Donald Miller's "Father Fiction"

Donald Miller, author of "Blue Like Jazz," has a new book out, "Father Fiction" and was a guest on the Diane Rehm Show today. I loved the interview, in which the author shares the discoveries he's made about his own fatherlessness and the choice to rise above its pain and his efforts to help fill in the void of children today with no father in their lives. He shares with the host a principle he learned in the following story, which was also recounted on his blog. The following is an excerpt from that post:

Years ago I read a book called Country of my Skull, about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. The TRC was a commission put together by Nelson Mandella to hear cases of crimes against humanity committed under apartheid. Mandella asked Bishop Desmond Tutu to head up the commission.

When asked what sort of people Tutu wanted to serve with him, he answered he wanted victims, people who knew firsthand the atrocities of apartheid, those whose lives had been ripped open, who’d lost families and loved ones. But what he said next would change my life forever. Tutu said he did not just want the victims who had stayed victims, but he wanted victims who had forgiven the guilty, who had the moral character to give of themselves when they had every right to be angry and vindictive. These people, Tutu said, are the most capable to help others heal, because they have the education of empathy, they know what pain feels like, and can guide the bitter into forgiveness and strength, and the guilty into reconciliation. He called these people wounded healers.

At the time I read that book, I was working on my own book about growing up without a father. And at the time, having to mine my own childhood, I was tempted toward bitterness. It was Bishop Tutu’s words that steered me clear of sharp rocks.

When we stay bitter, we don’t grow, and we don’t help the people around us. What God wants to do with our pain is turn it into ministry, into an empathy that will heal others. Some of the darkest seasons in your life may turn into a gift for somebody else. And if we are willing to allow our pain and hardship to be used to help others, our pain is given dignity.