Jim Daly’s childhood was almost the worst you can imagine.  His parents divorced when he was five.  His father, an alcoholic, once came home drunk threatening to kill his mother with a hammer.  (Jim and his brothers and sisters were hiding in their bedroom.)  His mother remarried an obsessively controlling man who didn’t love her kids.  When Jim was nine, his mother died of colon cancer and his stepfather took off, leaving them with literally nothing.  Then came the crazy foster family that lived in a dirty house in the country and spent their evenings rolling cigarettes and smoking around the kitchen table.  The father actually believed that little Jim was trying to kill him.

It’s enough to sound made-up, but it’s the life Jim Daly lived.  As he says in his new book, Finding Home:  An Imperfect Path to Faith and Family, when people hear what his childhood was like, they tell him he “should be insane—or in jail.”  Instead, Daly is now president of Focus on the Family.

He recently took time to answer our questions about his new book and work with families.

The story of your childhood is amazing and heartbreaking.  Yet there were many times when God clearly seemed to be protecting you (like with the older brother in your foster family who made homosexual advances, but stopped when he figured out you weren't interested).  When you look back, do you see pain, or grace, or a mixture of both? 

Mostly grace.  There is pain, but it really is not the focal point of my experience.  I felt God’s grace even in the lonely moments.  I did not understand it as I would today, but I felt God was with me as a child.

What was your dearest hope as a child? 

To feel loved. 

I was struck by the fact that so many of the things you yearned for were simple—a homemade breakfast of bacon and eggs, a baseball glove, a hug from your father.  What would your advice be to parents about the things that really matter—extravagant gestures or small signs of love? 

Everyday small signs of love…with the occasional “wow” factor.

Do you think your childhood uniquely prepared you for running Focus on the Family? 

I think so.  Simply put, I care about the family.  It is the bedrock of what we learn and the character within us. 

Humanly speaking, it would seem that the best person to fill a job like mine would have a background similar to Dr. Dobson’s.  But it is clear that the Lord has ordered my steps, and I have felt and continue to feel His presence on every step of this exciting journey.