A Father’s Prayer for His Daughter
By: Brent Rinehart
“Behold, children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.” (Psalm 127:3-5)
The father-daughter relationship is particularly important. According to the Institute for Family Studies, well-fathered daughters are more likely to graduate from college, get higher paying jobs, are more self-disciplined and confident, and are less likely to become sexual active or pregnant in their early teenage years.
How do we even begin to ensure our daughters are “well-fathered”? Well, it begins with being present, physically and mentally. Beyond that, it takes being intentional. Sometimes, it may mean saying things to your daughter that she doesn’t want to hear or that go against the grain of society. As our daughters grow, it means “keeping it real” (do the kids still say that?) with them, as opposed to telling them what they want to hear or what their friends say. Here are a few things I believe every daughter needs to hear from her father.
1. “Loving others is more important than being loved by others.” The things that are a big deal to you now won’t mean so much to you later. Trust me. Focus on things that will stand the test of time. Instagram likes may seem important, but they are meaningless. There’s nothing more important than being the type of person who cares about others. If you are that girl, I promise you that others will recognize and appreciate you for it.
2. “One seemingly small decision can change your life forever.” Peer pressure is built on the false premise of something not being a big deal. Kids will try to convince other kids to do something they shouldn’t with phrases like, “no one will ever know” or “everyone is doing it.” You need to understand the significance of decisions you make in your youth. One act can have repercussions for decades, or change the course of your life forever. It’s only because of God’s grace that my life has turned out the way it has.
3. “Intelligence, confidence, self-assurance, compassion: these are the traits that define beauty.” Don’t read silly magazines that claim to have all the “beauty secrets.” They are lying to you. There are no beauty secrets. You are already beautiful, inside and out. God gave you the ability to be a smart and confident young woman. God gives you opportunities to show compassion to others. Don’t waste time on the insignificant and neglect these opportunities.
4. “If God remains first in your life, you’ll have fewer regrets when you get to be your dad’s age.” Don’t worry about all these things that seem important in your younger years. Just focus on God. Jesus himself tells us: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’… But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:31-33).
A Prayer for Your Daughter
Father, thank you for my family. You’ve have blessed me so much, entrusting me to care for my children. Help me to be the father you have called me to be. Give me the strength to teach my daughter how to be the woman you have called her to be. Give me the courage to say the things she needs to hear, even if they are not the things she wants to hear. Give me wisdom to know what to say, and give her a tender heart to be receptive to her parents’ guidance. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Editor’s Note: Content taken from “6 Unpopular Truths Daughters Need to Learn from Their Fathers” by Brent Rinehart. You can read that piece in full here. All rights reserved.
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Click here for A Father’s Prayer and Blessing for His Son
Sweetheart, you are a good idea. One day, long ago, before God laid the foundations of the earth, He conceived the idea of you in His mind. His eyes twinkled at the thought of creating you. An uncontrollable smile spread out all across His glorious face. “Ah, now that’s a good idea,” He thought to Himself!
It was His joy and pleasure to form you in your mother’s womb, to knit you together delicately and beautifully, as a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, resplendent with His image, covered inside and out with the fingerprints of a master Craftsman.
I am so glad God made you – and so is He!
It is my great honor and privilege to get to be your dad – that God would share with me the unique gift of fathering specifically you! Of getting to daily share life with you during these days of your childhood!
May my love for you now make it easy to accept and live in His love for you in the days to come.
May my life lived out before you now make choosing to love Jesus and live for Him the most normal and natural decision you could ever make.
May my love for your Mom now demonstrate what you should expect out of a man in the future. And may you never ever settle for anything or anyone less.
Preciousness, I adore you, and I am committed to you for life. You are far too valuable and wonderful to ever settle for any affection that is less than mine.
Never settle. The only man worthy of giving your heart and your body to is the man who commits himself to loving and serving you with all of his heart for the rest of his life. You don’t have to give your heart or your body to anyone or anything less!
I love you with all my heart, and so does God!
May you live in security out of the affection you have from both your earthly dad and your heavenly Father. May you exude a humble confidence, certain of your identity as a treasured and beloved daughter.
God, please give her the mind of Christ. Protect her from lies – from inner deception – from the twisted and sinister assaults of the Accuser. Set her free with the truth – may it ring loud and clear in her mind, drowning out all other voices. May she know Your voice, hear You clearly, and respond with courageous faith.
Father, please surround her with quality friends:
- who build-up instead of tear-down
- who inspire godliness, instead of provoke evil
- who are faithful to her, rather than flighty
- who are passionate about her, not apathetic towards her
- who don’t compare
- who are not vain
- who will encourage her to guard her heart
Jesus, please give her a heart like Yours. Call her out of the land of ordinary and out into your great extraordinariness! Send her out into your harvest fields, and place Your eternal work in her heart and hands to do for You.
God, she has my eyes, my interests, my character traits, my DNA. She looks and sounds and acts like me… But You are her Father, too – even more truly so than I am. May she develop Your eyes, Your interests, Your character traits. May it be Your DNA that takes over her innermost being. May she grow to look and sound and act more and more like her heavenly Father everyday.
And during these years while you have placed her under my care, please help me, God, to steward her priceless life and heart infinitely better than I am able to on my own.
- I will fail her – please don’t let her project my failures upon You.
- I will not always be patient – please help her to see Your infinite grace.
- I won’t be able to fix every hurt – please help her to feel Your healing hands surrounding her.
- I can’t protect her always – please shield her in Your power.
- I can’t make her decisions for her – please guide her with Your wisdom.
In Jesus’ powerful and beautiful and life-giving and world-changing Name, Amen.
Click here for A Father’s Prayer and Blessing for His Son
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Table of contents
A Prayer for My Daughter
by William Butler Yeats
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-leveling wind.
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man.
It’s certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there’s no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all’s accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.
Literary Analysis
“A Prayer for My Daughter” is a reflection of the poet’s love for his daughter. It is also about surviving the turmoil of the contemporary world, where passions have been separated from reason. The setting of the poem is unspecified. The speaker is the poet himself talking to his daughter. The tone is gloomy, precarious, and frightening, as well as didactic.
The poem opens with a description of the speaker praying for his innocent infant daughter, Anne, lying in the middle of a storm “howling, and half hid.” The poet demonstrates his feelings through the use of symbols of weather. The newborn baby girl is sleeping “Under this cradle-hood and coverlid,” implying the innocence and vulnerability of Anne. Though the external world is violent, she is protected from it. The storm is a metaphor for the Irish people’s struggle for their independence, which was an uncertain political situation in Yeats’s day. He further presents the situation of the storm with “roof-leveling wind”, representing turbulence, in the midst of which the poet has “walked and prayed for this young child an hour.” Intense and threatening forces surround her like a “flooded stream.” The poet symbolizes the sea thus: “Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.” Despite his apprehensions for his child in this turbulent world, he is hopeful for her.
The poet continues on to comment on his hopes for her beauty:“May she be granted beauty and yet not.” His vacillation is that beauty in women sometimes brings disasters. For example, some such people have a difficult time choosing the right person as a life partner, and neither they can “find a friend.” The speaker lays emphasis on the need for feminine innocence. The poet advances his argument in the next stanzas by citing examples of beautiful women such as Helen of Troy, whose beauty was said to be the cause of the Trojan War. By the end, the poet wants his daughter to be courteous, as love cannot come unconditionally and freely. She must earn love with good efforts and kind-heartedness, and she cannot win it by merely physical beauty because “Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned.” Summing up his theme, the poet wishes his daughter to possess such qualities that could help her face the future years confidently and independently.
Structural Analysis
The poem is written in a lyric form containing ten stanzas with eight lines in each stanza. The poem follows a regular rhyme scheme, which is AABBCDDC as shown below:
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour A
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower, A
And-under the arches of the bridge, and scream B
In the elms above the flooded stream; B
Imagining in excited reverie C
That the future years had come, D
Dancing to a frenzied drum, D
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea. C
The meter of this poem alternates between iambic pentameter and trochaic pentameter, as in “I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour / And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower.” The poem is rich in literary devices such as symbolism, personification, paradox, sibilance, assonance, alliteration, and onomatopoeia. The line “murderous innocence of the sea” is an example of paradox. Sibilance is found in the words “sea-wind scream,” while “scream” is also an example of an onomatopoeia. The use of personification can be noted in the lines “future years … dancing”, which implies the transience of life. The poet uses symbols such as “sea wind” and “flooded stream” which denote turbulent forces at work. Alliteration is present in the phrase “be granted beauty.”
Guidance for Usage of Quotes
The poem is concerned with the chaotic modern world. It shows a father consumed with apprehension for his daughter’s future in an uncertain political situation. The father is tense about how he can possibly protect his daughter from the raging storm outside, because she is very beautiful. Therefore, he prays for her as well as gives advice about how to live successfully on earth. Similarly, modern-day fathers can send quotes from this poem to their daughters as a piece of advice for special occasions:
“In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.”
literarydevices.net
