Sunday, June 16, 2013

Lessons for fathers

I do not claim to have fathering figured out, and I cannot yet be considered fully successful as a Dad because the oldest of my kids is just 12, so how they might turn out is still in question. That being said, I have studied parenting a lot, and I have a great Dad as well, so I wanted to share some lessons for Dads that I have learned and that I try to live out.

1. Give your kids to God, because they do not belong to you anyway.
  • I once heard Dennis Rainey, a family life specialist, say that his goal for his kids was that they become independently dependent on God. I adopted this as my goal as well. This starts with a recognition that while I have a responsibility to love, discipline and teach my kids, they are not really mine in the first place. They were created by God and should be pointed toward him, not me. So this idea helps me to recognize that I cannot keep them and also helps me understand where they should be pointed.
  • Your kids were made by God for God, so point them in his direction, so that they have the best chance to become who he made them to be.
2. Let God change you into the man you should be. 
  • One of the best things you can give your kids is a good example. More than any other person your kids are going to look to you for their priorities in life. If you are consistent, honest, and growing, it is much more likely that your kids will be too. If you love Jesus, it is much more likely that your kids will too. In fact, kids take their first (and sometimes lasting) image of God from their father. If he is loving, kind, and consistent, that is how they will view God. If he is distant, absent, or demanding, that is how they will see God.
  • This is a scary one for me because I know how much I still need to grow, but I am encouraged by my own father who at 77 is still learning and growing and being an example for me.
3. Love their mother.
  • Guys get married and stay married. A loving and long lasting marriage has great benefits for you and your kids. It takes work, but it is worth it. Loving and prioritizing your spouse even over your children is the best thing for your kids. (Ladies this is true for you too.)
  • Even before Traci and I had our 10th anniversary (we have now had our 15th), we were making plans for a trip on our 25th. It is not a question for either of us whether that will happen as long as we both stay healthy and living (and we save enough money!). For us marriage is for life. It has not always been easy and I know it will not always be easy in the future. But for us and for our family, the security of knowing that that person can be trusted to be their when we get home helps our kids have a safe place to develop.
  • I know that for some of you this ideal is not now possible, but we should at least know the right goals toward which we strive.
4. Discipline your kids in love.
  • There are two parts to this one. First, we need to understand that correcting kids is not the opposite of loving them, as much as they may protest and as hard as it is sometimes. Kids need to learn boundaries and if you do not discipline them then they will not learn self-discipline.
  • Second, discipline is not about you. It should not be done out of anger or frustration, but rather out of love and thinking out their needs. For instance, when one of my kids disrespects their mother it drives me crazy and makes me mad, but those emotions should not be my motivation for discipline. The motivation is that it is bad for my child to selfishly disrespect one in authority over them, and so my discipline should focus on helping them see their sin and the harm it is causing. Now that may mean some temporary discomfort for them, but I also talk to them about why it is necessary and what they have done wrong specifically. 
  • If I discipline out of anger, all they see is my anger. What they learn is not how wrong their actions or motives were, but how to avoid Dad's anger. 
  • Admittedly this is a lesson I have failed at a number of times, but God has helped me over the years to be more intentional in my discipline.
5. Be present with your kids.
  • Spend time with your family. Your kids need you more than stuff. If work does not allow you to spend time with your family, change shifts or get another job. If that means you take less pay and have to do with less, then take less pay. It is that important.
  • If you don't like spending time with your kids, do it anyway. You will find that the more you do it the more you will enjoy it.
  • Also, you don't always have to spend time doing their activities. Let them come along with you in your activities. If you have to change a tire or replace a window, let them help. Yes it will take longer, but you will get more accomplished then just changing a tire. You will be building character for yourself and your child.
6. Pray with and for them.
  • This goes back to my first point. Even if you did everything perfect your kids would still make mistakes and get hurt by others in this hard world. Pray for their hearts and character. Life will bring problems, and my prayer is not that my kids will be saved from all problems, but that through them they will learn to trust Jesus more and become more like Him all the time.
  • Your kids will go away and be independent someday (if you have trained them right!), so learn to pray for them because eventually you have to give them into God's hands anyway.
Final thoughts.
  •  If you have gotten this far in this post then you probably know my recent history, namely that my oldest son Micah died of illness last year when he was 11. God recently gave me some comfort in the fact that his life was not a failure nor was my parenting. Micah was a talented, smart, funny young man, who knew Jesus as his savior, and was very loving toward his mother and I and toward others. We miss him terribly, but I know that he lived a life that was more and more being oriented toward Jesus. Finally, I know that the end of this life was not the end of his life. I literally got to be there when Micah went to be with Jesus, so in all the times before when I had prayed to give him to Jesus, I saw the successful conclusion of his young life here. It was successful because the point of this life is not to make something of yourself or to live a long life, but to give yourself to Jesus and Micah had done that. My prayer for my other 4 kids is the same. That they will as long as they have breath give themselves to the God who loves them.