Overcoming Father Wounds: Exchanging Your Pain for God’s Perfect Love

In this mixed debut, Stephens, founder of Entrusted Women, an organization dedicated to empowering Christian women of color, discusses how she healed from a painful father-daughter relationship through God’s love. Growing up in a single-parent household, the author became adept at glossing over the pain of her father’s frequent absence. But when, in adulthood, she was rankled by a minister’s derisive remark about women with “daddy wounds,” she came face-to-face with her own, and embarked on a quest to “exchang[e] father wounds for the Love of the Father.” Here, she aims to help others do the same, advising readers to identify their own father wounds and assess how they’ve affected personal attitudes toward romantic relationships, and posing questions like “In what ways have you attempted to receive affirmation from males that you did not receive from your father?” She also emphasizes forgiveness and acceptance, though readers will get varying mileage out of the exercises (e.g., writing a “forgiveness letter” to one’s father). Stephens’s candid personal stories captivate, even if sometimes the father/Father connection feels forced, and statements like “Though my father didn’t affirm me as a child, God affirms me through his word” land more as platitudes than useful lessons. Patient readers will find some useful insights. (Mar.)