Dads

Yesterday, I heard a sermon.  I feel like a lot of my blogs start out that way.  Does that mean I’m unoriginal?  Maybe I just really like sermons.  Either way, I felt like writing.

The sermon was about how critical relationships are in our lives.  How they’re more important than tasks and achievements.  And how we really stink at them.  This sermon was a gem (http://www.orthodoxsermons.org/sermons/relationships-101), so give it a listen if you have some time.  But the part that I started thinking about today was a quote that the speaker included on the handout.   The last part of the sermon was called “Steps to building a strong family” as we ultimately recognized our familial relationships to be the most important.  Step 6 said to “Build your marriage.”  And the quote directly below Step 6 read: “The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”  And as I was listening to Life of a Salesman by Yellowcard today, I let my mind go to work.

As many of you know, father figures were hard to come by while I was growing up.  And I think that kinda messed me up a little.  As a kid, I never had a real life example of how a marriage was supposed to work.  I didn’t know what it meant for a husband to treat his wife like a queen.  I couldn’t grasp the whole two-becoming-one thing.  The concept of “laying down one’s life for another” was pretty foreign.  And I definitely did not have the role model of love that the quote above alludes to.  So as I got older, I went from thinking that marriage was a painful waste of time to the idea that marriage was a utopian world of bliss.  Basically, the two extremes. 

I don’t mean for this entry to be a pity party, so please don’t feel bad or sad at what I’m saying.  I’m sharing this with you all today because I’ve recently realized how much I can’t wait to be part of a family where no one’s missing.   Where there’s a mom, a dad, a wife, and a husband.  And the kids know what love is because they saw it firsthand.  Kinda like that verse, “We love because He first loved us.”  That’s what I want to provide for my kids. 

And if you’re one of those kids who got to witness a father love their mother, stop whatever you’re doing right now (ok, finish the blog first) and thank God that you had that opportunity.  You, my friend, had a head-start at learning to love.  Don’t take that for granted.