“Oh, you see that skin? It’s the same she’s been standing in since the day she saw him walking away. Now she’s left cleaning up the mess he made. So fathers, be good to your daughters, daughters will love like you do…” These few lines are from the song “Daughters” by John Mayer. In 2005, it won Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards. When appearing on the VH1 show Storytellers in 2011, Mayer had this to say about the song, “I loved a girl a lot, but she couldn’t trust men. And if you trace it back, it was the first man in her life she couldn’t trust…it really is the result of tracing it backwards to find out how I could possibly love this person. And the answer is: you can’t. Because someone else didn’t before you.”
You may have seen or heard of the tragedies that have unfolded in a woman’s life because of the damage done by an absent father figure. These women have the power to overcome the physical or emotional unavailability of the father, but it is usually not until after some damage has been done to skew the girl’s view of self, love, men and emotional relationships.
Our self-image can begin to define thinking patterns about how we are perceived and how we relate or “should” relate to others. With this image, we begin to create the boundaries of what we think we are capable. We need to convey to our daughters that they are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psa. 139:14) and that, “God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline” (2 Tim. 1:7). We must admire her for who she is and praise her for what she has done. We must not focus on the things that she is powerless to change such as appearance and physical attributes.
Real love is not achieved by looking good enough to gain the attention of others. Real love is modeled in how we treat one another. A girl’s concept of love and how to be loved will start with the father figure. If he is modeling the love shown by God (1 John 3:16-18; 1 Cor. 13:4-8a), then a healthy concept can be formed. God has exemplified unconditional love toward us. The apostle John says in this passage that talk is cheap. Model the kind of love she should expect in a healthy relationship, and she will gravitate toward those who are doing the same.
The most important relationship anyone can have is with God the Father. This too can be helped or hindered by the father figure. It is a tragic thing to cause a child to stumble in their concept of God (Matt. 18:6). Take heed, fathers, that the actions you take towards your daughter are those that would build her up and set her on a path to love God and to be loved by her future husband, because daughters will love like you do.