As a Child with His Father

In 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 15.3 million American children, roughly one in five, were living with their mother only. Behind each of those numbers is a boy who grew up waiting by a window, and many of those boys are grown men now, some of them about to become fathers themselves.

As a Child with His Father is a 30-day devotional through the life of Timothy. It is written for men who grew up without a father in the house.

Luke tells us that Timothy was « the son of a believing Jewish woman and a Greek father » (Acts 16:1), and that is all he says about the father. When Paul remembers where Timothy’s faith came from, he names « your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice » (2 Timothy 1:5). Then an older man took the young one on. Paul called him « my true child in the faith » (1 Timothy 1:2), and wrote that « as a child with his father he has served with me to advance the gospel » (Philippians 2:22). The father Timothy needed came late, and he came from outside the family, and he was enough.

Alongside Timothy’s story runs an original one. Dorian Tolbert is thirty, a heating-and-air technician in a South Carolina mill town, and his first child is due in August. His father left when he was three. The last time he heard his father’s voice was a phone call on his eleventh birthday, promising a visit at Easter that never came. His father-in-law sends him to Cleon Satterwhite, seventy-three, a retired cabinetmaker whose own father walked out in 1959, and who was taken in at fourteen by an old craftsman who taught him everything. Over one year of Saturday mornings at seven, the two men build a rocking chair and read the letters to Timothy.

The six parts:

– Not Many Fathers: the man who was not there, and the older men who stood in the gap

– Let No One Despise Your Youth: shame, the prayer that begins « Our Father, » and the father who gives good gifts

– Fight the Good Fight: mercy that is not the same as trust, a meeting at a diner, and guarding what has been entrusted to you

– Turn the Hearts of the Fathers: Joseph, the father who raised a son not his own, and a birth

– An Unashamed Workman: honest work, a grandfather’s first visit and his no-show

– Entrust to Faithful Men: a call from treatment, an old man’s tools given away, and passing it on

Inside the book:

– 30 days. Every day includes a passage from the Berean Standard Bible, a Mentor and Student conversation, a reflection, a practice (one concrete step), a one-line word « From the Workbench, » a prayer, and journal questions

– Honest: it never says your father’s leaving was your fault, never tells you that you must reconcile with him or cut him off

– Back matter: practical help (grief, deciding whether to contact him, boundaries, forgiveness, preparing for a first baby, the first year as a father, anger, depression, and finding a counselor); help lines; a chapter for mothers, wives, older men, would-be mentors, and pastors; a six-session group guide; and a Scripture index

For men who grew up without a father in the house, new and expecting fathers, men’s groups and mentoring ministries, and the mothers, grandfathers, coaches, and pastors who stand in the gap. About 15–20 minutes a day, or one part a week with a group.

Dorian, Cleon, and everyone in Gaillard Falls are invented characters. This is a devotional, not medical, legal, or psychological advice, and not a substitute for a doctor or counselor. It includes emergency and help-line information for the U.S. (911, 988, the Crisis Text Line, SAMHSA, NAMI, 211, and Al-Anon). Scripture quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible (public domain).