Fatherhood

“Thank God for parents.”

This Father’s Day was the best!!

Both Stephanie (and Henry) and Charley were with me. We laughed and cried and celebrated the joys of being family.

This got me to thinking about my parents. I’m thinking much more these days about those who have helped shape me and whose love has made me what I am.

Neither of my parents would have been considered “successful” by the world’s standards. Neither graduated from high school, and my father never held a job that paid much more than minimum wage. I lived on the wrong side of the tracks - in what today would be considered an impoverished life. But in my view, they were most successful in the ways they touched my life and the lives of many others. They taught me that who I was was more important than what I possessed.

They taught me the values of a life that matters: honesty, compassion, service to others, and a love that is freely given and holds on tenaciously. But, most of all, they taught me the value of faith.

During our nightly family devotionals, I first heard the Bible read by my father, and I learned to pray by hearing the prayers of my mother. Theirs was a faith that was deeply held and demonstrated in their words and actions.

Over time their faith became my own. It grew in ways unlike theirs. We didn’t always agree on points of theology. In fact, they had no carefully reasoned system of theology, they simply lived by what the believed. But their faith continues to influence the way I live my life.

On this Father’s Day, I salute my mother and father, and give thanks to God for the way they taught me to live and give myself in service and love to others. I am reminded of the profound influence we have on our children. My children have not always lived out their faith in ways that I wish they had.

But I have seen the faith that Anita and I tried to instill in them take root and blossom and reach out in ways that my own faith failed to do. I apologize for the many ways I have failed my children, but I rejoice that they have overlooked my mistakes and have affirmed me in my faith.

For many young children, their father is their first hero, their model for living. For over 30 years I have kept a Father’s Day card that Stephanie made for me. In her childish handwriting, she listed her heroes. They were in this order:
“ Daddy, Jesus, and Hercules!”

You see, these were the individuals whom she thought were most powerful, strongest and smartest in all the world.

Tears welled up in my eyes, as I opened my Father’s Day card this year. It said:
“Dad, when I was a kid, you told me about the important things like hard work and good character.. . . but I learned the most from watching how you lived.“

And then Stephanie wrote, this time with much clearer penmanship,
“Who are my heroes? Daddy, Jesus, and Hercules!”

She and Charley have made my life worth living through their unflinching love and their total acceptance and affirmation of me as their father. I pray that you will have the same kind of experience with your children and you will never forget the influence you play on their lives.

Thank you, Mother and Daddy, for being such wonderful parents.
Thank you, Stephanie and Charley, for graciously accepting me as your father.
And thank you, Anita, for making it possible for me to experience the joys of fatherhood and for sharing those experiences with me!