You Can't Find Living Water In Dying Wells: Father Issues and Infidelity in the Christian Woman

By Lisa Marie Byrd

You've searched for love in Mark's arms. You looked for it in Darryl's bed. You thought you'd found it with Kyle. You knew for sure you struck gold with Anthony. And yet the search continues... What you're really seeking is the wholeness that comes from knowing your true value and worth. You tried to convince Thomas you were special. You believed Bob had finally realized you were a prize. You became entangled with someone else's husband because he seemed to value your uniqueness. You had an affair because he met a need that your husband wasn't meeting. You felt chosen, desired, and special...at least for a little while. Yet the search continues. Because - You Can't Find Living Water in Dying Wells.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781626758957

Book preview

Byrd

Chapter 1

My Search For Living Water

I had been married for two years before I realized how messed up I was. Like the woman at the well I was broken, empty, and hurting; trying to fill my emptiness with water from many sources. The answer to true fulfillment and contentment must be found somewhere, so I kept searching for the water to refresh and satisfy my soul…a fruitless effort. The only true answer, living water, is found in my relationship with the Lord. In His great love for me, my heart is bathed, saturated, satisfied! My thirst is only fully quenched when my mind and heart are focused on God and His will for my life.

But I had instead focused on filling the emotional void that seemed destined to consume my life. Although I had loved God since I was a girl and sought His will for my life since my teen years, I was still driven by a longing that had been planted in my childhood, and its deep roots had threatened to choke out God’s plan for my life. I didn’t know how dangerous trying to solve my problems without His help would be. It led me on a search that could have ended in disgrace and despair. But because of the Lord’s mercy, that potential end was instead just a brief stop on my journey. After that, through a long process of healing, I have come to a place of complete wholeness and peace.

Fasten your seatbelts for an intricate ride through my story.

My Father

A woman’s core self is strengthened by her interaction with her father.¹

When I was eight years old, I met my father. It was pretty strange to have this man walk into my life after nearly nine years and to consider him a father. The meeting was very awkward for both of us, as you can imagine. There was a part of me that was terribly excited at the thought of having my real father in my life, because the only father figure I’d known was the occasional sightings of my sister’s dad. I had derived all kinds of fantasies and dreams about how it would be, mostly from television and books. My sister’s father lived out-of-state so I understood distance was the reason we rarely saw him, but my father lived down the street and was just entering my life after eight years. Nevertheless, I was full of faith and trust, excited and feeling special because my dad had sought me out. This is a feeling I came to crave throughout my life…to be special, wanted, sought after.

After a disappointing year wherein my fantasy father failed to come off the pages of my mind, I began to experience feelings of rejection. I anxiously waited for phone calls that did not come, visits that never took place, and attention and affection desperately desired but seldom realized. He was in and out of my life, inconsistent and undependable. I could not understand why my own flesh-and-blood father did not want to be around me all the time like my mother was. Over the course of that year I began to develop a cool outer shell towards my father. What I really felt was pain, but I acted it out by trying to reject him with anger. Over the following years, for his birthday and at Christmastime my mother would buy him a card and make me sign it. This went on until one day during one of my many protests I asked her why she always sent a card to him when he rarely called, came by, or made any effort to see me. She said that somebody had to put forth the effort since we were family. I concluded he was the adult, not to mention the parent, and it was his job to reach out to me. His decisions caused me to be born; I didn’t ask to be his daughter. After that, I was never forced to send him any more cards. Mom always mentioned it as an option, but it was one I never chose. It was many years before I realized my father had rejected me twice: once, before he knew me and again, after he met me. The latter carried far more weight than the former and the pain penetrated much deeper, because the second time he knew me. Although I didn’t have the words at that age, the message I received was that I was flawed. There had to be something wrong with me because my father didn’t love me.

By the time I turned twelve, I found out I had four more sisters and a brother, most with different mothers. My father picked us up one day so that we could meet each other. I had always wanted to be in a large family so it was an exciting meeting and we all kept in touch afterwards. I continued to only see or hear from my father occasionally and was unaware of the roots of bitterness and resentment growing inside me towards him. I developed negative ideas about men in general, having learned early on that all they do is cause pain. The men who had come and gone in the lives of the women in my family had all put bricks and mortar on the foundation my father had laid. Selfish men…cheating men…men who leave…physically abusive men…liars…distant sperm donors who do not help raise their children; all had crossed my path through the lives of women I knew and planted or watered enduring seeds of distrust towards men.

Beginning in fifth grade, I started getting attention from boys. I was tall and had blossomed early, so I was easily noticed. I thoroughly enjoyed, and actually began to crave the attention of the opposite sex. However, I quickly learned that boys were no good, just like men, and I wasn’t about to be hurt or rejected by another male. I remained very cautious with guys through junior high school, taking none of them too seriously or letting any get too close. By the time I reached high school I had a solidly built barricade between my heart and those predators also known as men. They could look, but not touch; like, but not have. I would have fun with them, but never allowed myself to have any serious feelings towards them. My first real boyfriend came along when I was a sophomore. He lasted only one day. When he asked me to be his girlfriend, I was surprised and went into a silent panic. I wanted to say, No, but didn’t want to hurt him. So I said, Yes. Tormented by fear all that afternoon and evening, the next day I decided it was too serious for me. I freaked out emotionally and broke up with him, concluding I was much more comfortable with male friends. I went to great lengths to avoid serious relationships because I believed abandonment and pain necessarily accompanied them.

When a girl begins the ritual of dating without a father to help guide her choices, she is sure to stumble. The loss of a father…nearly guarantees personal, social, and relationship difficulties, if not failures.²

Feelings of rejection from my father became further embedded during college when I realized my youngest sister was getting all the love and attention from him that I had always longed for. He took her shopping, gave her money, faithfully attended all of her school functions and even bought her a car. He hadn’t so much as bought me a pair of socks, and he bought her a car! My defenses would not allow my subconscious to bring up the tumultuous question, "What is wrong with me that he doesn’t love me like that? Am I not worth it?" I was unable to identify or verbalize that thought until years later, but the unrecognized feeling constantly gnawed at me just below the surface. If he was a bad father across the board that would have been one thing; but he proved he had the ability to provide emotionally and financially, so it was his choice not to be there for me. Nothing had ever hurt me more deeply than that.

When I was a junior in college, my father began to call just to talk and frequently invited me over. I was thrilled! It looked like I was finally going to get the father-daughter relationship I had yearned for at my core. He took my little sister and me shopping for Christmas and bought me a dress for the first time. I even bought him a gift, his first from me since my Mom stopped making me send cards. We had a good time. College was going well, I was growing spiritually, and I was enjoying my long-awaited, Daddy. I felt more fulfilled than ever before.

I could have strangled myself for being so gullible! Once again, I had opened my heart to him only to have him break it to pieces. After a while, the phone calls waned again. And that was it! I determined I did not need him and would not give him any more chances. Oh, I had been saying for years that I didn’t need him, and had even generalized my feelings to the statement that, women don’t need men. My mother had raised my sister and me just fine by herself. My aunt had raised her daughter well by herself, and men were proving to be more trouble than they could possibly be worth. Of course, this rationale was merely a defense mechanism, a way to protect myself from further abandonment.

Deep inside I still believed God for a good husband; for a man who would be a great father. As Abraham hoped against hope, I believed, against all of my experiences, that there were faithful men in the world who took responsibility for their actions and loved their children. I believed I was going to marry such a man one day and have a happy, successful relationship that would last forever. How I was going to be able to accomplish that with my current mindset I did not know, so I stopped thinking about it and expected God to work out the details.

Arrested Development

My body grew up and my mind matured, but my emotional age was in many ways still that of an eight year old: unsecured and devastated by her father’s abandonment, trying to function at an adult level. Inside my heart there was a girl who silently and desperately longed to climb into her father’s lap and be held in his arms. I would make a lot of bad decisions later in life as a result of that emotional insecurity and longing to be held.

When no caring father’s hands are available to shape his daughter, the result is as certain to emerge askew as a bowl denied the potter’s touch before it is placed in the kiln.³

Now, I’m not sure how many of you have ever made pottery, but perhaps you have seen it being made either in person or on television. Whatever the potter places in the kiln is precisely what comes out, only hardened and fixed. Maybe your children have brought home something from art class at school that resembles a bowl or a cup. Their inexperienced hands shaped it the best they could, but when it was placed in the fire that precious creation did not suddenly become the work of a master potter. Why? Because when clay goes into the fire, ladies, it is in the same shape when it comes out. If your father’s inexperienced, inadequate, or abusive hands did not shape you correctly, did not fill in all the holes before the fires of life solidified you, then you are like the mug my daughter once made, filled with holes and unable to function as its creator intended.

I love this mug because my daughter’s hands and heart crafted it, but no one has ever been able to drink out of it. Like my daughter with this mug, your father may have had the best intentions as it pertained to forming you. Perhaps his father just didn’t teach him how to adequately show love to a child; perhaps he was mean and hateful because of his own wounds. He may have abused alcohol or drugs to avoid the magnitude of failure he saw in himself. And maybe he