I was invited this morning to a Five Star Man prayer breakfast at a local church by my good friend and next door neighbor Adrian. Five Star Man is a Christian ministry that seeks to demonstrate through examples, how Christian men should be leading their lives. The approach is to bring Christian men together and through prayer and shared experiences, they can come together to understand what it means to live a Christian guided life.
The members of the program are local church members and from time to time they have special guests to speak to the men. The program holds several gatherings a year and at each gathering of men, the topics are always centered on the principles of living your life as a Christian man and as a Christian husband and as a Christian father. You listen and discuss with others how you should live your life.
Today's message focused on the qualities of being a good father. The associate minister handling the service was joined by four other church members in delivering the message and handling the questions raised by those in attendance.
The minister's message was a simple reaffirmation of the principles that every man knows or should know (through experience) when it comes to being a father. The minister's message covered every aspect of raising children, from setting examples, to administering discipline to being actively involved in your children's lives. And the four other lay ministers reinforced the message with personal stories of their own struggles to be good fathers.
While listening to these men's testimonies, it occurred to me that the things that I had learned as a father, could be distilled down to a few very simple realities. Hard learned, but none the less simple. Caring for and about your children's lives being foremost in my mind as the number one and first importance to being a good father. Summed up another way, I was reminded of my years as a youth sports coach and something I was told long ago about coaching kids.
I was told coach, "these kids don't care what you know. What they want to know is that you care." Simply stated, if there is one element missing in the lives of a lot of today's children, that missing element in my opinion is caring parents. I saw it in the lives of children who played ball for me. Their parents were barely there for them if at all. They dropped off their kids at practice or games, or farmed them out to other parents to look after while they pursued other interests. They rarely attended one of their kids games and they never attended a practice. Subsequently, I have seen how several of those kids turned out as adults. In essence they were the products of a two parent broken home. Their parents lived together, but these parents never cared one iota about their children's lives. They fed them, clothed them and sent them to school, but that was where it began and where it ended.
The bottom line, parenting is no different than a lot of other things in life. You get out of it what you put into it and when you ignore your children and you never have time for them, someone or something will have time for them. And as a rule, that someone or something will not turn out good for them in the end.
I have four adult children now and I look back on the plays and the dinners and rehearsals. I look back on all the practices and all the games and all the tournaments that my wife and I attended and cheered on. I look back on it now, because it is long in the past, but I have seen how my kids turned out and all in all, we didn't do too bad as parents. They are all good kids and young adults and approaching middle aged adults now.
So......if there are two main principles to raising children in my opinion? First and foremost, let them know that you care and you do that with love and attention and interest in their lives. Next, be part of their lives every day and always make the time to be there for their smallest endeavors and their greatest challenges. They will remember that you were there (and so will you).
Lastly, remember that raising children is like nailing Jello to a wall. You do your best, you hammer away at character and principles and the myriad of things that you know are important. Time and again you tack the best qualities of individual character and honesty and truthfulness to their walls and time and again you see your efforts seemingly fade away without any acknowledgement or appearance of understanding. But you never give up, you persevere and you push forward and you continue to drive home the lessons of life that you know will one day be important to them. And in the end, you hope that some of it sticks.
I remember something that my father told me one day when I was a teenager. He said "son, when I was sixteen years old, I couldn't believe how incredibly stupid my father was and when I turned twenty one? I couldn't believe how much he had learned in five years" It took me a while to get the point of that message and I can't tell you exactly when it was that the light bulb came on in my head, but it eventually did register.
So as a father of four and as a man who stumbled and failed on many levels, somehow I seem to have pulled it off and made it through it all. I have four good kids and four good productive Americans. There have been times when I have been more than disappointed in each of them and there have been times when I have been bursting with pride for each of them. And I am proud to say that the latter times far outweigh the former times.
There aren't any real books or manuals on fatherhood, it's something that just happens as you go along and if you are lucky, you get it right in the end. When I was thinking about it today as I sat and listened to these other fathers recount their own personal struggles, I had several thoughts that came to my mind, not the least of which being my tender age of twenty three when I first became a father. Some how I muddled through and managed to see my first two kids turn into good level headed adn honest people.
By the time my second set of children came along, I was in my thirties and I most certainly thought that I had this fatherhood thing all figured out by then, but I have to admit that I didn't. I ultimately learned that being a father is a full time job and it is an ongoing learning experience and I believe the only way that you ever know how you did, is once it is all over. Life is like that. It gives you the test first, then it teaches you the lesson. All in all, I probably didn't get an A, but I think I did pretty good, all things considered.
Which brings me to the realization that ultimately intrigued me today as I finally put it all together. Most people have seen Kevin Costner's classic film Field of Dreams, where he portrays Ray Kinsella, an Iowa farmer inexplicably possessed to build a baseball field in the middle of his corn field. And most people will remember the brother in law Mark who throughout the film, was badgering his sister, (Annie Kinsella) Ray's wife, to sign over the farm to him and his partners, or else face foreclosure.
After Ray's daughter falls off the bleachers and begins choking, 'Moonlight' Graham steps off the field and becomes his old self, Dr. Archibald Graham in order to save the little girl's life. As he is dusting her off "good as new" and everyone is thanking him for what he has done, it suddenly dawns on Ray and his wife that Doc Graham can't go back. Having stepped off the field of dreams, he is stuck as he was in old age, "but no regrets."
While that realization is sinking in with the audience, Mark suddenly has an epiphany. He suddenly looks out at the field and remarks: "When did these ballplayers get here?" And everyone begins laughing, both on screen and in the audience.
As I sat listening to the discussion of parenting and fatherhood in church this morning, I too had an epiphany. I recalled the countless times I had told people how raising children was like trying to nail Jello to a wall. You hammered it and hammered it all your life and you hoped that some how some of it would eventually stick. But for all your efforts, more often than not, all you could see was the Jello sliding down the wall with little acknowledgement for your efforts.
Then one day your kids are grown and you are having a conversation with them and something that you once believed you would never hear come out of their mouths is said. It just trickles out like that long line of cars approaching Ray Kinsella's farm at the end of the film. And that is when you suddenly look around and say to yourself: "where did all this Jello come from?"
It's taken me over thirty five years to suddenly see the Jello that is firmly nailed to their walls, but now that I have seen it, I have to admit that it is very much like walking out and onto my own field of dreams.......
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