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Jun.18,2017
Fathers Day. Day of Choices.
In this western society of ours, it is a strange and perverted phenomenon that seems to give Fatherhood the element of Choice. Many times the exercise of choice to the shame of a man. Dude chooses to head out the back. Dude chooses to treat his children in ways unsuitable for pets. Dude chooses to hide himself in anything and everything he can find besides engaging with his offspring. Dude never understands the shame he’s brought on himself until it’s too late.
My own experience is nothing like any of those. When I found myself as an infant alone at my maternal grandparents’ house, it was my dad who chose to fly at a moments notice, in uniform, across several states to come pick me up, fly me home, dry clean the uniform whose primary battle that day was my penchant for motion sickness – and to establish by whatever means he could a home for me.
As I’m spending this Fathers day with my son in the hospital again, I was speaking with my dad about his condition, which at one point the other day was very grave. Dad wanted to encourage me by pointing out how over the years we have fought for Our son.
My blind response, “What else would we do?”
It took a moment, as it sometimes does when wisdom speaks through me instead of from me, to take in the significance of the mental process that had just transpired. I have done what I’ve done because that is what I’ve known.
And so, by extension, I hope to pass this experience on to others. Does it sound self-congratulatory to speak about my choices this way? I feel differently. Someone has given me a cup of nectar, and not only do I pass it on after I’ve taken my share, but I tell the next person how good it is in hopes they too will taste, and be nourished, and pass it on to the next.
Mothers Day is all about loving what you’ve been given, a God-given instinct that can’t be refused easily.
On the other hand, Fathers Day is a Day of Choosing. It is a day of choosing to love that which you could walk away from, hiding from your gift in the folds of society’s hedonism. Mothers Day is a celebration of our humanity. Fathers Day is observance of “that of God” in us.
If you have a father who has chosen to offer it, take that cup of nectar, drink of it deeply, and with personal humility share it with those who need it most – your children. It will sometimes confuse them. It will baffle them sometimes. If the child you have chosen was not born to you, it may raise in them suspicion sometimes, of ulterior motives, of somehow trying to take from them, instead of giving. It is hard to speak well of something you’re doing without sounding conceited – make sure you remember that the gift you give doesn’t come FROM you, only THROUGH you from another, greater source. Do your best to ensure that from this day of choosing forward, your child only knows this. Smother them in your choice so that when the day their child throws up, or disappears, or tantrums, or falls desperately ill, they don’t have to even think about the choice. Give them cause to boggle, “but what else would we do?”
The thing in fatherhood worth taking from it is, oddly enough, only possible by giving. There is nothing else. There is nothing your child has that you can have by taking. This requires faith. The blessing only exists by giving.
Fatherhood is among the greatest of gifts a man can receive.
Choose it.
Give the gift.
Then, and only then, receive it.
