Father's Day from a Different Perspective

I know Father's Day is over but I have found myself thinking about it in a very different way this year and decided I had to write it down.

It is no secret that I became a grandma this spring. My son and his courageous wife are the proud parents of a 9 lb. 7.5 oz. healthy baby boy named Joshua Lucas. He is now about six weeks old and is the reason why I had a different perspective on Father's Day.

Although I am eternally grateful to my own father for the example he has set for me all my life and equally grateful to my husband whose personality traits show up in our boys more and more often as they grow older, my thoughts this year centered on the type of father I hoped my son would be. As I watch him interact with his own son, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that his emotions toward this tiny, helpless infant will change dramatically as Joshua becomes a mobile, uncontrollable, and sometimes defiant toddler. And let's not even talk about his future teen years! It made me think about what Jeremy is going to need in the years ahead to be the kind of father that God wants him to be. Here's what I have come up with based on the qualities I have seen in my own father, in my husband as a father, and in my heavenly Father. This one's for you, Jeremy...

1. You need to maintain your relationship with God first and foremost. Life can get in the way and as we get busy just surviving, it is so easy to put growing spiritually on the back burner. 
2. You need to be firm and consistent but don't lose sight of your tender, vulnerable side. And don't be afraid it to show your children. They will love you for it.
3. You need to cultivate relationships with other people to be a support and encouragement. The storms of life are inevitable and leaning on others does not mean you have failed your family. It means you are allowing God's people to do the jobs He has placed us on this earth to do--support and encourage one another until He comes again.
4. In the immortal words of Dave Embree, "patience and flexibility" will need to be your constant companions. Not just once in awhile, but every day, every hour, every minute. There will be times when things won't go as planned, people won't respond as you want, and things will be out of your control. Roll with it. God still has a plan.
5. You will need to remember that you're not perfect. You WILL mess up, do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, make the wrong choice. That's why forgiveness is such a powerful thing. It sets us back up on our feet and gives us another chance. And don't be afraid to apologize to your children when you know you are wrong. That doesn't make you a BAD parent, it makes you a REAL one.
6. The most precious gift you can give your children is your time. Even the little things like throwing a ball around, swinging together, building with Legos...these will be the things that memories are made of. And if someday God blesses you with a girl, Barbies and tea parties CAN be a good substitute for Legos.
7. Don't be afraid to take advice from your own parents. Remember, we have been there, done that. Just because we're old doesn't make us useless. We just might have an answer you hadn't thought of.

Okay, so that last one was purely on a selfish level but I think it's valid. I could go on but it's entirely possible Jeremy stopped listening about #3. Maybe I should have put #7 at the top. 

Being Still

I recently returned from a visit to my parents' house in Kansas where I spent four days enjoying the peace and quiet of the farm. It was lovely and needed but when I arrived back home, I discovered that our phone service (the land line) was not working. No big deal, we use our cell phones more often anyway. It was reported but the following day, instead of correcting the problem, we also lost our internet and cable service. Going the wrong direction, don't you think guys?

Well, it was the end of the week before our service was restored. Did you catch that? It was AN ENTIRE WEEK before we got back our internet, cable, and phone service. What is this, the dark ages?  Keep in mind that I had just spent four days watching the news and RFD TV.  (Although I hate to admit it but the old reruns of Hee Haw, the Marty Stuart Show, and several others that I don't even remember was pretty entertaining.) Where were my talk shows and reality shows, my facebook updates and email? It was excruciating. It was frustrating. It was...

Enlightening.

The second day into the disappearance of civilization, I decided to make the best of it. I went to the stack of books I hadn't got around to reading and picked out the thickest one. On the third day, having finished the thick book and moved on to book #2, I couldn't stand the quiet anymore and played music on my iphone. I found the music distracted me from really focusing on what I was reading. Imagine that...distractions that disrupted my focus.

Hmmm...a tiny seed of revelation was beginning to form in my brain. And then I got to my devotions for the day. It was all about being still, shutting out the distractions of this world in order to hear God's voice. The revelation began to sprout. And then I went to a board meeting and the member who was doing devotions this month spoke on...you guessed it--being still.

Okay, now I had a full blown bush growing in my head. Was God trying to tell me something? Just about the time I was starting to get a clue, BOOM. We get our service back. Whew! Was I a happy girl! I turned on the television to a talk show and one of the first things I noticed was that they were glorifying an "alternative" lifestyle. I promptly turned it off and grabbed book #3.

So what did I learn from this past week? 1) Shutting out the distractions of this world is much easier to do when you are forced into it. 2) My focus is definitely clearer when I turn off the "noise" in my life. And 3) Silence is not such a bad thing after all.

Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things. Philippians 4:8