A Father’s Day Prayer

By Jenn Holden, Back2Back Mexico Staff

There are 34 children who live at the children’s home.

An inquisitive visitor asks, “Of all these kids, how many little boys have a father figure?”

The caregivers stop to count on their fingers, and they only fill one hand before they are out of names – five little boys. As I reflect on this fatherless generation, my mind races through a series of snapshots and prayers, stories of children I have served and loved over the years:

Stunned by the Question
When I picked her up from kindergarten, a classmate asks me bluntly, “Is it true that she doesn’t have a dad?”

I sit, holding this sweet 4-year-old girl, stunned by the question of her peer.

As a few seconds pass, her little voice speaks up to say what I had no words for at the time, “She’s right. I don’t have a dad.”

Oh, but she does have a Father, one who loves her unconditionally and will go to great lengths to reach her. I pray she comes to know her Daddy God, the one who runs toward her rather than walking out of her life.

Elvis’ Story
He combs my hair with his fingers and carefully puts the rubber band around the ponytail he has pulled together. I take the opportunity to tell him that someday, he could get married, and have daughters whose hair he could also comb gently into a ponytail. He could be a good dad- the one he never had.

His friends around the table begin to poke fun at the idea, but 11-year-old Elvis looks me in the eyes and says, “I actually want that. Someday, I want to get married and have a family. I want to be a dad.”

Only minutes before, we had been talking about how God can do anything when we ask Him- even fulfilling great and even impossible dreams.

Oh, that this sweet boy would experience the Father’s deep love so that he can someday reflect it to his own children through ponytails and words of affirmation. I pray that he would come to know his Daddy God, and as a result, choose to run towards his future family rather than walking out of their lives.

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling.
God sets the lonely in families”
-Psalm 68:5-6

Jenn Holden is living out her God-given dream in Monterrey, Mexico, serving orphan and vulnerable children with Back2Back Ministries.