When I was a little baby, my dad took me into the churning Atlantic Ocean during hurricane warnings. Suddenly, he looked up and saw a massive wave towering over us. The wave crashed and washed me right out of his arms. I was gone.
Desperately thrashing through seaweed and turbulent waters, at last he felt a little hand. He pulled me to him and held me as I cried out my fear and trauma. I had almost drowned.
Decades later, I look back at that true story as a metaphor for what has happened to our babies today. A wave of depression and anger has swept over our children, especially our boys, and our babies are drowning. In Reaching Your Son’s Heart, you will discover how you, as a father, can save your drowning son.
Bring your son to a powerful retreat where you can mend the broken bond between you. It will help heal your relationship with your son.
Here I was—a 24-year old high school teacher, trying to save all the hippies! My heart broke as many of my students began “turning on, tuning in, and dropping out.”
Years later, after rearing my kids, teaching in Bible schools, and presiding in Women’s Aglow, I went to seminary to fulfill a lifelong dream.
After completing my PhD at Fuller Seminary, I received the coveted “Best Contextualization” award for my dissertation, which was about how to reach this young, fatherless, postmodern generation.
I uprooted from Texas to start a retreat center and camp where I planned to train students for ministry, pouring into them the basics of the faith, before they went off to college or started families.
But I never knew I would face such a wounded and broken generation. One day, a young man said angrily, “I hated my dad so much for leaving our family that I wanted to just blow up my whole high school!”
I was stunned to see the level of hurt and rage in some of the boys. I soon realized that youth today are not at all like the hippies, who took drugs for the fun of it. Young people take drugs to dull the pain.
What causes this hurt?
Many kids carry a pulsing wound in their hearts. Their homes have been fractured, fathers have abandoned them, and kids are left alone as mothers struggle to put food on the table. Hatred and anger fester in their wounds like an infected sore.
That’s when I began to search for ways to reach these broken ones. One day a distant and angry young man came to our camp. I asked him if I could pray for him and he said, “I can’t tell you what’s wrong. If I do, you’ll have to put me in prison.”
After assuring him that would never happen, he finally broke down and told me his story. When he was only eight years old, his father had made him hold a gun to a man’s head and pull the trigger. The nightmares had never ceased.
I asked a fatherly man in the group to come and listen to Brian’s story. Then he stood in as a father, and with tears in his eyes, he sincerely asked forgiveness.
Brian laid his head on the older man’s shoulder and cried his heart out. When the tears finally dried, he looked the man in the eyes, as though he were his own dad, and said, “Dad, I forgive you!”
Brian left our camp with the burden lifted and joy flooding his soul.
Adrian was a teenager, who came to our camp, filled with depression. His father had made the family move over and over again because of his job.
Adrian hated him for it. Just as he was finally making friends in a school, his dad made the family move again. One night he gulped down a bottle of pills and almost died. His dad suddenly awakened to the pain in his son and brought him to our camp, where he forgave and turned his life over to God.
To help the dads, I offer you the book Reaching Your Son’s Heart. This will be followed up by a father and son retreat at my camp on the Gulf Coast on Father’s Day. It will be life-changing and will help you put into practice the three steps for restoring your relationship with your son. It will help heal our sons.
After hundreds more stories like this, I’ve written 26 books and led seminars all over the world. I have found answers for how to mend our shattered sons. Now I want to pass what I’ve learned on to the fathers who love them and long to be restored to them. It’s time to heal our sons.