When you think of your father--or the father of your children--what pictures play in your mind?
Probably it's not the wise, kindly, perfect dad from TV reruns like, " Father Kno ws Best." There Jim Anderson always did the right thing and knew what to say.
The trouble is real dads have to be a father without a script.
To keep wishing our fathers (or our husbands) would somehow morph into The Perfect Father is, well, a waste of time.
I fell into that trap, too. I spent a long time thinking, Why didn't he ... ? Why don't you ... ?
I didn't understand how my thoughts, spoken or unspoken, got in the way of my seeing what was right in front of me.
For example, my own imperfect father all his life loved my mother and his four living children. What's more, he faithfully loved and served the Lord all his life.
Why did I so long undervalue what was so familiar?
Becoming a father is the easy part.
It's being a dad, day after day and year after year, that stretches and grows a man. Love drives them to stay. Love that goes deeper than just-right words from a script.
Which brings me to the good man I'm still crazy about. We met when we both were too young to have good sense, and we fell hard. I couldn't have known that quiet, good-looking fellow would turn out to be the gentle, strong, patient man he became, but God knew.
Is he perfect? No. (Am I? No!) Have I ever complained about him or to him? Yes.
I think they call that marriage. A husband and wife growing together. Making allowances for each other's flaws. Riding out the storms ... together.
If I ever expected moonlight and rosebuds 24/7, I learned that's the stuff of Hollywood, not real life. Even for Christians in a good marriage, some days love brims over, other days it feels like a drought.
Commitment, marriage, carries us through as we love and grow together.
It turns out that makes regular deposits in an account, a marriage account. At this point in our lives we know it's true: The longer you invest, the richer the dividends.
Our family now includes four sons-in-love, as well as eight grandchildren. That makes at eighteen, but another (full-grown) is on the way.
Now as always, we are imperfect, every one of us. Each of us disappoints one or more of the rest of us at times. Like most families, we have our moments and we don't all agree on everything. That's okay.
We've learned that building closeness within a marriage, a growing family or a grown family does not just happen. It takes speaking love and doing love, step by stumbling step. It takes putting our family-ness before our individual preferences, because we are family, we are one.
The formula rests on enduring Truth, as usual:
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. --1 Peter 4:8
Blessings and JOY,
Lenore
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