I have an app on my phone that walks me through the steps of how to tie a tie. I’m grateful for that app. I downloaded it in my freshman year of college because the job I landed required me to wear one every day. I turned 31 last month….that app has been with me for nearly thirteen years—quietly faithful, always there. And my ties? They’ve always looked clean, crisp, presentable, even impressive, depending on the day.
I only knew my father on this earth for eleven of those years. We never made it to the tie lesson. Never made it to the hand-me-down wisdom that men pass on to boys in hushed, sacred moments—over mirror sinks, in car rides, in the space between football games and hard conversations. So I downloaded an app.
Children are supposed to bury their parents, but kids aren’t. Not when they’re still figuring out who they are, not when they’re still half-formed, waiting on a blueprint that never arrives. Walking through the weight of irrevocable loss while you’re still developing feels like losing a limb. You heal, sure. You go on. But you never quite walk right. You become an expert at adjusting, a professional at masking imbalance. You learn to live with absence like a second skin.
Who are you when you don’t really know your father? Sure, you know the facts; you remember the tone of his voice or the way he carried himself. You’ve seen the degrees. You wear his watch like a relic. But what did he do with his time, really? What did he believe about the world? What made him laugh from the belly? What were his regrets? What truths formed him, shaped him, made him who he was?
Those are the questions that hang in the air long after the funeral programs are folded and the cards stop coming.
So—you get an app. It gives you the steps—the blueprint. It tells you where to start, what to look for, and how to finish strong. You follow it, not just with your hands but with your heart. You make the knot neat, the dimple tight, and you pretend. You pretend you know what you’re doing. You imitate your lineage by channeling dysfunction. You cosplay stability. You move through life in borrowed manhood, unfinished, but with an app. In my case, I’ve now had the app longer than I actually had my dad.
But maybe for you, the tie isn’t a tie. Maybe your substitute came in another form. Maybe it wasn’t something you could download for 99 cents from the App Store. Maybe it was a habit. A defense mechanism. An addiction. A degree. A relationship. A persona. A paycheck. A title. A vice. Something to make up for what’s missing. Something to tend to the wound of a father you didn’t get to grow up with—or never really had to begin with.
And over time, maybe you came to see it for what it really was: a poor replacement. It worked for a while. It filled the silence. It helped you belong, helped you achieve, helped you forget. But late at night, when the noise dies down and the masks come off, you feel it—the ache of a love that’s gone. Of words you’ll never hear. Of moments you never had. Of pride that was never spoken over you.
As you mature and age, eventually, life starts making those demands of you. People, a spouse, children – needing from you what you’ve never received yourself. That’s when it gets scary. When you realize you don’t have what they need. These “apps” won’t cut it.
And it’s in that honest, soul-baring place that your heart sinks just a little. Because you’re not just grieving what was lost. You’re grieving what never was. The could’ve-beens. The never-will-bes. The imagined conversations that end in silence.
But here’s the thing.
The relationship with the man responsible for you being here might be unrecoverable (and maybe that’s the hardest pill to swallow), and the story won’t tie itself up with a bow. But the story isn’t over. Because there is someone, not something, you can invite into that space.
He’s not a myth, an idea, or a backup plan for broken families. He’s not the consolation prize for the father you never had. He’s the blueprint. The origin. The original. He’s not the God who erases your past like an Etch A Sketch; He’s the Father who redeems it like Michelangelo—seeing what’s marred and still molding it into something beautiful. He doesn’t discard your pain. He inhabits it. He doesn’t gloss over your loss. He meets you in it.
It’s not quick. It’s not a checklist. For God is a God of process.
He calls Himself “Father”—not once or twice but over 165 times in Scripture. That’s not by accident. That’s design.
The same year I downloaded that app, I also started learning to let God the Father into my heart. I knew God as Creator, yes, as King, as Lord, as Savior. I knew Him as holy, as just, as powerful, as triune. But Father? That was harder. That was personal. That was close. That was vulnerable.
Psalm 68:5 calls Him “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy dwelling.” He lives in holiness, yet He leans toward the hurting. That verse made it into the canon on purpose. Because He knew some of us would grow up without the tie lesson. Without the voice of approval. Without the solid ground of being fathered.
He knew. And so He named Himself accordingly.
In Him, we find what we’ve longed for all our lives. To be loved without performance. To be believed in when we’re unsure. To be guided when we’re directionless. To be protected when we feel exposed. To be taken care of. Even—dare I say it—to be disciplined in love, because a true father doesn’t just affirm, he shapes.
Romans 8 tells us, “You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’” (v. 15). That’s not distant God. That’s not theological God. That’s Daddy God.
And when you spend time with Him, you begin to look like him. And where you thought you’d have to pretend, to give other people what they were demanding of you, all of a sudden springs forth like a geyser of confidence. You realize, you too are His son or daughter, in whom He is well pleased.
I’m still learning to tie my tie. Still learning how to be a man. Still learning how to walk with a limp that this world doesn’t always acknowledge. But I don’t walk alone. I don’t father myself. And neither do you.
The app taught me how to tie a tie. But the Father teaches me how to wear it with dignity. Not to perform, but to become. To grow into the kind of man who doesn’t just grieve the past—but is being healed by a love that never left. Beckoning me to step into sonship.
Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has also made you also an heir.
Galatians 4:6-7
“Because we are the sons of God, we must become the sons of God.” – George MacDonald
Scripture References