08/27/2025
I lost my father when I was five years old, and from then on, I became a fatherless child. In those years, within the cultural and political atmosphere of China, an embrace was almost an unknown gesture. In my childhood, I had never truly been held in anyone’s arms.
It was not until 2024 that my sister unexpectedly unearthed a faded old photograph—tiny, no larger than a postage stamp. In it, two-year-old me was cradled in my father’s arms. In that moment, I was stunned to realize: I had once been a little girl who was held. That fragile photo became a precious proof in my life. I painted a picture to respond to that long-delayed memory.
Perhaps because of this, I felt a deep resonance when I read Tina’s story. Again and again she insisted, “Pastor, you still owe me seven hugs.” It was not childish stubbornness, but a cry from the depths of her being. She was searching for a father. When a girl grows up without her birth father, she will often carry this longing throughout life—projecting her need for a father onto other men: a pastor, a spiritual elder, even one day her own husband. It is an uncontainable search, a soul’s persistent attachment to the image of “father.”
I know this feeling well. I once carried the same stubborn hunger within me, though I did not understand it then. Tina’s insistence on “seven hugs” is the outward sign of that inner power—the longing for a father’s embrace. Yet every “substitute father” is limited. They forget, they fail, and they cannot truly satisfy a little girl’s deep cry for her father.
At this thought, I felt both moved and concerned. Yet I also know this: the absence of an earthly father does not mean the absence of love itself. For beyond the limitations and disappointments of earthly fathers, I finally discovered the embrace that never changes—the arms of my Heavenly Father. The image of any earthly father is but a broken shadow of the Father’s love; only the eternal Father can give the fullness of safety and belonging.
And so I bless Tina. May she, along her journey of growth, even through the losses and limitations of earthly fatherhood, be led into the embrace of the Heavenly Father. May she discover that unfailing, unending love—the true “seven hugs” her heart has always been searching for.
