Went from a Son to a Father

Went From a Son to a Father 

“My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.” Proverbs 3:1-3 (ESV) 

This morning I am going do something that I really haven’t done before and that is comment on one of Bill Welte’s Freedom Fighters. I mean who does this guy think he is? Just because, every once in a while, Oswald Chambers hit’s him in right between the eyes with something doesn’t mean he gets to do to me. All kidding aside Bill really touched my heart with an F.F. on a recent Saturday morning. It had been a rough week for me as I just started my new job, ran our Church’s soundboard during our Vacation Bible School at night and had to deal with my son’s knuckleheadedness from a distance. 

My son serves on the summer staff at America’s Keswick and he is well liked by those around him. But every so often he does something…just because and I can’t figure out why. My son committed an act of knuckleheadedness recently that lead to him receiving the appropriate disciplining. Now of course he did not notify his parental units that he was going to commit this act of said knuckleheadedness and that this appropriate discipline was going to create a bit of a stir in our home. So as he was home recently, sleeping off his mother’s home cooking in the wee early morning hours, I sat at my computer and checked my e-mails, opened the one I get from Keswick and then I read Bill Welte’s F.F. titled, “The Prayer of a Father.” POW!!! Right between the eyes!! 

It was ten days after his eighth birthday when Kevin watched me enter the Colony and I was ashamed of myself because of what I had become to him…a broken father. And even though during my stay at the Colony he managed to keep his young self together, I still felt my failure to him. My own father had his short comings as well. He was heavy drinker, smoker, somewhat distant to me and I swore I was never going to be like him. In that I had succeeded I wasn’t like him…I had become far worse than he ever could have imagined. After my time at the Colony I was able to go back to my father and share what happened to me but in time I lost him to the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease and then he passed away during an operation that he needed. 

In Bill’s F.F. he listed all those things that I pray my own son will take to heart. To be strong enough to know when he weak and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid. Proud and unbending in defeat, humble and gentle in victory and that to know himself is the foundation of all true knowledge. To be reared not in the paths of ease or comfort but under the stress of challenges and the spur of difficulties. To master himself before he thinks he can master other men. To stand up during the storms and have compassion for those who fail. To reach into the future and not forget the past. To quote Bill here directly, “And after all these are his, add, I pray, enough sense of humor so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself seriously – a touch of humility, so that he will always remember the simplicity of true greatness – the open mind of wisdom, the meekness of true strength.” 

I will never know if this was a prayer of my own father as he wasn’t exactly the church going type but I do know that he wanted me to better myself. I could see that as he enjoyed being with his grandson after I came home from the Colony…on my daughters sixth birthday (she is my “chip off the ole’ block”, just so you know). So I guess in the long run I will have to come to terms with the fact that there will be times where Kevin is going to be a knucklehead. It will be his learning curve but I am still going to love him in it. After all, he is not only my son, he is stewardship from my Heavenly Father and that in itself is AWESOME! 

Oh by the way, the part of Bill’s F.F. that brought it all home to my heart is the following…”Then, I his father, will dare in the sacred recesses of my own heart to whisper – “I have not lived in vain.” Santo!! – Chris Hughes is a graduate of the Colony of Mercy and a regular Freedom Fighter contributor 

GPS – God’s Positioning System: Jeremiah 7-9; Psalm 25; Proverbs 29

Compass Pointers: Love is seen in what it does. Gladys Aylward

Navigation Rules to Memorize: Level 1: Proverbs 30:5-6; Level 2: Proverbs 30:5-9

Anchored to the Rock: To pray well is the better half of study. Martin Luther