Daddy Please Don't Go: Our Lives Without Him

By Elvis Burrows

The book was written based on the authors personal experience of having to grow up without the involvement of a loving and caring father who was involved. It dis uses some of the negative implications of not having a caring and involved father as well of prescribing some of the ways fathers can stay connected Ted to their children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Primix Publishing
• Release date: Feb 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781955177795

Elvis Burrows

The author, Elvis Burrows is a senior pastor of a church in Freeport, Bahamas. But he is also engaged in counseling married couples as well as preparing persons for marriage. He is a well sought after teacher / preacher as well as a popular conference speaker.

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© 2022 Elvis Burrows. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by Primix Publishing 02/28/2022

ISBN: 978-1-955177-78-8(sc)

ISBN: 978-1-955177-79-5(e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021925199

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by iStock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © iStock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgement

Foreword

Fatherless Homes: It is for Real

Understanding Fatherhood

What Happened?

Daddy, We Need You

It Just Didn’t Feel Right: My Personal Experience

Dad Left Us: The Adult Children Speak

The Impact of Dad’s Leaving

The Fatherless Child Got Married

Time to Move On: Releasing the Pain

Connecting: Your Path to Healing & Wholeness

Making It Happen

Breaking the Curse – Reaching Beyond Ourselves

Reference List

Articles

Dedicated to the many persons, particularly the men and boys who had to live without the involvement of a loving and caring father, yet found the strength and courage to rise above the negative consequences associated with this unfortunate phenomenon.

Acknowledgement

The greatest gift that we can offer anyone is certainly the gift of love. After all, that is what a loving God gave to us, the gift of His only Son, Jesus Christ. So, I wish at the very outset to declare publicly that it was the love and goodness of God that sustained me up to this point. Whatever success I might have gained to date, it was because of God’s love, grace, and mercy toward me. For this, I give Him all the praise and all the glory.

I must also add that writing this book has been a real challenge for me, both personally and professionally. However, having the love and support of those closest to me provided the necessary encouragement and motivation that helped to propel me to the point that I am today. The very nature of the work presupposes that it would have been difficult, if at all possible to complete it without the assistance of some very special people. While I am grateful to my children for their continued input and critique; words alone cannot express the depth of my love and appreciation for the support I received from my wife Stephanie. She never ceased believing in me and has gone beyond the call of duty to ensure that I got done with this project in a timely manner.

But I realize that I cannot thank everyone by name; however, I do wish to personally thank the many persons who allowed me to interview them for this book. Because of our confidentiality agreement, they must forever remain nameless. I am blessed to have had Rev. Dr. J. Emmett Weir as one who gave good advice, shared his experiences, and also provided invaluable insights and honest critique of my manuscript. I must also thank Jada Russell who worked hard on the design for the front cover, as well as the Tynes family who graciously consented to having their son T’Kaeo as the little sad boy on the cover photo. Shan, your photography skills captured exactly what I was looking for. Last, but not least, I owe a debt of gratitude to the kind and patient staff at Westwood Books Publishing. They stuck with me despite missed deadlines and the many changes I made along the way with this project. I wish to thank in a special way, Eric Straford and Jane Miles who went beyond the call of duty. Thanks.

So, once again, whoever you are, and whatever role you may have played in making this project a reality, please know that you are valued and appreciated.

Foreword

Nutrients. Nothing is more essential for life on this magnificent hungry planet. Whether a towering redwood tree in historic Muir Woods, a rare bonefish off Grand Bahama Island, a red kangaroo in the Australian Outback, or a lowly flower in your backyard, each depends on the nutrients in its surroundings for its very life. If you do not believe this, try and transplant any one of these (including the flower in your backyard) to another environment and watch it struggle to survive. The kangaroos so plentiful in the Red Centre of Australia, let’s just say they would fail to flourish in the Bahamas. And that wily and remarkably resilient bonefish, remove it from a special mix of saltwater and its unique nutrients and survival would be all but impossible. Every form of life on this earth requires nutrients, including humans. Nutrients give us energy. Nutrients are essential for body structures like bones and muscles, organs and teeth to grow and be healthy. They help regulate body functions like temperature and blood pressure. And that flower in your backyard? Essential nutrients make it thrive and bloom! Many times, these rich sources of nutrition are all but invisible. But just because they can not be seen with the naked eye doesn’t mean that they aren’t absolutely crucial to healthy plant, animal, or human life.

Nothing is more nutritive to the life of a boy or girl than a father who is physically, emotionally and spiritually engaged. The invisible nutrients that pass between a father and his children, while incalculable, are vast in scope and readily demonstrable through the life cycle. Take away a father through physical absence or abandonment, through emotional detachment or narcissistic self-preoccupation and, just like a flower in an arid soil, you’ll find children that will simply have a harder time blooming. In the eyes of God, fathers are meant to be an essential nutrient in the life of every child. When this does not happen, there are often consequences that may cascade through life. Simply put, much of our self-esteem is mirrored into us through the relationships we have with our mothers and fathers. And much of what we learn about love and work is learned through observation and imitation. Even our sense of an unseen God as a wise and loving Father is powerfully impacted by our relationship with the father that we can or cannot see. And yet, if one looks at the statistics, some 40% of all children in the United States alone grow up without a father in the home. This does not count the kids who would say that their father was physically present but either emotionally absent or abusive. So if you are reading this book and have had such a father, you need to know that you are not alone! If you have struggled with the powerful feelings that come with a father who has dropped the ball, this book is for you.

Dr. Elvis Burrows knows the deep longings and pain that comes with fatherlessness. He has not just studied it; he has lived it. The son of a father whom he has never met, Elvis Burrows writes with honesty and transparency about his own journey from hurt and shame to grace, forgiveness and hope. He is a seasoned pastor who has served since 2006 as the senior pastor at the Central Zion Baptist Church in Eight Mile Rock in Grand Bahama, Bahamas. He holds advanced degrees in pastoral care and counseling and family studies and is a practicing marriage and family counselor. But what impressed me from the first time I met Elvis when I served as a professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was his commitment to his wife Stephanie and their six children. While I would come to understand over time his deep desire to serve as a wounded healer to others, early on I would have never known that this graceful, wise, and good humored Christian brother was giving to his wife and children a husbandly and fatherly gift that he’d never received, at least not from his earthly father. My point is simply this—Elvis Burrows knows this journey of fatherlessness. He has lived it. And out of the soil of his pain he has created with God’s help a healing map that will help you to transcend your woundedness, recognize how you can give what you never received, and become all that God would have you to be. If you have ever longed for more than your father was able or willing to give, or if you’ve experienced the remorse of realizing you were that father, Elvis Burrows has a wise and hopeful word for you. You are not alone. There is still time. There are still choices to be made. The Heavenly Father has nutrients for your soul.

Dr. Scott Wigginton

Professor of Pastoral Ministries & Counseling, Campbellsville University Director, Lighthouse Counseling Center, Campbellsville Baptist Church

Chapter 1

Fatherless Homes: It is for Real

A home without the active involvement or physical presence of a father is not a new phenomenon in today’s society.

It is for real. Research by experts in the field of marriage and family reveal that at the turn of the century, close to half of all American children under the age of eighteen were living in homes where the father was absent. In fact, the research suggests that in any given year, more than one third of those children do not have any kind of connection or interaction with their fathers or even see them at all. Even though this author does not have current statistics for the Bahamas, his home country, the assumption may prove that this trend is similar here as well as in many other countries in this hemisphere.

Research after research carried out on this subject reveals that the majority of those interviewed believe that the most significant family or social problem facing families today is the physical absence of the father from the home. It is often looked at as one of the greatest national tragedies of our times. Additionally, information from the men’s movement also acknowledges that fatherlessness is a real problem that is not about to go away anytime soon. Research is telling us that non-marital births and divorce are the two leading causes of father absence, and those numbers have now exceeded more than eighty percent of the total number of all fatherless homes. Additionally, many millions more children find themselves living with disconnected, neglectful, and sometimes even abusive fathers who are emotionally absent, even though they may be living at home with the family.

In a home where the father is absent or uninvolved, that situation poses many challenges for the children as well as the mother (more would be said in another chapter on this matter). While the problem of father absence appears to be multifaceted, it often manifests itself in two main ways: those who never had a father, and those who had, but lost their father. In the case of the latter, the child experiences a real sense of loss.

On the other hand, there are children who once had but subsequently lost a father, and, in this case, the child still identifies this act of abandonment with a real sense of loss.

But whatever the reason for a father’s lack of involvement in the life of a child, the problem of fatherlessness appears to be a real problem and a national epidemic that affects children everywhere. As was