Hello everyone. I hope everyone is having a wonderful time prepping for the upcoming holiday season. It crept up on me. I can’t believe it’s already the middle of September. For me, this year has been one of many challenges. That makes me most thankful for God’s ever abounding grace.

This past December (2018) I finally finished writing my book, A Father Takes All – Four Generations of Growing up in Single Mother Homes – Grace Abounds. It’s a story of growing up fatherless. It’s not just my story. It’s the story of four generations of daughters growing up fatherless.  A few years ago, my siblings and I were doing some ancestry research. We were trying to find information on my mother, who had been abandoned at birth by her mother. It was difficult to find any information on her birth as it was never registered with the county. The only information we had was on her baptism, that was not until 1927, when she was six years old.

In the early part of the 20th century, it was common for mother’s to give birth at home, and the family would register the birth with the county at a later date. However, that did not happen for my mother. And more than likely it was because she had been abandoned at birth. We also discovered that there was no verification of birth details.  

Well, my mother was baptized in a Catholic church down in south Texas. I am not a Catholic, but from what I know about baptisms, the parents had to be present along with the god parents. So, that meant her mother had to be present when she was baptized. However, the children of the woman listed as mother deny that she was my mother’s mother. I assumed her father was present – to sign the Certificate of Baptism. I went to speak to the local Catholic church and the secretary, an older woman, noted that at that time, the church did not verify identity of the parents, or the children, so there was no way to prove, or disprove that the parents noted were my grandparents. Well, my mother’s father died about four months later. She was raised by her older half-sister. My mother’s story is a bit sorted. The truth is hard to pin down as everyone involved is already dead and the descendants are already in their 70’s and 80’s, and legal records are few. The Census data is also unreliable for the same reason. People lied to the census workers. 

So as we searched for answers about my mother’s past, I was on a spiritual journey searching for answers for my present. It was a long journey. The Lord was gracious and merciful to me and my family. Along the way, the Lord revealed a strange thing about my lineage. It was shocking. It was shameful. The Lord revealed that my heritage was raising children in fatherless homes. Four generations of children had been raised in homes with no father. Shocking! Well, that’s what my book, A Father Takes All – is about. I was hoping to get it wrapped up by Dec 1, but it took until February to get it all nice and neat. 

The questions that beg for answers are what makes a good father and who trains men to be fathers? Certainly we have a nation of absent fathers. We know that children are growing up in fatherless homes. I call it fathers-missing in action (F-MIA) – or fathers – prisoners of wantonness (F-POW). As the year comes to close, the next three months, I will share a bit about what I learned in writing my book and the generational trends that can occur when fathers walkaway. Meanwhile, the link below is an article by Dr. James Dobson “Murder and Mayhem what’s going on out there.” It’s his take on men and mass shootings. Take a read. 

Dr James Dobson September Newsletter

Be Blessed.