For the Fatherless

“We are fatherless no more, and it’s the reason we sing.” That’s Brian and Christa Yakaboski’s watchword as For the Fatherless. In all their efforts, the husband-wife duo focuses on bringing hope to people through Jesus’ love in worship.

Both Brian and Christa know what it's like to grow up without a father. Christa lost her dad to a brain tumor when she was only 7 years old. And Brian's father was an alcoholic and drug addict who abandoned his family. But both also know what it is to be healed in Jesus, to find wholeness in his presence.

Today, we’re asking deep questions and getting honest answers. Be inspired as Brian and Christa share their out-of-the-way interests, hidden kryptonite (and how they battle it), unique spiritual practices and favorite faith-building resources.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does your go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?

Growing up 100% Italian in Long Island, New York, Christa has always had a taste for good Italian food. We really won’t settle for anything less than the kind of Italian food that makes you kiss your fingertips and put on a terrible accent for anyone and everyone watching you enjoy such a feast.

That being said, it was only natural that our first date night in our new hometown of Columbia, Tennessee, was to a little neighborhood pasta place called Barino’s Italian Southern Eatery. Finding that little gem on Instagram was something that helped us muster up just enough courage to take the plunge and move out of Nashville to buy our first house in Columbia. Sitting across the table from each other in that restaurant a month after moving into our new place was reassuring and showed our hearts that we were in the right place. If you’re going to move somewhere, it should be to a town that serves Banana Pudding Cannolis.

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activities do you love and help you find spiritual renewal?

We love birdwatching. Being in our early 30s, it always makes us laugh when we get so invested in our birds. It feels too soon — like we should be playing shuffleboard in sweatsuits somewhere in Florida while we name the birds around us.

We fell in love with birdwatching a few years ago and have since invested a pretty significant amount of time (read: money) in birds. If you think putting up a bird feeder is a quick and easy process, you’re sadly mistaken. There’s setting up the regular bird feeder, making it squirrel-proof, setting up the hummingbird feeder, planting the right flowers to attract hummingbirds, making sure you can get the right birdseed for the songbirds, buying binoculars to see the birds when they fly away from the feeder and back to the trees, buying a book to recognize all the new birds as you welcome them into the fold and so on. It never ends.

All of it feels overkill until you’re huddled around your back window as a family of three gasping in awe at the beauty and grace of a small, fragile, fleeting bird that seems to dance into your life just for the sheer joy of being known by you. Those have been precious moments for us. When we lost our first pregnancy in 2018, a place in our hearts opened up to receive and love on those small and fragile things in a way that keeps us awake to how precious life is.

QUESTION #3: CONFESS

Every superhero has a weakness. Every human too. We're just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?

It’s a battle for me (Brian) to choose presence over performance every day. There’s a part of me that wants to say yes to everything all the time, to move from one success to another, to never slow down, to never be vulnerable to any failure or disappointment for myself or anyone else. I easily snap into a mentality that says, “Let’s just get through this and then…” When I put on that mask, it takes me a long time to catch up on what I’m missing at the moment.

There are a lot of people who have boiled those feelings down to a war between doing vs. being, and there are a lot of self-help books dedicated to figuring out how to “be.” But I don’t like how dualistic that mentality is. I’ll 100% admit I have a problem with being too task-oriented and overfocusing on the “doing.” But I’m a husband and a dad — there’s no way to divorce myself from what I do to provide for my family. There’s a lot of good love tied up in all the doing. My longing is to grow to be more fully alive and present in the doing. That’s where I think that love can be felt in my actions and decisions.

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?

Being an honest storyteller and a good steward of our stories is really what keeps us invested in who we are as For the Fatherless. We’ve been telling our stories of losing our earthly fathers for the past 10 years. But when I think back to how we started, I remember moments where I may not have been as true to the tension in between songs as I wish I dared to be.

Growing up in the church, having been worship leaders, and remembering all the different conversations about how we’re supposed to communicate and carry ourselves on a platform when leading God’s people kept our testimonies surface-level at first. For a while, I simply told everyone I was abandoned by my biological father because he was addicted to drugs and alcohol but that I was blessed to be adopted when I was 3 and raised in a loving Christian home. It took me years of telling that true but cleaned-up, polished and careful version of my story before I could get to the point where I could share details that are more difficult to swallow.

My biological father was unfaithful to my mom while I was in utero, and I was born with syphilis because of his infidelity. That’s more than abandonment. That’s neglect. That’s a man taking advantage of my mom and treating her terribly. So as a 32-year-old, I wrestled with a burning feeling of anger that surfaced in counseling before we had our first child.

I love sharing my story because I believe we all want to live redeemed lives, and I’m thankful for how I’ve felt redemption in moments of my story. But I’m not being true to the Redeemer when I settle for the spark-notes version of my story and gloss over all that he’s done just so I can save face and a little time between songs.

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it's God when it happens?

There are a lot of voices out there telling people how to write songs and how to record and release music. It’s honestly a deafening cacophony of voices. It’s even worse when you add in friends who work at record labels and manage other artists. My throat closes up trying to think about how to check all the boxes and do something of merit by those standards.

That’s why I have to go back to the fundamentals. I love writing songs. I love singing. I’ll never forget the earliest moments of my journey into music, when I wrote my first few songs in my parents’ basement, recorded them and posted them on Myspace for my friends to check out. Friends used to quote them and put them up as their away message on AOL Instant Messenger. All of it was electrifying! Seeing someone else connect with my music was and still is the best part of doing this.

I remember stumbling upon those messages and feeling like they were a gracious gift to me rather than a reward for all my hard work. It’s taken me a long time to understand the difference between those two perspectives. I can either try to sustain all my own efforts so that someone will respond and give back just enough for me to do it again in a few years or I can go back to that basement and just let the songs be born without the burden of any expectations or agenda. If the songs get to the point of being released, that’s great. I think that’s where the Spirit steps in and blesses things on our behalf. It may sound lazy to not be writing every day, always chasing inspiration or grinding away, but the Spirit’s going to finish what he starts, so I’m cool to wait for those songs.

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied actions that open our hearts to the presence of God. So, spill it — which spiritual practice is workin' best for you right now?

Meditation and centering prayer have been the best way for me to connect with God and find peace in this season. There’s a song on our EP called “Never a Day” that was born out of an exercise I like. It’s a meditation I do when I have a chance to plan a walk, and I always try to practice it when I start feeling the weight of the unknown and fear in my heart.

I set out on a walk and I imagine that I’m just following the train of Jesus’ robe and that it’s all I can see as I follow him through thick fog and mist. A few minutes later, I imagine I can see more of his back and the robe is filling out in more beautiful colors. Even in the unknown, there can be a sense of awe as I follow him. After walking in this way for a while, I imagine Jesus’ shoulders. More of the beauty of the robe rolls off his shoulders. Even as I walk and meditate, I can imagine what those shoulders are carrying for me.

Lastly, I keep walking and picture the gems in his crown piercing through the fog and shining in the mist. With his crown in view, I can acknowledge in these uncertain moments that he’s still king, and King Jesus knows where he’s going.

The beautiful thing about meditation is that it can be the same experience and commitment to me, but something new can be born of the time spent in it — and that speaks to me about how alive and present Jesus is every day.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources — lots of things that have truly impacted our faith lives. But you know about some really great stuff too. What are three resources that have impacted you?

For the Fatherless wouldn’t be the same without the work of Brennan Manning in The Ragamuffin Gospel; Adam Young’s podcast, The Place We Find Ourselves; and poetry books by Grace Noll Crowell.

Brennan Manning has obviously been well known for a long time, but his messages deserve revisiting. So we’re not ashamed to remind people about his work every chance we get. Don’t sleep on Brennan Manning, y’all! If you’ve already read the books, go search for his sermons on YouTube, and sit and listen to his voice ring out against the old hiss of the tape they recorded on. It’s beautiful.

The podcast from Adam Young is basically like going to a counseling appointment. But instead of you sitting there and talking for 40 minutes, the counselor talks for 40 minutes and you get to just take it in and apply it to your story. The stories he shares in that podcast have been healing to listen to.

Lastly, there’s a lot of good poetry out there, but I doubt people have heard of Grace Noll Crowell. We stumbled upon Grace’s poetry in a small bookstore in Buffalo, New York, and never looked back. There’s so much peace in her writing, and she has such a sweet way of drawing you into a scene that leaves you carrying a spirit of simplicity away from the page and into your life.

We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season — and tell us what it's done for you.

The week we moved into our first house, our son came down with a case of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD). It was a miserable week for him. We didn’t even have our internet set up in the new home yet, so we were scrounging through old DVDs trying to put something on to get him to sit still and rest on the couch. Enter our old friend … Mr. Rogers. Tucked away next to Dad’s copy of “Inception” and Mom’s DVD of “The Holiday” was a collection of “Mister Roger's Neighborhood” episodes that have been our saving grace the past month.

We unpacked boxes listening to him play his piano. We felt like miserable people doing a terrible job caring for a miserable son while listening to him sing “I Like You As You Are.” After being up all night getting puked on, we woke up early the next morning to catch the Neighborhood Trolley for the Land of Make-Believe. It has been a godsend.

And as if that sickness weren’t enough, the week after our son recovered from HFMD, we took him back to the pediatrician because he came down with RSV. If anything happens to those DVDs, I’m going to lose it.

QUESTION #8: dream

God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So, give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?

When we started playing and making music as For the Fatherless, we immediately noticed how many voices are in the conversation about orphan care and supporting foster kids and foster families. Great ministries are caring for physical needs and doing very tangible things to help kids and families walk through foster care and adoption.

Coming to the table with just our songs, our music, and our stories felt inadequate until we thought of what we do as a way to meet people’s emotional needs. We want to be there for them when the fundraiser is over or after the foster placement falls through or after the caseworker drops off the foster kid. We want to be a resource for kids who have grown up adopted and who, after leaving the house, have to make sense of their experiences in a blended family.

There’s a part of writing and releasing music that has been prophetic for us in the sense that I had no idea my 33-year-old self would need to hear what my 28-year-old self wrote. And a part of me has to believe in the long game even though I have no idea how God will use this music in that community as we all grow together. Our new frontier in releasing music involves connecting with new listeners to build a community of empathy and compassion as we all hopefully hear this music and open up to the hope of healing and joy in the mess.

A staggering 18.3 million children live without a dad in the home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s 1 out of every 4 kids in the United States.

But those numbers don’t paint the full picture. They don’t show the hurt that comes with losing a father. Death, illness, abandonment, abuse — each story hurts differently. But they all hurt.

That’s why Brian and Christa focus on meeting emotional and spiritual needs through their music. They know that true, lasting healing comes from knowing Jesus intimately, knowing his love and knowing the peace of his presence.

In that precious space, we can fully understand who God is: “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation” (Psalm 68:5, ESV).

There’s no easy answer to fatherlessness in our nation. But there is a healer — and his name is Jesus.