How Family Dynamics Shape Fatherhood and Sonship w/ Patrick Meese (EP 278)

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What does it mean to honor your father, even if you have a difficult relationship?
How can healing your relationship with your dad impact your family and leadership as a man?
What steps can men take to break generational cycles of hurt and be stronger fathers?

This week on the Men of Iron Podcast, we sit down with therapist and consultant Patrick Meese for an honest, powerful conversation about reconciliation, forgiveness, and the critical role of men in families. Patrick shares his moving personal story—from growing up with a fractured relationship with his father to caring for him at the end of his life—and how doing the hard work of honoring your parent can lead to deep healing, freedom from shame, and transformation as a father.

"If I didn't do the work with my father, I don't think I'd be the father that I am today."
Patrick explains how his journey from bitterness and pain to forgiveness allowed him to break generational cycles and become a more tender, present dad for his own five children. Whether you're struggling to connect with your family, looking to overcome past wounds, or taking steps to lead with strength and grace, this episode will challenge and encourage you.

If you're a man who wants to improve your life, your leadership, or your family, Men of Iron is here for you. Reach out for mentorship, join a group, or check out our resources—find the support and brotherhood you need to grow.

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Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Subscribe, listen, and share!
Find out more and get resources at https://menofiron.org/podcast

#fatherhood #mensministry #christianleadership #forgiveness #strongfamilies #breakthecycle #menofiron

Transcript

Patrick Meese [00:00:00]:
I'm just being brutally honest.

Ryan [00:00:02]:
Yeah, that's what we want, man.

Patrick Meese [00:00:03]:
The personhood of Jesus was hard for me as a male, as a male figure. God the Father, no problem. The Holy Spirit, absolutely, 100%.

Ryan [00:00:16]:
Hey, welcome back to the Men of Iron podcast. This month on the podcast, we're talking all about your role in your family. So we've taken a week at a time and just delved into what it looks like to be a man functioning well, functioning healthily in the roles that God has given to us. We just want to encourage you. You can check out the links in our description for some really great family based resources from Men of Iron. You can also check out the links in our description for our merch shop. So if you want to support us, you can get involved in a group, you can click one of those links to one of those free resources, or you can buy our merch and support us with shirts and hats and anything else you want to see in our store. We, we encourage you to go check that out. Today I am here with Patrick Meese on the pod. Patrick, why don't you introduce yourself so we know who we're listening to here.

Patrick Meese [00:01:01]:
I'm Patrick Meese. I'm a 57 year old, married for 34 years, five kids, five grandkids. I'm a therapist. I'm also a consultant. So that's me.

Ryan [00:01:12]:
All right, so you got the whole run of all the stuff, man, you.

Patrick Meese [00:01:14]:
Know, all the roles I've earned, all my gray hair.

Ryan [00:01:18]:
I love it. Today on the pod, we're going to dive deep, I think, into what it means to be a son. And over my experience at Men of Iron, we've actually bumped into some, some kind of rocky roads when we talk about being a son. Because what we try to do is just represent biblically what it means to fill this role. Well, and probably in the most pointed way possible. What I can say is that the Bible actually says, children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is good and it will go well with you. There's actually a promise in the scriptures that if you honor your parents, it will go well with you. Which is kind of rare in the Bible to have like a directly connected promise. But usually when we teach that or say that, it brings a lot of feelings out of people.

Patrick Meese [00:01:59]:
Right.

Ryan [00:02:00]:
Because what I found, and I've been blessed with a great dad, I've had a really strong relationship with my father and that's fantastic. It's not hard for me to wrap my head around it, but obviously that's not everybody's story. And if you guys are listening, you know, there's guys in our audience listening that have great dads. There's guys in our audience that either don't know their dads or haven't had a great relationship with their dad. And the tricky thing about the biblical command is we are called to honor our parents regardless. And that's where we get into some. Some bumpy roads. And if you're really, like, you know, if you're listening today and you're actively working through some of that stuff, it can make you feel some kind of way to. To be called to honor your dad. And. And at the same time, like, if you've been blessed by your parents and you've enjoyed that relationship, that brings feelings out, too. So one of the reasons I'm excited to have you on here, Patrick, is one you have kind of the therapy experience. I'm sure you've worked with a lot of guys through those kinds of things, but you have a little bit of a story yourself.

Patrick Meese [00:02:57]:
I do. I do. I have a big story. Yeah. My story starts back when I was probably 8 years old.

Ryan [00:03:05]:
Okay.

Patrick Meese [00:03:05]:
Yeah. Back in the day. So I'm one of three kids. The middle kid. Okay. Especially. And my story starts with a phone call to our kitchen back in the day when the. The phone lines were long and braided.

Ryan [00:03:19]:
Oh, yeah.

Patrick Meese [00:03:20]:
And my mom answered the phone, and I watched her face kind of turn white. And what was happening was a. A woman from Florida who my dad had. Was having an active affair with, called and let her know what was going on. So I'm in there in the kitchen watching this go down, watching my mom and dad and kind of that interaction. And I'll never forget it. And so I figured it out, obviously, what it was, what was going on. Even as a young kid, eight years old, I think you're what, third grade? Something like that. And really just my heart broke for my mom. I was angry at my dad because he let me down. We grew up in a Catholic family where everything was, you know, very regimented, very strict, and. And so he really let me down as a male role model. And, you know, to keep the story short, over the, you know, the next few years, our relationship got tense. My mom kind of somewhat parentified me, which means that she looked at me to fulfill some of the emotional role that my. My father would have held. My dad traveled internationally with Scott paper. He'd be gone for months at a time. And so as we grew up and, you know, there was more and More. This is a good story because my own rebellion against my father pushed back to the point where I found myself out of the house at 16 years old, on the street, living with, living with friends and trying to find my way through, through school. Over time, you know, that really progressed and there'd be long, I'd say long periods of time, you know, 10 years at a pop, where I wouldn't hear from my dad, we wouldn't talk. My mom always tried to stay in touch to some degree. And I started my own family, ended up having five kids and began working professionally on my way up through. During that time, I would see my other two brothers and my family. They would be, they would be out on vacation and I'd see it on Facebook and it was hurtful. I'd say in my mid-30s, my mom came down with, I was working in burn trauma and doing things like that. My, my mom came down with ovarian cancer, which spread very quickly. And in our family, I was kind of the only person that had the skill set to take care of her, loved my mom, took care of her and just watched her die very quickly. During that time, I had become a Christian. I very consciously used that time to try to move back into relationship with my father, knowing that I was a father and I had my own kids and understanding more what he was going through from a man's perspective, um, and so tried to move back into relationship with him. My mother died, she passed away. I took it pretty hard. She was really my only advocate. And so I reacted, you know, pretty hard for a while. I probably drank too much, you know, that kind of thing, and then got my act back together. And I would say a number of years later, I have a brother who has a schizoaffective disorder with paranoid delusions. So it's everything you'd think of in a movie, right? So I became his primary caregiver. He's lived in Seattle, so I'd fly out when he'd get off his meds because that's what always happens. And, and I was out there for about five weeks and I got a call from my younger brother who's a policeman, who said, you have to get down to Florida immediately. And I hadn't seen my dad in probably 10 or 15 years at that point. Hadn't talked to me, you know, didn't acknowledge birthdays, anything like that. And, and so the, the little eight year old guy that got on the airplane just fought with himself all the way across the United States till I got to Florida. I got picked up by a second wife who I'd never met and brought down to his house in St. Augustine, St. Augustine beach, and saw him for the first time in 15 years. And so this guy that had all I've given, you know, so much power and authority and all these things to. I was seen for the first time in 15 years. And so he was moving from, you know, maybe like the 200 pound guy to maybe 125 pound guy. And when I walked in and saw him and I almost didn't recognize him, you know, and then I looked at him, I was like, this is a frail man. You know, all the bark had come out and there was no bite there. And so I began to look at him in a different way and did my very best to, to move towards becoming a caretaker for him as an adult man. I was able to forgive the sins of the father. Right. And knowing what my own were with my own kids and just move towards connection, move towards relationship, take the opportunity to serve him, even though it was emotionally really difficult for me, but to see how frail he had become and how a shell of the person that I thought of him as was very difficult. So over the next, I don't know, five years, you know, multiple times, you know, I kept him from one incident, he became septic and basically died on me.

Ryan [00:09:17]:
Okay.

Patrick Meese [00:09:17]:
And carried him up the stairs, called an ambulance, you know, took him back. But just caring for him through that time. His second relationship was horrific. They screamed at each other all the time. You know, even as a therapist, I tried to get in there. Well, it wasn't very welcome, but. But yeah, I did my very best to, to work with my dad and just let go of all this pent up energy that I held and was able to actually see him as a man, a flawed man like myself and not this big iconic figure. So I was able to take care of him right up until he died. And at the end of that, I was able to walk away with a free conscience, you know, having resolved and settled the things that I needed to settle. So that's the basis of my story. Wow.

Ryan [00:10:06]:
I appreciate you coming on to share that story.

Patrick Meese [00:10:09]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Ryan [00:10:11]:
I'm curious, like, as you, as you worked through forgiving your dad, I think it's like actually how you explained it. What was like the most challenging part of that process.

Patrick Meese [00:10:26]:
Wow. I think, I think for me that's a great question. I think for me, some of the things that were said that were shaping and forming, I was told at one point, you'll never amount to anything. And, you know, that creates a deep shame wound that we function out of for the rest of our lives until we deal with it. It's a spiritual and a physical wound because it takes away our identity in Christ. God says, you, you have infinite value and worth. I see you as my son, redeemed, sinless. And we're tricked out of giving that up for something less that then defines us and drives us into hiding in all our relationships and disconnection and all these big things. And so I think that was probably the first time I really pushed through my own shame wound, internal shame wound. That was the hardest thing to forgive because I suffered under it for ever. And I'm.

Ryan [00:11:25]:
Obviously, that's not an overnight process. That's not like, you woke up one day. It's like, I'm gonna let go. All this shame.

Patrick Meese [00:11:31]:
This is. Yeah.

Ryan [00:11:31]:
You know, it's. It's something you work through. One of the things we've talked about in groups with men of iron, specifically, is. I mean, from the top, like, your relationship with God colors a lot of your other relationships.

Patrick Meese [00:11:43]:
Absolutely.

Ryan [00:11:44]:
But particularly with men, your relationship with your. With your dad colors a lot of your other relationships. And you alluded to that a little bit, I think, earlier. Do you want to jump into that at all and dive into that and explain that?

Patrick Meese [00:11:55]:
Yeah, yeah, that's. This is a great question. So my dad was never my hero. And because my dad wasn't my hero, I didn't have heroes. I didn't believe in heroes. Right. I believed in. In myself and my own strength. I can remember telling my dad when I was probably 12 or 13, you have no power over me other than that which I give you. And I just remember the look on his face. He's like, game's up.

Ryan [00:12:24]:
You know, like, a lot of times what we notice is when you have a struggling relationship with your dad, you can start to identify some of the evidence of that in other relationships around you. Yeah.

Patrick Meese [00:12:36]:
Yeah. So for me. For me and this. I'm just being brutally honest.

Ryan [00:12:42]:
Yeah. That's what we want, man.

Patrick Meese [00:12:43]:
The personhood of Jesus was hard for me as an. As a male. As a male figure. God the Father, no problem. The holy spirit, absolutely, 100%. And actually, both of them showed up for me repeatedly throughout my life. When I became a therapist, you do this thing called a nodal timeline. Starts at zero, goes to whatever age you are. There's a line, and it's a continuum, and everything below the line are horrible things that happen. Okay. Everything above the line are great things that happen. You divide it into time periods, as I did, that God showed me, literally in a flash, all the people that he put in my life, that came in, that came out, that came in, that came out, they'd be there for a short period of time, get me to the next step, maybe disappear somewhere there for long periods of time. But that shame wound, this is where it was healed. Went from my head to my heart. So the God is for me, I am his and he is mine. Literally went from my head knowledge to heart knowledge. And from then on, I've lived out of God is for me. And so there's been some radical healing and change in that, too. Yeah. Yeah. I hope that answers the question.

Ryan [00:14:01]:
No, it does. I'm curious, too. So, like, obviously, we have a lot of guys that listen for those guys that are in a position in their lives where they're like, man, I had, I hear, honor my father. And I'm like, nope, not doing that. Like, for those guys. Like, what would you say to them? How would you encourage them? Because, again, I recognize it's not an overnight thing.

Patrick Meese [00:14:24]:
Yeah.

Ryan [00:14:24]:
But, like, what. How would you encourage them to walk through some of that stuff?

Patrick Meese [00:14:28]:
Yeah. I believe that God has set up a system and a system that has structure and authority. And so even Jesus, you know, before his time of ministry, honored his mother Mary by changing the water into wine, because that's what authority is. Right. And so our fathers have authority over us. And I think. And I spoke earlier about the rebellious part of me. I think letting go of that and leaning into honoring my father, despite the things that I experienced, freed my own heart and allowed me to have forgiveness that took the bondage of shame and all those other defining things away from me. And I would encourage each individual to lean into that, to move into that space and allow God and the Holy Spirit to work in that, to reshape reform and restructure, if you will, the way that we think about ourselves in relation to our fathers.

Ryan [00:15:32]:
So a lot of times I've noticed this, that we do. We've done different episodes on fatherhood, but oftentimes just being a son, which is really what we're talking about today, connects so much with being a father. So I'm curious about, like, how has your kind of, like, the story that you just shared, the way that you walked out, your relationship with your dad.

Patrick Meese [00:15:52]:
Yeah.

Ryan [00:15:53]:
How has that affected how you're a father?

Patrick Meese [00:15:58]:
Yeah, I'm so much more of a tender father. Yeah. It's given me, if I didn't do the work with my father. I don't think I'd be the father that I am today. And you know, I have, I have five kids, two girls, the bookends, three boys in the middle and five grandkids as of now, plus all the others that have come into the family. And it's given me a real heart to be tender, to take people where they're at, to, to know that they're flawed and to love them in that space. And it's just freed me to be able to do that. So I think the, the work is of reconciling, honoring your parents, reconciling what you've experienced, forgiving, provides the freedom to become a good father.

Ryan [00:16:44]:
Yeah. Yeah, guys, so often the, the challenge that we put out there at Men of Iron is if, if you are a son who really strug relationship with your dad. And we know, we know you're out there, we know there's a lot of guys in that seat. You have an incredible opportunity to stop that cycle. And part, I believe part of working through that cycle is getting to a place of forgiveness with your father, a place where you can honor your father. And I get it's not the easiest thing in the world, but as you do that, I think it actually makes you a better dad.

Patrick Meese [00:17:16]:
Absolutely.

Ryan [00:17:16]:
And as you kind of work through, hey, these are hurts, these are sores, these are pains. As you work through those things, man, you're gonna, you're gonn those things in your own fatherhood journey and you're going to be able to deal with those things in such a unique way and you have such unique power to stop that cycle. So I just want to encourage you, if you're listening today and you've been in a similar boat as Patrick, just know that you have the opportunity to stop the cycle of hurt and pain in your family that oftentimes goes for generations.

Patrick Meese [00:17:45]:
It will repeat itself if it's not stopped.

Ryan [00:17:47]:
That's exactly it. And it's really only by God's grace that we have this opportunity to embrace the call that Christ has put on our lives, to fully represent him and fully live like him. And it involves hard decisions. You're talking about a lot of hard decisions and you kind of what you summed up, what, a 50 year journey? Yeah, 57 year journey in 15 minutes. Obviously there's a lot of hard decisions in there and there's a lot of personal processing in there and forgiveness, grace. So guys, if you're listening, like, you have an incredible opportunity to walk a similar path of reconciliation. You don't have to pretend like everything's okay. You don't have to pretend like there was never any problems. But you can come to a place of reconciliation. You can honor your parents, and because of that, just really set a solid tone for what it means to be a godly dad. And like we say all the time, like the. The most important relationship in your life is your relationship with God. And. And part of honoring God is responding to what he's asked us to do. You talked about that a little bit when it comes to authority and how it works. And so we just want to encourage you, if you're dealing with this and you're not sure how to make sense of it, you can reach out to us at Men of Iron. There's a link in our description where you can just click that and you'll get in touch with somebody here at our offices. We'd love to talk to you. We'd love to get you connected to a mentor. A lot of times we've seen mentors actually help out in a significant way in these kind of things. It's a pro and a con that a lot of guys have walked through situations like this, and sometimes it can be helpful to get somebody around you that has experienced similar things to you and help you make good decisions to come out of those situations. Patrick, I really appreciate your time.

Patrick Meese [00:19:25]:
I appreciate you.

Ryan [00:19:27]:
Thanks for coming on the pod and thanks for helping us out with this episode. I hope it's encouraging to you guys out there that are listening again, if you're walking through something like this, you don't have to do it alone. Reach out to us, Reach out to a mentor. Get some help from somebody in your life. But we encourage you to truly come to a place where you can really honor your father and your mother. We get that it's hard sometimes, but it is what God has asked us to do and oftentimes God blesses us when we do it. So we'll be back again next week. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening to the Men of Iron podcast.

Patrick Meese [00:19:55]:
Be sure to, like, subscribe and share.

Ryan [00:19:57]:
At Men of Iron. We exist to change a culture one man at a time, and we'd love.

Patrick Meese [00:20:01]:
To have you partner with us.

Ryan [00:20:02]:
So go to menaviron.org to see how you can get involved or donate@menaviron.org donate.