Ashley, Johnathon and James, I wanted to write you this letter to let you know how very sorry I am that I could not have been a better Daddy to you all.  Hear me out please.  I have chosen to make this a public letter in order to encourage reconciliation among parents and children, but this does not change the sincerity in which I write this letter to you. Over the past few years I have grown up a bit and have changed quite a bit from the Father you once knew as children into who I am today.  It happens.  As we experience life we have to either change and conform to our new understandings of the world or remain stubborn and fixated on some old idea or past that does not really work in reality. I often have wished upon wish that I could go back, and that the 45 year-old version of myself could somehow go to the 20 year old version of myself and say “Stop!”  “You don’t know what you are doing.”  “This is not Jesus, but something altogether different.” “You are hurting your children.”  “Stop.”  And I have to also wonder that, even if this modern miracle could occur and I was face-to-face with an older version of myself back then, if I would have really listened to him.  I pretty much thought I knew it all back then. When I became your Daddy I was stuck in a trench of sorts called Fundamentalist Christianity.  I do not blame the churches I was associated with at the time.  I blame myself and do not offer this as an excuse for my poor parenting, but rather as an explanation. Fundamentalism Leads to Bad Parenting Here are the traits of Fundamentalism that can lead to being a bad parent.

1. A hard and fast certainty about everything including the beginning and end of the world, the instructional nature of the Bible and how then we should live based on these beliefs.
2. A confidence in our certainty that borders on arrogance and egotism.
3. An aggressive, crude and prescribed way of living in every aspect of our being including child rearing that we believe honors God.

The Bible says “²⁴ Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.” (Proverbs 13:24) Likewise in Chapter 22 verse 6 “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”  This was all the license I had to discipline you with a firm hand and a flimsy but firm belt. My version of fundamentalism called for complete control of the household including my superiority over Mom and you.  I fought for it and I claimed it in Jesus name.  I scared you when you countered that control into believing that I would hurt you. Because of my complete certainty with the fact that I was supposed to dominate you as daddy as suggested from the Bible, I never let you have your way.  I instead made you conform to my way. I raised each of you to despise and ridicule LGBTQ people and despise those with differences and to treat those who in my own mind would veer from Jesus with disdain rather than love. I raised you to be ignorant of science and the growing changing fascinating world around you. I am no longer the same and therefore your complaints about me seem unmerited to those that know me now, but I know they have merit. I raised you to be bigoted and racist and sexists and heterosexist. I did this with complete arrogance and at times favored my own desire for quiet, peace and other things over your own wishes. I chose to use the rod to make sure you would never cross me or question our way of life out loud.  I told you to be quiet and to stop crying and to go to your room if you wanted to be emotional.  I left marks on your legs and back and buttocks because of my clumsy treatment of you. Ashley When you were born I was so happy.  I had wanted a daughter my whole life ever since Brandy was born.  You were the beautiful daughter I had always wanted.  When you were young you behaved so well.  You were the example child and always did what you were told.  But when you started to grow from a child into a woman (middle school and above) I pulled away from you.  I was a little afraid of your femininity and treated you differently.  As you grew older I was afraid that boys would take advantage of you and I did not trust you to set your own boundaries so I set them for you with stringent curfews and prohibitions.  I told you what music to listen to and what friends you could have.  When you complained I shut you up and refused to listen to you claiming to myself that I knew better.  I am sorry about this.  You deserved a father who trusted you completely and who was willing to roll around on the living room floor with you, regardless of your changing body.  I am so sorry.  I love you and you are still the daughter I always wanted.  If there is something else that I have missed here, please do bring it up to me.  I would love the opportunity to apologize. Johnathon When you were born your birth was such a hard experience for Mom.  You were so big and she was hurting and the doctor did nothing for her pain except to demand more from her.  I was angry and disgruntled the moment you arrived because of this and that did not change while I was raising you.  You proved to be a challenge not just from the beginning.  You had such bad eczema and your legs were in casts and you required much more attention than your sister did and I was unsympathetic. I ignored you when you would cry out in the crib, I ignored you when you would cry from the play pen.  I let Mom hold you most of the time and I stayed away from you when you were upset.  As you grew you had difficulties in school and the only way I thought to deal with those things was aggression.  I scared you into believing that I would hurt you if you did  not comply with my wishes, We fought and I won at those times.  I remember pushing you into your room when you were waist high, because it was messy and I wanted it clean and you tripped and hit your lip on the edge of that aluminum toy box and started to bleed.  I was so ashamed of myself but never said anything to you about it.  I was just not being careful and I was mean. I pushed you, shoved you, whipped you and spanked you to get you to do what I thought was the right thing and I am so sorry.  I raised you in a home that was unsafe to share what was really on your heart and mind in regards to sexuality and growing up.  I am so sorry.  I love you and am so proud of who you are, not just what you do.   You are so much like me in so many ways.  If you can think of any other thing that hurt you or made you unhappy in our time together I invite you to please bring it up and give me the chance to apologize.  I love you. James The youngest.  You were born in a time of real transition in our lives literally.  You were just a few days old when we all moved to Texas from your place of birth.  You had to do a lot of reconfiguring from the beginning and you have always had to conform and change to what we were doing. I sometimes think that since you were younger that you were not around for the worst parts of my parenting, but that is not correct is it.  You had to deal with a changing Daddy almost regularly.  My messages were inconsistent and I rarely told you anything to begin with. As the youngest you were often ignored and since you did not complain much it was that much easier to ignore you.  I apologize to you not just for my fundamentalist certainty but for the hypocritical way I succumbed to sex addiction and made life difficult for you because of my relationship to your Mom.  I don’t recall how many times that you had to hear that me and Mom were splitting up and that your life was going to change dramatically only to retract those statements later. I am so sorry for raising you with such terror and transition and uncertainty and insecurity and all that goes along with this, and I am also sorry for the times that my belt left marks on your body and the times that you complained loudly only to be told to be quiet or go to your room.  I am sorry for not letting you truly express yourself to me and Mom.  If you can think of anything else, I invite you also to please bring it up to me and give me a chance to say I am sorry.  I love you. All of you I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, really I did.  But now I know just how wrong it all was.  I am so sorry.  I love the three of you so much.  I did not see this differently until just recently (the last 7 years of my life) when I began to accept things that were contrary to fundamentalist Christianity.  I did not list everything above and many of the things that apply to one of you also apply to the other two, so please read all of the above and accept my apology. I Have Learned

• I learned that I don’t have all the answers.
• I learned that I don’t know God as well as I thought I did.
• I learned that I am wrong a lot of the time.
• I learned that doubt is as much a part of faith as faith is.
• I learned that Mom is my equal, not my possession.
• I learned that children are a gift from God and are to be treasured and loved.
• I learned that children have so much to offer in their creativity and innocence and fresh take on the world to a parent that allows them to speak and be and live.
• I learned that the Bible is just a book, not a mandate or a prescriptive text to follow.
• I learned that the world is the most amazing thing that God ever did in his act of creation and that we should appreciate every aspect of it, not just the ones labeled Christian.
• I learned that music is beautiful regardless of lyrics and that friends are priceless regardless of their faith and smoking and drinking and cussing and all of those ways that people express themselves are okay – not bad, ungodly, unchristian, or any other derogatory term.
• I learned that patience is much more important to a parent than position or posture. Grace is better than punishment.
• Love is greater than right thinking and is the premise behind right-doing.
• I learned that you only get one chance to teach these things to your children while they are young.
• I learned that the LGBTQ members of our society  are precious people too, made in God’s image and that they deserve the right to be treated with fairness, kindness, equality and love.
• I learned that Jesus would object loudly to the way I raised you and over time it has made me ashamed.

I Have Changed, You Will Change Mostly I learned that change is an indication of life.  If you do not change, evolve, grow and transform you are not truly living.  I want to encourage you to try and understand the things I have learned along the way and I want you to ask me questions and to form your own ideas and opinions about things too.  Again, I want you to bring up any grievances that you may still have with me as your Dad.  God Bless you in this new chapter of all of our lives. Remember that I am not that same man that raised you, but I too am still growing and learning and changing and being transformed by Jesus daily. --  Love Daddy