In this episode you’re going to hear the powerful story of a woman who was rejected by her father and learn her pathway to finding healing and forgiveness as well as finding her identity and purpose. She will also share some gold nuggets that will not just help you be an amazing dad but build a legacy too.

Lisa Schafer is a podcaster, author and the founder of Christian Drama Queen Solutions. She’s also an entrepreneur of several businesses.

My website and blog: www.christiandramaqueen.com

My podcast: The Chronicles of the Christian Drama Queen available on most podcasting platforms or https://www.buzzsprout.com/2181999

Free resources and joining my email list: https://freedom.christiandramaqueen.com/

Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/lisacarringtonschafer

 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thechristiandramaqueen/

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@christiandramaqueen

Email: lisa@christiandramaqueen if you’d like to buy a spiral bound copy of the following books available on Amazon:

Discarded: a daughter’s journey to reclaim freedom and forgive the father that left her behind

https://amzn.to/41j5QCw

The Christian Victims Guide to Forgiving the Unforgivable: A Biblical Journey to Break the Bondage of Bitterness

https://amzn.to/4i2MozB

Special thanks to Smile Online Course & Books for sponsoring this episode. To learn more visit: https://thefatherhoodchallenge--smileteenskills.thrivecart.com/social-career-skills-accelerator/

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Transcription - What Abandonment Looks Like

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In a few moments, you're going to hear the powerful story of a woman who is rejected

by her father.

You'll also learn her pathway to finding healing and forgiveness as well as finding her

identity and purpose.

It will be an amazing journey so buckle up.

This program is made possible by financial support from Smile Online Course and Books.

Smile Online offers online courses for teens and young adults designed to help them

master social and career skills.

It matter includes customer service skills, job interviewing, electronic etiquette, and managing

stress.

For more information, visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

That's thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere,

to take great pride in their role and a challenge society to understand how important fathers

are to the stability and culture of their family's environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

Greetings everyone.

Thank you so much for joining me.

I've asked Lisa Schaefer to join me and share her story with me.

Lisa is a podcaster and the founder of Christian Drama Queen Solutions.

She's also an entrepreneur of several businesses, so she's quite busy.

Lisa, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge.

Oh, I'm so glad to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Lisa, let's start with your story.

Take us into your childhood and from there, your journey to finding forgiveness as well

as your identity and purpose.

Well, I was raised by my mom primarily most all my life.

My father left us when I was almost two years old.

He was a country musician and so he was just given to a lot of excesses back then in the

'60s because that's when I was born.

It was real common for these entertainers to be deeply involved in drugs and alcohol

and flandering and all of that.

And he was just no exception.

And so I think my mom being very innocent, she was a beautiful woman.

But she was very young and gullible and she thought I think that she could love enough for

them both and it just didn't work out that way.

And when he began to get violent with her and began to abuse me physically, she said that's

it.

And so they got divorced.

I never had a dad.

I was probably 16 years old by the time my mom married a man that thought he could be

a father to me.

But most of my experiences with the men in her life were really poor.

And so I spent most of my teenage years realizing that moms and dads actually come to the kids

events at school and kids events at church and he was never there for that.

And in fact, it wasn't even that he wasn't there.

He was not in any way shape or form interested in having a relationship with me.

He never sent me a card or a letter.

You know, exactly where it was, my mom was very good about just kind of making sure that

my grandparents on that side of the family knew where I was.

They never acted like they wanted to have anything to do with me either.

So evidently that kind of neglect and discarding just ran in the family.

And so by the time I hit those teen years and all the hormones kicked in, I was looking

for love in all the wrong places.

And I spent most of my mid to late teens and very, very early 20s trying to develop relationships

with all the wrong people.

And my self worth and my value and all of that was impacted by him not being around.

Later in life, I was probably 26 or 27.

I tried to reestablish a relationship with him thinking that, you know, I had some sort

of romantic idea that he would have a good excuse for not being a part of my life and not

being around.

And there was nothing.

He was the same liar.

He was the same philanderer.

He was the same abuser.

Nothing had changed.

And even when we got to a place later on where, you know, I was the oldest daughter and

therefore contacted when he became ill, he still had the audacity to say he had never

regrets for the things that had happened or really had not ever really happened in our

relationship.

And yeah, he just, he had no interest.

Oddly enough, he fathered nine children with nine different women.

And so I have siblings all over the country.

I don't even know them all.

I've not even met them all.

But I'm quite sure that we all tell similar stories.

Some of them were given up for adoption by the groupies that he was, you know, impregnating.

And some of them, I have some relationship with.

We've actually had conversations, why not?

But he was not a father to any of us at all.

So that abandonment really played a strong role in my life.

And it's what led me to do the writing that I've done where I have to address those things

that being unloved and unwanted and unprotected and all of that that happens when there's

no daddy around to let you know your worth saving or let you know your worth protecting.

So, so that's kind of, my childhood was, you know, we were impoverished.

There was no, listen back then.

There was no force in some dad to pay child support that went, if he didn't do it, he didn't

do it.

And so my mom worked really, really hard to take care of me and my younger brother.

And she took every job she could.

She was one of those women that broke through all of those barriers, you know, she was one

of the first female insurance agents in the country back in the 70s.

She became a collector.

She picked a very difficult job, but she was really good at it.

So she went to these finance companies and made their accounts better.

And so she was always getting a promotion, which meant we always moved.

I was, you know, I think I had 14 places to live by the time I was eight years old.

So there was a lot of insecurity with that.

And yet, you know, I look back and I realized how hard she was working just to try and take

care of us.

And that was the, that's what she had to do.

So, so between the lack of, of being wanted and the lack of input and protection and the

insecurity, by the time I hit my early 20s and was getting married, I took a lot of baggage

into my relationship with my husband.

And we still do with that.

We've been married 40 years, but it's, those are some mountains that you just keep

climbing.

What do you know about your own dad's generational history?

Well I know that he had a couple of sisters and three brothers.

I know that his father and mother were not strong Christians.

They were churchgoers, but they didn't, they didn't really have a strong faith or certainly

not a strong, active, obvious faith that they were living.

But they went to church and, and in fact, when I was trying to rekindle my relationship with

my father in my late 20s and trying to make something out of nothing, he was, it was quite,

he made sure he talked about Jesus like he knew him, but his actions speak far louder than

his words.

And so he was still devoted to deception.

He would try to tell me stories about things that I knew did not happen because my mother

was there.

And she would say that, that didn't happen.

Or I was there and I remember those things.

So they're just, he just was in, he was in bondage.

And now I look back and I think, and his, his, some of his siblings dealt with drug abuse

and that sort of a thing and alcoholism.

So I think there were some of that going on in, in, in most of his, in, in a lot of his family.

But like I said, I didn't get to spend any time with them growing up.

I didn't meet my grandparents really and have any kind of conversation with them until they

were having their 60th wedding anniversary.

And I just popped in to see if my dad was there.

And, and that was all because it was in the paper.

Otherwise they would, they had no idea was, you know, they had a relationship with me.

So I didn't really know a lot about them.

But little bits and pieces have told me there was a lot of dysfunction there.

I'm not exactly sure what kind of a father, my father had.

But he seems to me to have been probably very distant and very cold.

And, and that may have been due to substance abuse.

I don't know.

I'm not certain.

But I do know that, that, that his brother, one of his brothers was also given to excess

and alcoholism.

And I also know that they were kind of, my father had a car accident when he was very young.

And I don't know that maybe that created some head trauma and brain damage or something

that maybe had impact on his mental ability to deal with fathering.

I don't know.

But I do remember that because of his close call of death, his mother was very, very careful

to spoil him.

She protected him from just about everything.

And I think he just became, you know, expectant.

He kind of had this mandate.

Everybody was supposed to cater to and watch out for him and take care of him and his issues.

Sadly, regardless of his great talent, I mean, I've been told you look on the backs of those

old country albums back in the 60s and 70s, his name is there.

He was a studio player.

But he was poor, his whole life, his whole life.

And, and I have a feeling that, that his inability to control the substance problems was part

of that.

He just never could get out of that.

What lies did you believe about God as a result of being abandoned by your dad?

How did you find the truth?

About three or four years ago, I actually came home feeling like God was calling me to write

a story.

And we, I've dealt with a lot of things in my life.

I've had infertility issues.

We adopted three children.

We were an interracial family.

We've dealt with, I mean, a homeschooled kids for 25 years.

So when I came home between all of the things that I've been experienced with and, and

even things like what my kids were going through because of their abandonment issues and

being adopted.

I thought that that's what God was calling me to write about.

But when I sat down alone with him in front of the computer, that's not the message I was

getting.

It was like I just could not start the story.

And he said to me, this, this is the story I wanted to tell.

I want you to tell them how I redeemed you from your place of bitterness and bondage

to that bitterness, to a place where you could not only forgive your father and your abusers.

But you could actually find a way to love them and love me even though I was around and

allowed those things to happen.

And it is the subject that people do not want to talk about very much because one, it's

kind of ugly and painful.

And two, sometimes when we're talking about dealing with abuse, some of our abusers have

been within the body of Christ.

Now maybe they're redeemed now and they've repented and they've got their second chance.

But they don't want to talk about this and they don't want to hear you talk about this because

they've moved on.

They've got their second chance, their redeemed.

They've walked out of the past and that's all well and good.

But for someone who's lived through abandonment and abuse, you've got to get to a place where

you can, number one, stop believing the lies that you were not really wanted because God's

proven He wants you.

Stop believing the lies that you are unloved because He's loved you from the beginning.

You have to get to a place where you get to know the character of God so much that all

of those lies are seen for what they are and they're just ways of keeping you distant

from the Father.

So what I began to do took me 40 years but I began to see God's word ministering to those

emotions of feeling unseen and feeling unprotected and trying to understand how a God who says

He loves me could allow things to happen to me that were so bad.

How do I forgive the unforgivable?

And so that process, I had to start putting down on paper.

That's where the discarded Bible study and the forgiving and forgivable Bible studies

came from walking through God's word and getting close enough to the character of God that

I could see Him as a really loving Heavenly Father because there was a huge gap.

Even after I became a Christian and was in the Word and was going to church and was becoming

friends with other believers and we were good Christian people.

We didn't smoke.

We didn't drink.

You know, I'm saying I go down a whole list of legalities.

But there was a huge disconnect between what I really believed about who God was and what

I was experiencing.

And so I had to reconcile all of that and that just meant getting deeper and deeper in

His Word and getting closer and closer to Him, trusting Him to be loving and protecting

and cherishing me and wanting me and all of that.

But there was a, you know, it finally hit me.

You know, I was thinking that was just, I was having some mental problems not getting close

to God.

And why did I feel so distant?

And it was me.

It was me believing He was like my dad.

Why you calling Heavenly Father?

Father.

It's right there in the description.

So when you only, the only experience you have with fathers is bad.

Then you kind of naturally, you keep hearing Him called Father.

You assume He is as distant and as detached and as unwanting and going to be disappointed

in what you've done.

And we just developed that really artificial relationship with Him.

I, it's the honesty of His Word in my life that changed my point of view.

And when I sat down to talk about what I was going to write, that's where He said, you

need to let people know there is a way from being in the bondage of bitterness to a place

where you can forgive others.

And because you learn how to do that, you're learning to have the mind of Christ.

So that's kind of where, how I got from there to here.

Why is it critical for dads to learn and understand their generational history, both good and bad?

What's that line?

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

You know, for my father, I can't speak for everybody else's dad.

You know, so it's like, and I'm not really sure I can speak very well for my own.

But as I look back now, because he's deceased, he passed away five or six years ago.

But as I look back, I think it really would not have mattered what he knew or didn't know

about who he was supposed to be and where he came from.

I think he had a mental, I think he had some mental illness that he just never dealt with.

It was a, it was a special kind of narcissism.

It really was.

Now, my own, I will speak on behalf of my own husband.

He knew very early on that it was important for him not to be anything like his father.

He knew how he felt, you know, he wanted, he wanted to have a home where the children

wanted to be there because he knew growing up he did not want to be there.

So he had his own, you know, he had his own generational history that he had to deal with

and to get past.

And he would, I think he would say for him, once you know that you're supposed to have

this relationship with God that's authentic and forgiving and redemptive, you want to create

a place in your own home where your children want to long for that.

But if they didn't see it in their own father or grandfather or great grandfather, they're

not going to develop.

And I think he felt responsible for presenting this authentic life as a believer, which was

just something he never saw.

Now, oddly enough, he does have men in his life that stepped up when he was younger and

he realized, okay, that's what dads are supposed to look like.

Not what my dad looks like.

And I think that unless, you know, it is real important for men to know from when they came,

so to speak.

But if they're not open to the idea, I think that God, the Spirit gives them that guidance

and says, you need to long for something better than what you saw if what they saw was a

poor representation.

It just took me a long time to realize that not all daddies were like my daddy, including

God.

He was not like my daddy, but it took a long time.

It took a long time.

And it took a lot of, you know, there's just guilt and shame attached to victimization.

There's guilt and shame attached to being a bound.

And you think you did something wrong.

Eventually, you have to take your eyes off of you and look at him and realize who he really

is based on his word.

But I'm not sure if you're not open, it's going to matter.

And that's something God has to do within you.

There's a guest I've had on his name is Chris Bruno and he used the analogy of a generational

train knowing what's on the train, knowing who's on the train.

How long is that train?

What's in the cars?

How far back does it go?

And what's pulling it?

That was a critical game changer for me to understand that.

And through time and through a process where the Holy Spirit walked me through and taught

me how to forgive.

Once I got past that, I was able to go to a place where I was ready to explore the

generational components of what happened.

When I was ready to explore it, it was probably one of the most healthy experiences for me

because I came to realize what I was up against in my own personal life and my own development.

I cannot recommend there be enough.

But that was a game changer for me for understanding what I was likely to do if I didn't become

aware of it and stop it and seek God for an intervention.

If you could go back to when your dad was alive, what could your dad have said to you or

done for you that would have made you feel valued and loved?

Well, I will tell you, you might be the first interviewer that makes me cry.

You might be the first one because nobody's asked me that.

When we got to the place where my dad was dying and he was on hospice care and there

was a nurse in his house all the time taking care of me.

I was called to come and see him about just every few days because of course we were getting

to that place where they were saying, "Okay, it's probably almost time.

If you want to see him come now."

Then he'd rally and he'd get better and then he'd get bad again.

One day, I had it in my head that I would just spring a visit on him.

I would just go in and when I got there, I found him naked on his bed with no sheets,

wearing an adult diaper, no blankets, air conditioning cranked up because it was August and it

was hot.

No one was there with him.

He was left there and he was shivering.

I will tell you, I had been a caregiver, worked in medical profession for almost 30 years

by then and I was floored.

I rang up a friend of mine, she lived about 20 miles away and I said, "Please come because

he's a big man.

I can't do this by myself.

I need some help."

She dropped everything she was doing, God love her and she showed up and she helped me put sheets

on the bed and make sure he was clean and getting covered up and turned down the AC and all

of that stuff.

I had some genuine sympathy for him at that moment.

I made arrangements for a nurse to come.

I made arrangements for someone else to show up another family member to come and make

sure that someone showed up from the nursing facility or wherever the hospice center.

I was probably two or three hours that I was there and then I got my car.

There was a huge struggle within me and I write about this in my book.

There was this huge struggle because I felt such great pity for him at that moment and

immense anger.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, "Why didn't you want me?"

If he had ever shown and said to me, "Well, I did want you, but if he had had an explanation,

but just acknowledged that he wanted me, I think I would have been able to deal with that.

I think if he had said, "Well, I really wanted to take care of you, but I never had the finances

or I really wanted to see you more often, but I was working on an oil rig in the ocean."

I mean, I would have taken almost any explanation if he had just acknowledged that he wanted

me.

But I knew that was not the case and I knew that based on the lives of nine other siblings,

it was not the case.

They did not have relationship with him.

He had never been a father to them either.

I think every child, and I know for daughters with daddies, that if those fathers do not express

the daughters need to be protected and that they're willing to take that security on.

If they don't say to them, "You are worth preserving, protecting, watching over.

I'll fight for you."

I can remember time when I was nine or ten years old and I just had the tar bead out of

me by some big kid on the school bus.

My mother was living and of course she did everything she could when she found out that this had

happened and so did the teachers and guess what?

The kid never rode the bus again.

But I remember distinctly thinking if my dad had been here, he could have protected me.

Of course he wasn't.

He never was.

If he had just said to me, "I really did want you."

But unfortunately, clear up to the last lucid conversation I had with him, he was still

saying things like, "Well, you know, I've lived a weird life, but I've got no regrets."

I was like, "Really?

You've got no regrets?

Not what you can't say just one time.

I wish I had more to do with your life."

It took a lot of me convincing myself that he missed out.

I was a good kid for the most part.

I was in junior miss.

I was in performing arts.

I got scholarships to art schools.

You know, there was all these good things in my life and the only thing I really wanted

was a dad.

But it took me a long time to realize he was the one that missed out by not wanting to

be a part of my life because for the longest time, it was all, I thought I was missing out

on having a father.

Obviously I was, but that was having far greater impact than the truth that he was really

the one missing out on our relationship.

What lies did you believe about yourself and how did God reveal what was true about you?

Of course, I believed all of the things that I've written about.

I was unloved, unwanted, uncharish, undesirable, unworthy, unprotected, unseen, all of those things.

I believed all of that to be true.

And I didn't, you know, I know some people have experiences where the Holy Spirit hits

them on the head and all of a sudden they believe all the truths and they're good.

I didn't, that didn't happen to me.

I was sitting in a service one day after we had started going to church as a married couple

of my husband and I.

And it was a father's day sermon.

And at the time my husband and I were dealing with infertility.

So we didn't have children.

Fathers day services were hard for both of us because his father committed suicide when he

was young and my father was just not around.

So we didn't have good experiences with dads.

And so I was sitting in this father's day service and it was the first time I'd ever heard

this verse about God being the father to the fatherless and it zoned in on my heart.

It was like, I know you don't believe it because you haven't seen it and I know you're mad

at me because you were molested when you were four.

And I know you don't think that I can forgive you even though I keep telling you as far as

the east is from the west.

That's how far your transgressions have been removed from me.

I know you don't believe that but I am telling you you've never been fatherless because

I have been your father.

And that's when my journey started to really get clarification about who he was and

what he really saw in me.

And so the lies and believe me when you have 40 or 50 or 60 years worth of history being

a discarded daughter or an abuse victim, you don't get over those emotions just because God

all of a sudden says you should.

They revisit.

So I know I'm loved but I still have days when I don't feel very loved and I know I'm

seen but there are times when I think he didn't see what happened to me.

You know, there are, you know, this is just part of the growth process for you to have two

steps forward and one step back in those areas.

That's just normal.

And you can't carry the guilt of not accepting everything all at once like a hurricane.

You know, like there was no tidal wave of truth that swept over me and man, I just soaked

it all up.

And now I'm walking with Jesus loved and precious and cherished and worthy and all of that stuff.

It didn't happen to me that way.

It took time for me to see God's word applied to all of those lies and my life.

So that sermon started it for me.

That, listen, he really is the father to the fatherless and understanding I was never without

him.

I just thought I was without him.

That's kind of what's that that set me off on the journey of battling all the untruths.

How can listeners reach out to you, learn more or listen to your podcast?

My Bible studies are available on Amazon.

Discarded, a daughter's journey to reclaim freedom and forgive the father who left her behind,

which is a very long title and my writing coach said you really want to shorten that, but

I haven't done it.

And the other one is called the Christian Victims Guide to forgiving the unforgivable.

There's also a planner on Amazon that let that you walk in the word and memorize scripture

as you go through the studies, but they're undated so you can use them whenever.

So those are all available there, but what I tell people, shoot me an email.

Lisa at Christian drama queen.com.

Lisa at Christian drama queen.com.

You can buy those all of those books for me and I'll spyro bind them for you.

People can ask me there or they can go.

My podcast is available on, on almost all podcasts platforms.

It's called the Chronicles of the Christian drama queen.

And of course, I have a website, Christian drama queen.com that they could go to.

There's even some free assessment tools there where they can find out.

Maybe they think they've dealt with all that bitterness, but if they've got some certain

behaviors, rage that seems uncontrollable or self-doubt or the need to finish every

argument with resolution, never being able to walk away from an argument having to

be right.

All the time, there are just several things that are kind of part and parcel to being someone

who's still bitter.

And so that assessment's free and it's available if they go to the Christian drama queen website.

And of course, you can find me on YouTube if you just want to see where this gorgeous voice

is coming from.

You just go to YouTube and you look up Christian drama queen and you'll find my podcasts

there.

So I have a video for pretty much all of my podcasts, audios.

So.

Just to make things easier if you go to the fatherhoodchallenge.com, that's the fatherhoodchallenge.com.

If you go to this episode, look right below the episode description and I will have all

of the links posted there for convenience.

Lisa, as we close, what is your challenge to dad's listening now?

Daughters are born and built with a deep seeded need for fathering, parenting, yes, but not

just parenting, fathering.

Daughters that see them as the priceless, precious, jewel and princess that they really are.

And if that is not taught to them, the world is going to teach her enough that she's not

good enough, that she's not the beautiful, that she's not precious to God because there's

a daddy-sized hole in every daughter's heart.

It's up to our daddies to make us feel like we're precious princesses.

Lisa, it has been an honor having you on the fatherhoodchallenge.

This has been a very, very important conversation that I wanted this audience to hear and you

were the perfect person to deliver that message.

Thank you so much for that.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

I really appreciate it, I do.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Fatherhood Challenge.

If you would like to contact us, listen to other episodes, find any resource mentioned in

this program or find out more information about the fatherhoodchallenge.com.

Please visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

That's TheFatherhoodChallenge.com.

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