Jesu- #231

I have laborede sore and suffered deth,

And now I rest and draw my breth.

But I schall come and call right sone

Hevene and erth and hell to doom;

And thane schall know both devil and man

What I was and what I am.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Fathered by God



A few weeks back I got the chance to go to Ransomed Heart Ministries Wild At Heart Boot Camp in lovely Fraser, Colorado. I had been trying to go to this for several years and it would seem like one thing or another would keep me from going- we were short on money, I couldn't take off from work, you name it and it kept me from going. This year was looking no different than the past few years. With the help of my wife's cousin, Jonathan, I got accepted into the camp. I got out my planner and marked off the days in question and worked a little extra this summer to pay for the trip. For some reason, the email notifying me that I needed to send payment didn't show up and at three weeks before the camp I was making frantic email and telephone requests to Ransomed Heart hoping to get my spot back. God intervened on my side (yet again). With my reservation in the bag the only thing left to do was pack. And then...

The night before I was to leave, Natasha's dear Uncle "Doc" Torsten Seubold passed away. I was torn, but at the same time I knew that Uncle Doc would rather I go to receive something from God (that I badly needed) than to stay here. Natasha refused my pleas to stay and do what I could for the family. Grass needed to be cut, houses cleaned, and, of course, I wanted to be there to weep at the loss of our family's patriarch. I was weak, feeling compelled to stay and compelled to go. I got up at 4:00 AM and started driving to Tulsa. At the airport I called Natasha and pleaded again with her that I would come home in a heartbeat if she would say the word. She batted away my complaint and urged me to go. So, at 8:00 I boarded my flight and left the rest to God.
The Boot Camp was invigorating and I came home refreshed and filled with revelation about who I am and what I am meant to be. This feeling was so much in this direction that I haven't really talked about it with anyone yet. I wanted what I received to soak in and become part of me, and that had not happened in the few days after the camp. I'm now getting to that point.
With this in mind, it was tonight as I was mowing Uncle Doc's office lawn that I think the import of one of those lessons began to hit home. In fact, the lesson began before the camp. It was the night that Uncle Doc passed away. Like I said earlier, I felt both compelled to go and compelled to stay. Natasha and I talked about what I should do and she wanted me to go. "We'll be fine," she said. Alright. OK. This is what my wife was telling me. I believed her. Kind of.
For the last 6 years of our marriage I had been a whole lot closer to being an LPN than a husband. And for a good deal of that time, this is in fact what Natasha needed. But once a guy, and a hard headed guy at that, gets into some sort of role, like "nurse", he might find it difficult to let go of. I did. And to be perfectly honest, I've not completely relinquished that role of nurse just yet, but I am getting better.
Natasha tells me to go and trust that everything would be OK. So I boarded my flight in Tulsa with the suspicion that the my little bunch wouldn't fall apart without me there. Not a belief, just a suspicion or maybe it would be better to say a dread.
The dread is not that I wouldn't be missed, but that I'm not needed. Someone else will be there to hold my wife while she is crying. My kids will shuffled between the grandparents as needed and they will be fed and loved on. Someone will cook dinner and clean the kitchen and haul the trash out to the curb.
There comes a point where we fathers need to realize that we can't be there for every situation that arises for our family. There are areas where my knowledge and skills will have played out and my son will have to go to someone else for help. For fathering. I am not a one-stop never ending resource fatherly wisdom on all subject areas. If my son comes to me ten years from now needing to know how to wire a light with two switches, I'll have to send him to my neighbor down the street. I'm not an electrician.
So what happens when a father is gone? Or when you had no father or a very bad one? You find fathering in other men, and if one of those men is wise, he will teach you that God is your father. He will point you to Ephesians 1:4,5 to show you that you (all mankind) were chosen before the Earth was formed to be adopted as sons by God, and teach you the full import of this idea.
I have been very fortunate in my walk in this earth-suit to have had some very good fathering done by many different men. Doc Seubold, the man whose bedside I had just been weeping beside a few days ago, was in so many ways one of those men who I considered a father to me. Whatever sonship I feel pales in comparison to what his children feel at this moment, and the loss I feel is infinitely minuscule to the loss Josh, Jonathan, and Jordana feel in these days, as well. But in his going on to be with the Father, I have lost a father as well.
The lesson I have learned, with the help of Morgan Snyder of the Ransomed Heart team, is that I need fathering from other men, but mostly, I need it from God. When I get in a bind on some project that I am not qualified to do, I need to ask my Father for wisdom and assistance.
Morgan said, speaking to his son, "Son, I've tried for three years to be your father." He realized that he was grossly unqualified for the task of fathering a son. At my church, Cornerstone, we have an axiom, part of which says, "If it's all about me, then it's all up to me." I, like Morgan, am grossly unqualified for the position of father to my two children. What I should be teaching them is something I learned some time back but didn't have the term to express the concept. What I need to be teaching them is to let God be your Father. Let God be our Father. Morgan's son said to him that he (Morgan) was his brother really, if God was his father. It is an idea that is so simple that a child can latch right on to it. In my fatherhood to my kids, I need to be showing them my reliance on the Father. Because, if it really is all about me, then it really is all up to me. And I am becoming more cognizant everyday that I am in as much need of fathering as my kids are.