Men

Adam, Where Are You? Part 1

by Janice S Ramkissoon 
02/16/23
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I read the following passage and and began to think about the journey I've been on:

‘Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid”’  (Genesis 3:8-10).

We can still see the evidence of Adam’s absence today. It leads me to the conclusion that Adam is still hiding in the garden.

Men are still missing in the garden of our homes, our churches, our communities and in society at large. Generations of leaders have been destroyed because of the enemy’s attack on our men, at infancy. Today, we are lacking effective male leadership and we are suffering for it.

Everyday I wake up I live with the many symptoms as part of the consequences of a missing father.

My husband still suffers from the lack of emotional connection with his recently departed father. He dreamed of having that emotional connection but that dream died in 2022 with his father. He grew up craving the physical involvement of his father also, for games and outings, but without it he became very good at being a lone ranger.

What he was introduced to distorted his view of marriage and parenting and it negatively affected our marriage and our partnership in parental responsibilities for a great portion of our marriage. He was robbed of that emotional connection and the direction he needed to smoothly transition into manhood. The model he had was distorted. The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10a). When we are naive to this fact,we become partners with the enemy to complete his mission of destroying the family.   

I suffer from the physical absence of my father, craving his love. Because of his absence, my mother also had to make choices that she thought was for my best but it turned out to be the worse thing for my mental and emotional well-being. She left me with her parents and I grew up not just lacking a father for my entire journey but also a mother for the majority of my childhood and teen years. Although I joined her in my latter teen years, I am still without the motherly bond I crave even today. Therefore, my husband and I are both craving the love of one or both parents.

As parents, we are now aware of the negative consequences attached to the absence of a father. Most of those negative impacts began showing up when we became parents. But our love for each other and the son we were blessed with made us seek the help we needed to help us move forward.

After two separate occasions where we needed to see a counsellor, many marriage and parenting seminars and workshops, a Baptist Expression of Marriage Encounter (BEoFME) weekend event, and hundreds of hours of on-line teaching over the years, we have survived to this point on the journey.

Yet, our desire is to thrive, not just survive.

End of Part 1 >>> Continue reading part 2

© 2023, J. S. Ramkissoon