What does it mean to declare yourself a father? In today’s America, father is a bad word. My father was not a man I had anything but hate for when I was growing up, and I think that hate existed so strongly because my love for him was so strong. I admired him, and wanted to be like him, which is the same feelings any young boy has. Now that I can look back and understand the shoes he stood in much better, I have nothing but love for the man. He wasn’t a saint, but he was and still is one of my heroes.
I write this as a tribute to my father, and as a rebuke to the fathers out there that have traded puerile sexual activity for the pure love of a woman, and have fostered and abandoned their children in the process.
My father was loyal, hard working, and severely flawed. I can’t fault him for that; I am as flawed as he was, just with different scars, scrapes, and bruises. I find myself at once acting so much like him and not wanting to be like him – but to be my own man. Not because I have any dislike of how he acted – I just don’t want to be the stereotype; I want to be different. I have a vision of how I should treat my children framed perfectly in my mind – and that is not now how I act. A twisted cacophony of God, my wife, the psychological establishment, and my own feelings rings in my ears telling me a hundred different things about how I should raise my kids. Strangely, the moments that are the most vital are the ones that happen with the least thought. I move in the flow of the spirit of God in my life and the result is children that are grateful to me for disciplining them. Weird. God says, ‘I discipline those whom I love’ (Proverbs 3:11-12) and ‘whoever spares the rod hates their children…’ (Proverbs 13:24). We must not be afraid to give our children what they crave – a clear definition of right and wrong based on an objective truth.
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