Turning the Hearts of the Fathers

Malachi 4:5–6

The Clue I Missed

It was 2020: COVID, lockdowns, masks, fatalities, and fear seemed to govern the earth. I had left New York and moved to Central Florida to be near my elderly parents, determined to offer whatever care I could.

My closest friends worried deeply about my decision. They knew the history, the wounds, the cost of returning to people who had shaped my earliest traumas.

Two of them asked me a question that pierced straight through my wounded heart:

“If you don’t do this, will you regret it?”

Their words cut like a knife.

And so I said yes to God’s commandment to honor my parents.

During those first two years in Florida, I learned more about both of my parents’ childhood trauma than I had in my entire life. My father had been raised by an angry, alcoholic mother and a father who abandoned him. Trauma upon trauma had shaped the man I called Dad.

I didn’t know he was dying. Even my mother didn’t realize how sick he truly was. But looking back, I can see the clue he gave me.

One day, he remembered holding me as a baby.

This gruff man—who had shattered my young heart with harsh words, punished me for grades, and often disciplined me for things I did not even do—looked at me with a tenderness I had never witnessed before.

His eyes softened as he drifted back into memories of a time long gone.

Something in him was shifting.

I didn’t recognize it then, but something in him was saying goodbye.

His eyes were different that day—full of love.

His voice trembled as he said, “I remember when you were born. I remember holding you,” and he lifted his aged arms into a cradling position, as if he were holding me again.

That was the sign I missed.

He rarely spoke without finding a way to wound me. But this time, he didn’t.

I was in Panama City when the phone call came. I rushed back to Central Florida.

The next day, I took my mother to the ICU. My father was unresponsive. After waiting for a while, we left.

Later, when everyone else had gone, I found myself alone with him.

I felt the Spirit nudging me.

I leaned close and whispered:

“I want you to know I love you, and I forgive you for everything.”

I don’t know if he heard me, but I trusted the Father to carry my words to his heart.

The next day, my mother didn’t want to return, but I insisted.

When we arrived, he was awake but unable to speak because of the respirator. His eyes followed us, never leaving my mother.

He seemed to be drinking her in like a man who had spent a long time in a desert—thirsty for life.

Fear spoke loudly through his eyes.

Through a series of Spirit-arranged moments, the head nurse suggested hospice, and the chaplain was called.

He happened to be a Seventh-day Adventist. I shared my testimony with him—the real story of me—the version of myself my father had never known.

Then, in another divine moment, my mother’s pastor arrived.

These men of God prayed over my father.

After they left, the Holy Spirit led me to speak directly to the spirit of fear that had entered him as a terrified child and ruled him all his life.

I spoke to his heart about his heavenly Father’s love.

I told him he had nothing to fear.

I told him he would fall asleep and meet the Lover of his soul—the One who knit him together in his mother’s womb—the One who had collected every tear he had cried since boyhood.

That very morning, Psalm 23 had been given to me.

I read it to him.

I read Psalm 23 to the man who once caused my knees to tremble with fear.

I read Psalm 23 to the man who beat me.

I read Psalm 23 to the man I longed to love me.

We stayed for hours, but eventually my elderly mother needed to go home. We planned to return in the morning.

That visit never came.

At 9 p.m. that night, the Holy Spirit told me to turn off all electronics and pray for my father.

For twenty minutes, I prayed—speaking to his spirit, not fully understanding, only listening and obeying.

Then the phone rang.

My mother was sobbing.

My father had passed away while I was praying.

The Holy Spirit was there.

The angels were there.

A war was being waged over his soul.

He professed belief in Jesus. He thanked Him every morning and night. But he hated religion and refused to go to church.

Only God knows the truth of his heart.

A few days later, my son flew in from New York.

As my mother went through my father’s briefcase, she found—at the very bottom—a black-and-white photograph of me.

Not of her. Not of my brothers.

Just me.

He had kept me tucked away with his most important documents.

Do I Have Regrets?

Yes.

I regret allowing my own trauma to keep my heart armored against him.

I regret never being able to reach his brokenness with my own healing.

But I do not regret moving to Florida.

I do not regret walking my parents home.

I do not regret being present to hear their stories of childhood trauma—stories that explain so much of our own.

Sometimes healing doesn’t look like resolution…
it looks like obedience.

My Father

“Yes, you are your father’s daughter…”