Your relationship with your dad can affect how you see your heavenly father

‘Our earthly dads will let us down, they may have abandoned us, failed to protect us or been abusive. When that’s the case, it’s very difficult not to perceive our heavenly dad through the same lens,’ says Samantha Bailie-McMurdock.

Many of us had earthly fathers who were undemonstrative or provided conditional love. Growing up in a home where my dad exhibited affection only when I’d achieved a significant goal, I never felt that true security that unconditional love affords. I forgive him and looking back, now he’s passed away 12 months, I recognise he had his own difficulties. Nonetheless, it has left me with ‘daddy issues’ but not in the quintessential, psychological sense caricatured in movies where the ‘needy’ female seeks validation from older men. No, my ‘daddy issue’ was that I couldn’t comprehend the father’s love - and by that I mean God’s love. I couldn’t fathom it.