Practical Fatherhood

I'm a father of 5 kids, three teenage girls and 2 preteen sons. I love spending time with my kids and have found being a father one of the most rewarding things I've done. On the flip side, it can be nothing short of bewildering. How can you possibly stay ahead of the needs of 5 different children spanning 10 years, each at a different stage in their development, male and female. Add to this a full time job, a home, cars, my own needs and interests and it can seem like a genuine pandora's box. As I heard a speaker say once "Ever feel like a one armed paper hanger with the hives? The glue is drying, and you have 12 rooms to go?"

I clearly don't have the answers, just ask my kids, but I have stumbled upon a couple basic concepts that have helped me immensly. I've found them so helpful because they are practical, and simple.

The first is, "Find something you are passionate about, and do it with your kids" Kids know when you are faking. I've pretended I like fishing to introduce my kids to the love of fishing, but all that's been accomplished is 5 kids who hate fishing. I couldn't fake them out. The caught the reality that I hate fishing, despite my insistance that this was a great way to spend your Saturday afternoon.

Tae Kwon Do, on the other hand, has been an awesome family experience. At one time of another every member of my family was in Tae Kwon Do and though we are not currently involved it's been a bonding experience between me and my oldest daughter who is now a black belt. We've spent countless hours together at practice and driving and back and forth. I never needed to fake interest in TKD. It was a genuine passion I had and my kids "caught" it from me.

Rock climbing is an even better example. There's nothing I delight in more than roping up to a huge slab of rock and testing my abilities, strength, skill, and stamina to see if I can reach the top. My kids started climbing with me a few years back and now it's a favorite past time for me and the 3 teenage girls. It's been fun quality time in some of the most beautiful places in the area.

The second "principle" I've started living by is "Never do anthing alone" . As an example, I was lamenting one day, with a tinge of self pity, that my dad never taught he how to change the oil on my car, I had to figure it out on my own. In the depths of my self pity I realized that I'd not taught any of my kids how to change oil. As any dad knows, it's a lot easier to change oil by yourself than to have the kids "help". But what a wasted opportunity. You get to spend time interacting with your kid, they learn a valuable life skill, and you eventually get the oil changed, which needed to be done anyway.

We live on a 5 acre hobby farm, and there is always work or some project or another that needs to be done. What I'm teaching myself to do after formulating my do list for the day, is to look around for the nearest idle kid and say "How'd you like to help your old dad with a project?" They are quickly learning to duck and run for cover when they see me coming, but with 5 kids there is always someone who is free to spend some time with me. If the work seems truely burdensome I can alway sweeten the pot with some cash.

Need to run to the hardware store? Grab a kid. Gonna ride your bike for exercise? See who's available. Not sure what to do? Ask the kids, maybe you can join in with them. Even watching a movie can be time well spent.

Live well "today"

In C S Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" the wise old demon Screwtape has some sage advice for his nephew, a novice demon who is learning the business of luring men away from God. "He (God) would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity ...or with the Present ... Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. "

So the strategy from hell is to get us to spend our time either thinking about the past, dwelling on past failures or injuries, or to dwell on the future which easily leads to fear and anxiety, or to greed. With your mind filled with failure, injury, anxiety and greed, precious little life energy is left for living well "today".

I think there is profound wisdom in this idea and a life principle that makes a huge difference in one's daily living. How much of the angst that you feel is rooted in something that you are responsbile for today versus some point in the future? How much of the guilt, regret or injury you experience is from some event in your history? Imagine if both your past and future were removed from your mind's eye and you were only aware of what was on your plate for today? Wouldn't that be a tremendous relief!

Jesus says basically the same thing in Matt 6:34 "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." The birds of the air are smart enough to let tomorrow take care of itself, what's our problem? Remember the prayer "Give us this day..." Not much in there about tomorrow is there? When you get right down to it Jesus doesn't promise to take care of "tomorrow", but he does have "today" covered, and if you manage to take care of your "todays", tomorrow will eventually get taken care of.

I'm not as far from retirement as I once was and I sometimes catch myself obsessing over the performance, or lack thereof, of my 401k. In Luke 12 Jesus speaks pretty directly to this " And he told them this parable: The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” " I don't think scripture forbids saving for the future, but it's far too easy to get your hope in your nest egg and forget that it's God who looks after our future, in this life and in the next.

A wise old man once told me a little jingle that's stuck with me, "By the yard it's hard, by the inch it's a sinch". I have several ambitions for my life, I want to be a great husband and father, to be a great infuence on others and to experience all the beauty and wonder life has to offer, but I don't have the ability to control what my life will be, other than what I do "today". "Now" is where my will affects the world, it's the "inch" that I can get my mind around. If I live well "today", and do this on a daily basis, I'll find in the end that my life was well lived.

So, if you want an extrordinary life, live an extrordinary day. I believe that's our birthright as children of God, and that's also what Screwtape fears.