If the word Father catches in your throat, you do not have to force it out before you are allowed to pray. You can bring the wound to God exactly where it sits today, using the words you can honestly say. This guide follows a path that Dr. Esau McCaulley, who teaches at Wheaton College, describes from his own life. First you survive the wound. Then, slowly, it loses its grip. And sometimes, though not always, you become able to speak it for the good of others. None of those steps asks you to call what happened to you good.
You can use this guide alone over a week, with a notebook and a Bible open to Genesis and Psalm 13. You can also use it with a small group of people you trust. Either way, go slowly. Some sections will ask you to look at a passage. Others will ask you to notice something in yourself. You can skip anything you are not ready for.
Before you begin
McCaulley’s father struggled with drug addiction and could turn violent. McCaulley says plainly that he was physically abused as a child. He also describes what made it confusing. His father was sometimes kind and sometimes dangerous, and the child kept hoping for the kind one. In his words, “what you actually have in your life then is this longing for something.” That longing is often what makes the word Father hurt. It names what you wanted and did not receive.
He is also honest that many people with a story like his end up unable to trust God. His own experience went the other way. When he prayed as a boy, he found that someone was there. This guide does not promise you that experience, and it will not tell you how you ought to feel. It offers a way to be honest with God about the wound, at whatever stage you are in.
One ground rule comes from McCaulley himself: “you can face your trauma because you know that God is greater than your trauma, but you still have to face it.” Right belief about God steadies you. It does not carry you around the hard part. That is why this guide asks you to notice and to grieve, and not only to agree with true statements.
If you are still living with someone who hurts you, your safety comes before any part of this study. In the United States, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233. If you are in immediate danger, call emergency services. If this material opens something too heavy to hold alone, bring in a counselor or a pastor you trust. Seeking that help is not a failure of faith. God works through trained counselors, and caring for your mind is part of caring for the life he gave you.
When the word itself hurts
Start with a prayer that does not tidy itself up. Read Psalm 13 aloud, all six verses. It opens this way: “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” (Psalm 13:1).
Notice three things. First, the psalm is a prayer. The complaint is spoken to God, not about him. Second, it asks “how long” four times before it reaches any word of trust. Third, the turn in verse 5 does not cancel the earlier verses: “But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.” The writer can only arrive there after saying the hard part out loud. Psalm 13 is poetry. It gives words for lament. It does not set a timetable for how quickly lament has to end.
Notice too what the psalm calls God. It uses “O LORD” and “O LORD my God.” Scripture gives many names for God. If Father is the word that flinches in you right now, you may begin with another name the Bible gives him. Jesus does teach his followers to say Father. That word does not have to be ripped back from you in a single day. Many people find it returns slowly, as they learn who God is apart from the man who raised them.
Try this: Write a short prayer to God in the shape of Psalm 13. Use the name for God you can say honestly. Include at least one “how long” of your own. You do not need to end with verse 5 yet. Ending with a question is allowed.
First ground: I survived it
McCaulley describes a first kind of testimony that is simply survival. You do not tell anyone. You only know you are still here. He says this stage means the story still has a hold on you: “You can’t talk about it without, like, being overcome.”
He does not treat that stage as shameful, and he does not treat it as a single step everyone finishes once. He notes that “different traumas play different places in your life.” One wound may be behind you while another is still raw. He also says becoming a Christian does not mean you face everything at once: “The life with God is a unfolding reality over time, where as you mature, you get more and more courage.”
McCaulley finds this first stage in Joseph. Read Genesis 40:14-15. Joseph is in prison, and he explains himself to Pharaoh’s cupbearer: “For indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews: and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon” (Genesis 40:15). Look at what he leaves out. He never mentions who sold him. McCaulley reads that silence as a man not yet ready for that part of his own story. That is a reading of the narrative, but the text supports the observation that the brothers are missing.
Observe: What is the most you can say right now about your father wound without being overcome? Write only that much. If it is one sentence, or one word, that is where you are. Survival is real ground.
Middle ground: when the grip loosens
McCaulley describes a second place. You learn to face the trauma and feel the pain of it. “It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, but it no longer paralyzes you.” His image for this stage is a place left wild: “I think of my past as like this wilderness.” And then: “piece by piece, the Spirit of God is slowly reclaiming parts of the narrative.”
Pay attention to the word parts. McCaulley says his memoir is not his whole life. It contains the stories he has gained hold of. “There’s still stuff that God is working with in my life.” Even a scholar who has written a book about his father does not claim the work is finished.
Joseph’s story shows this middle ground too. Read Genesis 41:50-52. When his first son is born, Joseph names him Manasseh: “For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house” (Genesis 41:51). That sounds like a man who has moved on. Now read Genesis 42:21-24, 43:29-31 and 45:1-2. When his brothers stand in front of him, Joseph turns away and weeps. Later he goes into a private room to weep. Finally he weeps so loudly that people outside hear him.
Read together, those passages suggest something honest about loosening. The grip had eased enough for Joseph to build a life, marry and name his children with gratitude. The memory had not disappeared. When the wound walked into the room, the tears came. The Bible does not present those tears as a relapse or a failure. Loosening does not mean forgetting. It means the wound no longer runs everything.
Observe: Is there one part of your story that has loosened even a little? It might be a memory you can now recall without your whole day going dark. It might be a holiday that hurts less than it used to. Name it if you can. Then name one part that still feels like untouched wilderness. You do not have to do anything with the second one yet.
Far ground: speaking it for good, if that is given
The third place McCaulley describes is the one people most often push others toward too quickly. Here a person holds their story so firmly that it can become a testimony spoken to help others. McCaulley insists this is a grace and not a requirement: “if you can’t talk about it, it’s not a spiritual failure.” He goes further: “Some things that you just may never talk about may be between you and the Lord until you return.” Of survivors who do speak publicly, he says, “That’s not your call if God didn’t call you to it.”
Read Genesis 50:15-21. After their father dies, the brothers fear revenge. Joseph answers: “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Genesis 50:20). The first half of that sentence matters as much as the second. Joseph does not say the evil was secretly good. He names it as their evil. McCaulley’s comment is simple: “He doesn’t minimize the trauma.” When he speaks of survivors whose stories now help others, he adds, “It doesn’t normalize it, it doesn’t make it right”.
Joseph’s sentence also takes years to arrive. It comes after prison, after Manasseh, after weeping in a private room. Genesis does not hurry him to it, and you do not have to hurry either.
McCaulley offers one more honest caution, about himself. He used to preach about his father when he was young. Looking back, he says, “I wasn’t ready to talk about the things that had happened in my childhood.” He describes some of those early sermons as “I was venting in front of the public.” He admits part of him was trying to get back at the man who hurt him. He does not say this to shame anyone. He says outright, “I’m not gonna tell some traumatized person that they’re processing their trauma in the wrong way.” His point is that speaking a story does not always mean the story has healed. The third stage is less about telling and more about the wound no longer needing to win.
A practice for the week: three pages
Take three blank pages. Title them Survived, Loosening and Mine to Speak. Over the next several days, return to them for ten minutes at a time.
- On the Survived page, list parts of your father wound you can only name, not yet explore. Short phrases are enough. After each one, write a single line to God about it. Psalm 13 can give you words.
- On the Loosening page, write any part that hurts less than it once did. Beside it, note what helped, if you know. Maybe it was time, a friend, a counselor, a season of prayer. This page is for noticing, not for proving progress.
- Leave the Mine to Speak page blank if that is honest. If something belongs there, write who it might help someday, and what you would need in order to say it safely.
These pages are private. No one needs to read them, including a group leader. At the end of the week, look at where most of your words landed. Wherever that is, it tells you where you are. It does not tell you what you are worth.
Questions to talk through
Answer only what you choose to. Passing is always welcome.
- Before you ever heard a sermon, what did your home teach you the word father meant? Which of those lessons still shows up when you pray?
- Psalm 13 complains to God before it trusts him. What would change in your prayers if you believed complaint addressed to God is a form of faith?
- McCaulley says faith gives you the courage to face a wound, but you still have to face it. Where have you hoped that knowing more about God would carry you around something you needed to grieve?
- Joseph names a son forgetting and later weeps when his brothers appear. How do you read the relationship between those two moments?
- In Genesis 50:20, Joseph holds two statements together: you meant evil, and God meant good. Which half is harder for you to say, and why?
- McCaulley says that if you never talk publicly about your wound, it is not a spiritual failure. Has anyone ever pressured you to make your pain into a testimony before you were ready? What did that do?
If you are leading a group
Say at the start that no one has to share anything, and that silence is a full answer. Agree aloud that what is said in the room stays there. Expect that someone present carries a wound like McCaulley’s, whether or not they speak.
Resist the urge to move people forward. A comforting verse offered too early can sound like a request to stop hurting. Do not suggest that anyone should forgive on a schedule, renew contact with a parent, or reconcile with someone who is still unsafe. If someone discloses ongoing abuse, take it seriously, stay with them, and help them reach real help, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. If anyone mentions thoughts of suicide or self-harm, stay with them and help them contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, by call or text, or emergency services if the danger is immediate. Keep one or two local counseling referrals on hand before you meet.
Watch how the group describes absent or abusive parents too. McCaulley says hurting people “are, no matter what they say and what they do, are worthy of our compassion and our love and our care in how we describe them and interact with them.” That applies to the members of your group as they speak. It also means a person’s anger at their father does not need correcting in the moment.
Carrying it forward
Joseph’s road ran from silence in a prison, through tears in a private room, to a sentence that named evil and still saw God at work. Yours may not follow the same route, and it does not need to reach the end this month. For now, the honest question is narrower. Which page holds most of your words today, and what would it mean to bring that page to God just as it is?