the
family, even though she had no job, to a larger city. The volleyball coach at
Mary Ann¹s high school noticed that Mary Ann had athletic ability and so asked
her to join the team. She was a standout player, then received a scholarship to
play volleyball in college. That school went on to win three straight national
championships. As Mary Ann looks back, she realizes that her heavenly Father
gave her, and her mother, the strength to carry on.
7.
There may be someone listening who had a bad father relationship. Maybe their
father was abusive, or he abandoned the family. Because of that, they may have
trouble with accepting God as Father. What can you tell them so, like you, they
will embrace God as the Father they never had?
We cannot equate God to humans. Human
love fails, but the Bible says in Psalm 32:10 that the Lord¹s unfailing love
surrounds the one who trusts in him.
Psalm 33:5 says, ³The earth is full
of his unfailing love.² He created us with a void in our heart that we either
fill with unrighteous or material things or we fill our hearts with His love. I
can tell you from experience, it¹s only the love of God that satisfies. Out of
his love, we have free will to chose Him and his Son, Jesus, or to go a
different direction. Our choice has consequences, but because of His love for
us, we have a choice. If we choose wisely, we spend eternity with him in
Heaven.
After spending five years in
seminary, the one thing I realized is that my God, prior to entering seminary
was not big enough. Our heavenly Father is greater than our minds can
comprehend. Creation as well as the intricacy of our bodies, points to an
intelligent designer, one who designed us with a capacity to love other created
beings and love God. I have a chapter in The Only Father I Ever
Knew about creation. Out of God¹s love for us, he created this
beautiful world for us to live in and admire. Did you know that there are
almost 400,000 different plants in the world? There are about 8.7 species on
earth, 6.5 million on land, and 2.2 million in the ocean. Human beings are an
intricate work of our brilliant designer God. Our brain contains 86 billion
nerve cells, joined by one hundred trillion connections. This is more than the
number of stars in the Milky Way. Creation is enough for me to believe that God
exists and that all of creation did not come together in a big bang, or from a
single cell that mutated. So if God exists, and in His Word, he says that he
loves us, and wants to have a relationship with us, I believe that as
well.
In Ephesians 3 Paul understands this
amazing love that the Lord has for us and he prays for the Ephesians and for us
that we, ³being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with
all the Lord¹s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the
love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge‹ that we may be
filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.²
God¹s love for us cannot be compared
to human love. It is unfailing. He knows the number of hairs on our head. He is
in constant pursuit of us. He just wants us to fully commit to Him so that he
can begin to lavish us with His love.
The Only Father I Ever Knew: How a Fatherless Child Finally Found
True Love
By Lisa Worley
heart millennials.
