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Take Aim and Release

May 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment

father-son-bow

I recently had the amazing opportunity to listen to a challenge from Dr. Duane Litfin. If you are not familiar with the name, he is the President Emeritus of Wheaton College, and brought some great reminders to me in his presentation.

We read from Psalm 127. I have to admit, I had never taken the whole chapter as a single topic, but after hearing this, I felt compelled to share.

You see, I find myself challenged with the notion that my day-job needs to matter. From what I have read in management literature, I am not alone in this. We all need to have a sense that we are not just wasting our days and that we will come to the end of our lives wondering if we really made a difference.  Here is what the Psalmist had to say…

1 Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. 2 In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for he grants sleep to those he loves. 3 Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. 4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. 5 Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court. (NIV)

I have never really connected verses 1-2 with 3-5 before. Solomon was passing along some wisdom that really struck home with me. It is not an accident that he starts by saying that the Lord needs to be in the center of the work, but then he wraps it all up talking about our kids and the blessing they are.

Solomon was really onto something here. I have always said that my definition of success in this life is that my grandchildren are serving God. Regardless of where I work, and what I do, my first, and most powerful, field of influence is my children.

C.S. Lewis once said “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.”

How much of the daily work I do is outdated the moment I finish it? Is my career really all about things that no one will know about, or care about, decades from now? I contrast that against the generations before me, and the generations that come after me. My dad does not have much in the way of material possessions, but he did leave me and my siblings a legacy to follow: A passionate legacy of living a life with God unashamedly.

Am I looking at my kids as a blessing? Many days – yes. Some days I forget and need this reminder.

Am I intentional in how I aim their lives towards the Lord? I need to be more so. When I am not placing a priority on my children, and their need for seeing who God is, it is because I am guilty of placing too much emphasis on other endeavors. Endeavors that, regardless of how noble, pale in comparison to my role as the father, mentor, leader in my home. My boys need to see the God I serve. They need to know that I am here for them. They need to know that true manhood is experiencing a personal relationship with the God of creation.

Disclaimer: I often refer to myself as a Jack of all Trades, Master of None. May I learn to be a Master of One Trade – Dad.

Filed Under: Blessing, Challenge, Fatherhood, Responsibility, Spiritual Leadership, Work Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When An Iron Fist Turns Soft

May 2, 2013 By 8 Comments

 

When an Iron Fist Turns Soft

My six-year-old son follows me into the cool room; last bits of sunlight cascade onto the brown couch where we sit down. Looking down at my son I search for the right words to speak to him.

I quietly pray, “God, help me not lose my temper. Help me talk to him gracefully and not become angry.”

There is a fine line with my son when speaking to him.

Through many failures of my own, I have sharpened the tipping point. If I am too harsh and yell when he screws up, his heart shuts down towards me, rendering me useless in getting through to him.

I had just found out that he had done something quite harmful; sinful.

My wife called me at work to let me know what had happened, asking me to talk to him when I arrived home.

Anger, frustration and uncertainty clouded my mind through the remaining hours of the day. I was uncertain about how I should handle the situation.

Should there be discipline?

If I go soft on him, will he not take me seriously?

Doubts of my own ability to handle the situation creep in.

Sitting on the couch with my son, looking at him, his body language telling me he doesn’t want to be there. Fearfully he sits, quietly, intently waiting for me to explode.

Processing through my mind I realize (insert God telling me because I am utterly helpless in this area) that if I come down hard on him, yell or be insanely firm, he will throw walls up and I will lose his heart.

His heart.

Often I have bought into the lie that if I am soft on him, he will grow up to be wild and out of control. I have allowed my fears of my son not being an honorable, upright, truthful follower of Christ, to guide my fathering of him.

Fear.

I have been parenting most times out of fear.

Because of my fear, the very thing I am fearful that my son will become, I have parented out of. I end up fathering him dishonorably and untruthfully. Through being quick to anger, ruling his heart with an iron fist at times, and not extending much grace to him when needed, I am the one who is then repelling him to the very things that I fear most he’ll be.

I turn to my son sitting on the couch and by the grace of God, softs words come out towards him. I see him ease into me. Because I am being soft to him, he softens his own heart to me.

And we talk.

I listen.

And he hears me.

As time passes he inches close to me and embraces me.

Through the softness I had once feared would turn him from the Way, it has now steered him towards the Way.

I squeeze him tight.

I quietly thank God for His own graces with me and for this moment with my son. I thank Him for being soft with me, working with me patiently to see the errors of my ways so I can have restoration with my son.

 

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You can find Jesse writing about his attempts (failures) at being a good father, husband and follower of Jesus. The good news is, Jesus is the redeemer.  And that is what he clings to.  There is no amount of failing or screwing up that He can’t redeem.  He writes on his own blog here.

Twitter: @jessemhoover

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jessehooverwrites

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Filed Under: Behavior, Challenge, Failure, Fatherhood, Grace Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

What A Man’s Gotta Do

April 18, 2013 By Leave a Comment

WhatamansgottadoMy wife, weak from the stomach flu, came out of the bathroom where she’d been hiding out—hiding by my request, I should say.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, shakily. “I feel like I shouldn’t have left you out there to do that.”

She had just stepped into the bathroom for the bedtime rituals when one of our younger children stumbled to the door of our bedroom and was gloriously sick—on me, on the laundry beside the door, the surroundings generally. Knowing Melanie was in a dicey state already, I had called out to her, “You stay where you are—we’ll take care of it.” Two of my sons scrambled for towels, trash bags, all the stuff needed to get the situation at least stabilized, and in a few minutes we got the sick child off to a different bathroom, the first load in the laundry, and Ground Zero restored to a more hygienic state.

It made me think about my father, who passed away while I was in college. Dad was a strong man with a weak stomach. My mother used to tell me that if my sister or I were sick, or even needed a serious diaper change, Dad would take care of the cleanup without hesitation or complaint, and when the crisis was over, excuse himself to the bathroom and be privately ill. Mom tried to spare him that indignity whenever possible, but the thing that she remembered and shared with us was that, even so, he went ahead and did it.

I’ve often thought that most Christians are not likely to face lions in the Arena – we brace ourselves up for that – but more often, we’re pecked to death by chickens. My dad never took a bullet for any of us, he never took newsworthy public stands or did remarkable feats of heroism, but he lived a life of quiet faithfulness to the needs of his family. I’m sure he would have run into burning buildings for any of us, but he answered the call of marriage and fatherhood by doing the routine, boring, even nauseating stuff, just as a matter of course.

The old Western-movie cliché is “Sometimes a man’s gotta do, what a man’s gotta do.” I learned from my dad that most of what a man’s gotta do is not the stuff of movies or newsreels, but the simple willingness to sacrifice his own desires and comfort for the needs of someone else. I hope my sons are learning the same lesson from me.

 

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Filed Under: Behavior, Challenge, Fatherhood, Marriage, Masculinity, Responsibility, Servanthood Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

You know the NEW saying, “Boys will be…girls??!!”

April 9, 2013 By 9 Comments

Hey Dad,

There aren’t many things in the media that get my temperature up because I know that most of what the experts predict, discuss, or preach doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

That said, I feel my temperature rising over an idea that seems to be growing. It’s the thought that: little boys who think they feel like little girls should be nurtured in that thinking.

Boys will be girls?

First, an article was passed on to me by a fellow dad about another dad in Germany (I think) who wore a skirt because his little boy liked to wear dresses and the dad didn’t want to discourage his son from being who he wanted to be.

Some of us have had boys who put on dresses from time to time. My boys have occasionally come up to me with goofy looks on their faces to parade their silly dress-up. I always laughed and then added, “Now go get something else on…boys don’t wear dresses.”

I didn’t make a huge deal out of it, but I also wanted to teach my sons from an early age that God expects ‘men’ to be men. It’s not optional.

Then yesterday, I read in World Magazine (March 23, 2013) that several hospitals in the US offer hormonal treatments for kids questioning their gender. The treatment postpones puberty so that if little Johnny decides he really wants to be a girl, then he won’t have started down the slippery path of ‘maleness’ before it’s too late to alter.

What set my blood boiling is that the story described how a DAD took his 9-year-old son to Chicago for the treatment because his son liked to wear dresses. This may sound like an isolated, far-fetched incident, but it’s a reminder that our society as a whole is working hard to convince us that these gender lines don’t matter.

Dad, it is our job as father to not give our sons the option of being a boy or girl. If God created them as boys, then they ARE boys and our sole purpose as their dad is to help and guide them to be MEN.

So, you make sure your sons dress like men, do men things, and behave as men. It’s not about some legalistic macho stereotype, it’s about training our sons to be dads, husbands, and the men God created them to be.

And I’m telling you, it’s a whole bunch easier to start when they’re little boys than waiting until they’re teenagers.

You ‘da man-dressing-dad,

Todd

Filed Under: Behavior, Challenge, Masculinity Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

It’s No Cake Walk

March 5, 2013 By 1 Comment

Hey Dad,

Greetings from vomit-central. I’m typing away on an iPad from my bedroom where my kids, Cal (6) and Maggie (8), have been quarantined and are eating popsicles and watching videos. I’m on duty because my wife doesn’t do body fluids…if she’s forced to she is prone to adding to them.

Up until last night we have been stomach flu-free. All that changed so quickly. And now here we are hoping we’ve stemmed the tide before we have an all out epidemic.

No Cake Walk

That’s just part and parcel of being a dad. It’s always something. Last week it was another something. I ‘caught’ one of my children…or better yet God placed me in his path so he would get caught.

We both knew right away that this was going to be a big deal. He tried to deny it, but I knew he was guilty and so we didn’t give him much room to dig any deeper. It wasn’t one of those things where you can just yell and chastise…it demanded more involvement than that. It required me to talk, probe, understand, and pray. My wife was indispensible and deeply involved as well.

It wasn’t very fun, but we made it through and I find myself so thankful it happened and was uncovered. Still, I hate those times. I would much rather smile though parenting, pop in a video, eat pizza, and have good memories. But that’s not the way fathering works.

Sometimes it’s not much fun…like when you’re emptying another trash can full of puke at 3:30 in the morning. But that’s what being a dad is all about. It’s hard, stinky, messy, and terrible. But our children need us as much when they’re heaving up…stuff, as when they’re caught in sin. It’s why God gave them to us. And in a way…I like it. I like being a dad.

You should too, my fellow father, because you’re doing something big!

You da dad,
Todd

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