A Father’s Tenderness

No human father has ever shown greater tenderness or consideration or sacrificial love or deep affection for his children than God has for us. Everything that God carefully measures out and allows to come into our lives must first pass through the wall of his protective love. And when he brings pain into our lives, it is only to heal us and make us more glorious in eternity. Dr. James Dobson tells of a powerful moment when he took his three-year-old son, Ryan, to a pediatrician to have his ear infection treated.

The pediatrician said that the infection had adhered itself to Ryan’s eardrum and could only be treated by pulling the scab loose with a steel instrument. Ryan began to scream with pain and terror, and his father had to hold him down on the examination table. After hearing what was needed, I swallowed hard and wrapped my 200-pound, 6-foot-2-inch frame around the toddler.

It was one of the toughest moments in my career as a parent. What made it so emotional was the horizontal mirror that Ryan was facing on the back side of the examining table. This made it possible for him to look directly at me as he screamed for mercy. I really believe I was in greater agony in that moment than my terrified little boy. . . .

Though he was screaming and couldn’t speak, he was “talking” to me with those big blue eyes. He was saying, “Daddy! Why are you doing this to me? I thought you loved me. I never thought you would do anything like this! . . . Please, please! Stop hurting me!” It was impossible to explain to Ryan that his suffering was necessary for his own good, that I was trying to help him, that it was love that required me to hold him on the table. . . . In his immature mind, I was a traitor who had callously abandoned him.