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To Own a Dragon: Reflections on Growing Up without a Father
by Donald Miller and John MacMurray
Good dads are almost as rare as fire-breathing dragons – or at least so it seems. New from Donald Miller, author of the critically acclaimed Blue Like Jazz, comes a gut-wrenchingly honest look at growing up without a father. In a unique, literary style, Donald and John MacMurray – the man who taught Donald the things his dad never did – encourage readers to both recognize and leave behind the disappointment and emotional scars marked by having absent earthly fathers.
Orphaned Elephants in puberty are like men without fathers
Excerpted from Guys and Dads, a 2006 Christianity Today interview with Don Miller:
What was your experience growing up without a father?
My dad left before I remember anything. There were early memories of my mom interacting with my dad occasionally, trying to get a credit card back from him, but I don’t have any memories of my dad. It all seemed pretty normal. It wasn’t until five or six years ago that I even began to process the fact that something in my life had been missing. There were a lot of the things I didn’t know. By know I mean that on a holistic level I didn’t know that authority equals love, those sorts of things. I always felt like I was ten years behind in terms of the way I was living my life. I attribute that to not having a father.
It was watching a documentary about a group of orphaned elephants that helped you see the need for a male authority in your life.
Without the presence of older elephants in their lives to mentor them, these elephants remained in suspended musth cycles, which essentially is like a puberty phase. With an older male elephant there, their musth cycle will only last about three days. It’s a very uncomfortable time, but it’s eased when an older male elephant is in their life.
But for the elephants on this reserve, with no older males, their musth cycles did not end. They basically began to lose it. They acted out aggressively and violently toward other creatures. They began to withdraw from their tribe. When they introduced older male elephants into that community of orphaned elephants, their musth cycles ended. They were able to be normal.
It was very interesting to me that there is evidence in the animal kingdom that you are changed biochemically by your relationship to something outside of yourself. Young men are changed by their relationships with older men. There is evidence of that. So I began to wonder, what am I missing? How am I being affected by not having a dad? ….
[READ CHAPTER 2 IN TO OWN A DRAGON FOR THE FULL STORY ON THE ORPHANED ELEPHANTS]