So after staying up until dawn talking with a young Christian about his very tragic life and his new hope-filled spiritual life, I crashed at 8 am. Then at 9 am Father’s Day began with a boom! Sean and Conner came bouncing in with a breakfast-in-bed, hugs, cards, and irrepressible excitement about their plans for an action-packed Father’s Day.
Oh the joy of Father’s Day…
Why Complain?
But it’s impossible to complain about such tender mercies, of course. And it broke this old man’s heart the way his mostly-grownup boys worked earnestly all day (and night!) to edify him. It’s heartbreaking because so many Fathers Days are now gone, and so few remain like today. But I’ve seen more than my share, and what a joy Bryan brings this day, four (five?) years now.
My heart was pierced by all my crazy “kids” who gave me a “Thanks, Dad!” picture…
What a day! Fun-in-the-sun (golfing!), fine cuisine (Bob Evans carryout), useful gifts (travel alarm clock), hilarious repartee (they “take it” when the old man clowns around–and dish it back!)
If you watch Dirty Harry with the Millennial Generation you must explain “the old days” (70s) when criminals were treated like victims at the dawn of our “Politically-Correct” era. It explains why everyone cheered Harry’s “dirty” tricks: “Feel lucky today, punk?” Yes! Blow his head off!
But the Millennial Generation is not quite so inflamed by P-C nowadays.
Fathers Day for Millennials
Then one of our newer, crazy live-in teens popped in. He couldn’t understand why a “Hallmark-manufactured-holiday” was such a big deal. He was also strangely indifferent about his dad today. Oh what an education that was, because he isn’t from a broken home, and his dad qualifies as a decent father by most people’s standards. This is Millennial Generation talk?
Actually, it hit me last night watching the remake of Yours, Mine and Ours that my boys may not see Fathers Day celebrated like this when they get to my age. It wasn’t a blockbuster movie, but it was charming, and the kid actors were heartbreakers (for a parent-audience).
Their dad sacrificed the power and crowning achievement of his Coast Guard career so he could love and serve his wife and their 18 kids. A post-millennium movie with morality?
I so badly wished this was commonplace beyond Hollywood dreams, but it delivered a sharp smack of surreal Postmodern naivete: can a Postmodern, single mom actually pull together 10 ethnically-diverse kids into the loving, serving family the move portrays? I’m skeptical. Whose ethics win? The Postmodern mom couldn’t answer that question in the movie, even with Hollywood’s best imagineers at work.
The Converging Winds of Goodness…
Then I was overwhelmed by the the Body of Christ and the love of Christ which shaped my family so much. It really wasn’t great parenting, even though we parents can certainly muck it up or make things better. What broke my heart watching that movie was the realization that Darlene and I were carried by strong winds of great fortune. I know this because I see how few enjoy such privilege.
It was the love of Christ and the Body of Christ which showered my handicapped firstborn with grace at his graduation and 18th (and many other) birthdays. They supported him all these years for no good, deserving reason. I’m witnessing it again for my handicapped youngest son.
Kyle too received far more grace than he could ever find elsewhere. I believe the typical Tribal American family life would propel Kyle into a lifetime of tyranny. But the Body of Christ is building him into a sacrificial servant of Christ, which he longs to become (and is becoming).
It was also the crap of our crappy fellowship that saved them! Yep.
Our fellowship is a great “House of Pain” where cross-currents of love and hatred, war and peace, miracles and defeats are blended, high-speed. My kids are spoiled by good fortune, and too often they behave like royalty in search of a kingdom. Fortunately, the strains and heartbreak of this fellowship restrained their exaltation.
They were at the center of random emotional storms passing through our fellowship. They were variously persecuted because their parents were crack-head Jesus-loving-radicals. They were bereft of many weekends and nights because mom and dad were saddled with various ministries. I could build a long price list, but God does it better:
“we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus…” 2 Corinthians 4:8-10 (NASB)
It sounds melodramatic, but it isn’t, really. They were saved from their (self-perceived) royal blood by “the dying” thing, as Paul says.
Kyle told me early and often that living sandwiched in-between Sean and Connor was the best place for a princely prince to learn gratitude and sacrifice. Dar and I were crazy to move those boys away from Columbus and friends and so much vital support, especially for my handicapped boys.
The unsettling maelstrom of ministry put us in a precocious position: poop or get off the pot!
And now they’re great poopers (in my view), nurtured by the most sacrificial, loving woman ever produced by God’s afflictions, perplexities, persecutions and “strike-downs…” She is an unappreciated, solitary-female saint surrounded by coarse male dogs, but her soft, nurturing heart never grew calloused or resentful. Darlene is like this:
10 Who can find a virtuous and capable wife? She is more precious than rubies. 11 Her husband can trust her, and she will greatly enrich his life. 12 She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life. 28 Her children stand and bless her. Her husband praises her: 29 “There are many virtuous and capable women in the world, but you surpass them all!”
30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last; but a woman who fears the Lord will be greatly praised.
Proverbs 31:10-12, 28-30
Listen Up, All You Fathers-to-Be!
You soon-to-be-dads (Mark and Alex, you listening?) — I just can’t resist! It is Father’s Day, after all. Can I lecture just a little? Why not?
What a “storm of the century” fatherhood is! It is a wondrous storm. Everything makes sense with fatherhood. It crystallizes why God bothered to create us, and why He paid the personal price for our rebellion at the cross.
I know one thing: the “new and living way” of a Christian family is found in the following…
Love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8
Wait, don’t lunge at this…
I always thought 1 Pet. 4:8 was teaching that godly parenting is loving parenting. This is true, of course, but dangerously incomplete. It is a view often held tenaciously by Tribal Christian families, despite the depressing evidence against it, that loving Christian homes produce loving Christians.
What the verse actually says is overlooked:
8 Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. 9 Be hospitable to one another without complaint. 10 As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. 1 Peter 4:8-10 (NASB)
If victorious parenting relied on Darlene and I to provide the love which “covers a multitude of sins,” then our kids would be doomed! Quite the opposite, parents are usually the ones to perpetrate a “multitude of sins!”
What liabilities our parenting inflicts on defenseless, unsuspecting children! Decades pass before the kids learn how to successfully (not sinfully) defend themselves against our countless wrongs and deep, ingrained patterns of selfishness unique to our familial genome. (I now understand without malice why I and three other McCallum boys were so terribly iconoclastic.)
“It’s THEM Again!”
Fortunately, it was the penetration of our Christian home by the Body of Christ which brought enough love to “cover a multitude of sins.” Much like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, our lives were disrupted, but also healed.
I grew up and was discipled to “be hospitable…without complaint.” Dar and I came dangerously close to losing sight of this at times when we pulled into our Tribal shell.
But somehow the Lord just sent more “Body Snatchers” to drag us out of our mole hole.
To be hospitable “without complaint” is difficult, I confess, but still there is a spiritual compensation which outweighs the price: “each one has received a special gift… employ it in serving one another.” The gifts and love of other Christians relieved Darlene and I from the pressures of covering all those “multitude of sins” alone. What flawed love would those kids know had it been up to Darlene and I?
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