Now fathers, let me address you for a moment. (The rest of you can skip this TFTD! See you on Monday.)
Filling the role of Dad is not a job for cowards, is it? It's tough to know when to be a disciplinarian and when to be tender, when to wrap your arms around your kid and when to kick his butt. It's hard to know when to tell him how and when to step back and let him try it on his own.
- We start out the fathering trip staring at our wife's expanding stomach wondering what in the world we've done to her and how that 'thing' inside of her body is going to change our life.
- Then they put that 7 lb. baby in our arms and we feel sheer terror, "I might break it." is our only thought in that moment.
- When he is a toddler, we start to realize that the 'baby' is really 'human,' and part of us.
- When they get on the school bus for the first time, we want to throw up because it hits us for the first time- "this child I love is going to leave me behind someday." Sometime around 7th grade, we start to wish they would leave tomorrow!
- The teenage years are amazing for fathers who stay engaged. The old line about 'herding cats' comes to mind. Despite our best efforts to provide guidance, they manage to do what they want, often rebelling just because they can. Dads spend most of those years feeling like a failure wondering where we went wrong.
- When they grow up and make the really big life choices - career, college, marriage, buying their first car - we feel pride and fear because we know that disappointment is inevitable and we don't want that adult person we still think of as 'our kid,' to have to be broken by life in the same ways we were.
Here's one thing I have learned about being a Dad that you can take for what it's worth - your kid, whether 4, 14, or 24 years of age - doesn't want a Grand Poo-Bah for a Dad; someone who is handing down edicts from some lofty height of imagined authority. They want a Life Coach, somebody who is showing them the way; modeling character, faith, and wisdom. Grand Poo-Bah Dads are kings; men who become melded with their recliners, TV remote in hand, barking out orders and sending their kids our to do the right things that they, themselves, don't do. They say really dumb things like - "You little *&%$! Who taught you to talk like that?" As they head off to their hunting camp for yet another weekend, Grand Poo-Bah Dads tell their son, "Go to church with your mother. It's important." GPB Dads lose touch with their kids, "their mother takes care of them," then cries in self-pity wondering "why doesn't he respect me?"
Life Coach Dads say, like Paul, "Follow me as I follow Christ." Watch how it's done, imitate my life. So, you're thinking, that's hard. Yep, it is. Life Coach Dads realize that values are caught, not taught. They don't have a private porn stash, or go to clubs where they can't take their son, or have a life apart from their family. Dad, live as an open book, letting your kids learn as much from your failures as they do from your successes. Let them know that Dads sometimes do not have the answer and that you need life coaches and God, too! Show them that making the God-honoring choice is costly, but right. Teach them to repent when you sin by admitting your error - to God and to them. Demonstrate that life is more than things, by making the choice to give yourself and your time to others, to the Lord.
Anybody can plant sperm and become a father in that sense. It takes guts, endurance, wisdom, and the daily help of the Spirit to be a real Dad. Few things in the world compare to the joy that a Life Coach Dad feels when he sees his son or daughter doing the right things and realizing with amazed wonder and some fear, too- "They becoming just like me!"
"Fathers, don’t exasperate your children by coming down hard on them. Take them by the hand and lead them in the way of the Master. " (Ephesians 6:4, The Message)
Happy Father's Day.
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