Sunday, February 19, 2012

Finishing Well --- A Challenge to All Fathers and Grandfathers

My wife and I joined with nearly fifty of our friends at church last evening to eat, of course, and  to then settle back in our lawn chairs inside our church and watch the movie, Courageous.   I had not seen nor even heard of the movie but was taken completely aback by the power of the thesis of the movie.  I highly recommend anyone to watch the movie but not because it is a pretty good  movie for in this cinema piece, it will pierce your heart deeply or at least it has mine.  So this is not a movie review but a few words of the pierced heart I have awakened with this cold morning while it is still dark.

The movie is about five men that are joined by circumstance with all having families with the daily struggles of any family. There is tragedy, there is humor, their is angst and there is joy and yes, there are tears but superceding the emotions is this mirror that gets pulled into the viewer's life to assess his or her own life from the perspective of standing tall, taking positions for the Lord and even through adversity and loss of family and friends, that position is the battlerground of life for the individual.  The movie is about YOU, the person, the man, the husband, the father, the grandfather all rolled into a single ball of determining what it really means to connect with a Sovereign God at the heart and the brain and to being courageous enough to be strong in the time of trouble and humble in the times of strife but all the time remaining vigilant to God's Purpose and Will as a man in your home. 

Many thousands of my students have heard me as I do each semester talk about how society's greatest failing, I believe, resides in the loss of the male role model in families today. In the thousands upon thousands of prisoners I have spoken with over the last almost ten years, common to the great majority of them both male and female, is the broken homes and terrible or nonexistent childhood of no father in the home from which they come.  I have written many times and spoken far more times on the detrimental reality I get to witness up close and personally daily in my teaching and other venues of the indications that are blatant in students and others with no foundation of a mother and father core to the family.  The family begins with the marriage of one man and one woman and there is no negotiating nor rationalizing that Biblical fact for it is boilerplate.  So when I see states almost daily legislating same sex marriage as normal, that is a travesty to the very priniples of what God sanctions as a marriage.  You may not like my words but those words resonate from a Biblical foundation and are irrefutable in principle.

But there was a line in the movie use three times about "finishing well" and that line has awakened me me this morning.  Perhaps it is because I have a birthday coming up or we had two our grandkids Friday and Saturday or perhaps God has awakened deeply inside me a cavern not entered before in my heart and my soul but regardless, my words are the reflection of my heart and my life and my future to, like the movie, this is my Resolution for my remaining tomorrows and I am putting it to words and sharing for sharing is accountablity so I am asking for you to hold me accountable, please.

Coming from a two parent home, in today's standards, is something I should relish.  But being in a home that was a backdrop to decades of alcholism in my father, untold thousands of dollars wasted in the consumption of alcohol and the ensuing seemingly constant fear, worry and chaos of a family plagued with conflict between my parents due to alcohol has marked me deeply to this day in so many ways.  First, I detest alcohol and have next to zero toleration for people that choose to pour that poison into their body and their minds and especially the colateral damage to family and friedships that result.  Secondly, it is the scarring of one's value system that lasts a lifetime when reared in an environment of fear and embarrassment in doing everyting to hide the reality of your life from friends and other family.  Thirdly, when that time comes when you have to step up and assume the responsilbity for a wife and a family and a career, you realize then, in seeing others, that your values are different, your reactions are different and thus fourthly you begin to realize the contridiction that comes from seeing and feeling those differences in you and those around you for that provides the coloration of the scarring from your childhood of fear and constant worry about my mother's safety, the almost complete void of affection and displays of love. No, I am not whining but painting the picture of my life's beginnings.

For me, the amalgamation of the paragraph above produced a man that is an overachiever, drives too hard, expects too much, pushes too strongly and for too many years sought recognition as the driver of my emotions; all of those are clincal traits of the eldest son of an alcholic father and you can know, I have studied the finding many times.  Some that those triaits in me are really good but at the aggregate have caused me to take steps in my work, in friendships, in relationships and in decisons that have are simply wrong and misguided and thus hurtful to many in my pathway of life.  I have been disappointed but worse I have disappointed many people in my life.  I have been hurt but worse, I have hurt many people in my life.  I have been shunned by a father more bent on drinking and the band of other drinkers that congregate but I have shunned my core responsibilities as a husband, father and grandfather. So to all I plead Guilty as charged!

Many of you reading this that know me well would probably never think of me in the light of the above paragraph but I am the one that knows the real me and thus the consequence of bad choices in my life.  There are those that know me that would think I have lived a charmed life of accomplishments, experiences and nothing could possibly have been wrong in my walk.  But then I also realize that each of us are the product of our childhood in so many ways.  I see me in both my children. I see me in my grandchildren. I see me in me!  The great news is that me approaching sixty-four years old in a couple of weeks is a me that knows the joy of serving a God that loves me.  That me is a me that cherishes the challenge of a new set of minds each semester that provide rich opportunity to exhibit to them a man that cares about their lives and choices as much as their academic performance.  My teaching has evolved as the most fertile mission field I could never have imagined; what a blessing!  My singing is another component of my life that has gone from feeding my ego to seeking to touch a heart and thus a life in a song or a story about how that song has touched my heart and thus my life.  

In seeing my three grand daugthers as they grow and mature and in seeing how much they love their Poppy in fixing my hair, cleaning my finger nails, scratching my back with brushes, reading to me and letting me love them and kiss them and tell them how much I love them; I also realize they need more, so much more from me and that is part of my Resolution to be more for them. 

To my two phenomenal grandsons, Logan and Noah, so much alike but wondefully different, I am so blessed to know how much they love their Poppy and show it in so many ways.  But I realize I have not shown those young men that too soon will have relationships and families to lead how much I love them in deed and example as a God-driven grandfather.  Thus, part of Resolution is to be more of a Christian example to those boys for they are blessed to see that example in their dad's and need to see in more from their Poppy in being more available and approachable as the days go forward.

If you are going to have a clean house, you have to, well, clean the house.  My house is not as clean as it needs to be for I need to be more of a husband to my wife.  I need to rid myself of friendships and demands that redirect energies and efforts away from the bounty of a family that loves me and needs me in every way.  My heart must commit to more ways to show in not only word but in deed how much I love and wish to be an example of a Godly father and grandfather to my children and grandchildren. 

There was a wonderful piece in the movie when a father of a teenage daughter took her out for a "date" and committed his love to her and presented her a ring of that commitment. I want to have "dates" with my grand daughters so they can see what a grand father treating them with manners and showing them they are special is normal and they should expect that as they form their value template for a husband.  I want my grandsons to want to share with me the little things they love and enjoy and that they want me to be part, more a part of their lives and that I can find the time to have a guys night frequently with a meal and movie or a basketball game. I want them to remember me as their Poppy that loved them in ways they will strive to establish with their sons and grandsonds long after I have left this earth.

All of these aspiration are just strokes on a keyboard until energy is brought forward; kinetic energy that moves and changes things. This life really is about legacy and example I have learned as my hair has grown whiter and my heart has been more cleansed by a God that can cleanse a heart as nothing nor any one can cleanse.  Ego is a powerful, at times overwhelming, force.  Far too many people are driven to satisfy that ego which is defined as what I think you think about me.  Far too many years my entire being was aimed at constantly feeding that ego.  In that feeding were created relationships and friendships built on the sands of ego feeding and we all know what sand does when the waves come!

So in closing, I resolve to be a much better husband to my wife, a much stronger father to children and their spouses and to be an example-setting Poppy for my five grand-gifts through deed and not just words or gifts.  They need to see me be me in them and their lives; I commit to finding ways to fulfill that template that creates a value net that will last them a lifetime thus their legacy begins with my brushstroke on their lives.  I want to finish well! Think about that for a moment ... to finish this life well but not for what others may say about you, that is pure ego, but for the touch of your love in action and example on the lives God has entrusted me with biologically as well as the thousands of lives I get to touch in my teaching. That is my challenge and my desire is to be an example in deed for generations to come in something they saw me do or said or exampled in action that they will process its impact on each individual life specific to that life at the moment in time.

In proofreading this I realize I have penned my obituary for it is my desire and my hope that my written Resolution this day will be something somebody will have kept and can read at my funeral to those there be they many or few will know a side of my heart and hope not enough people know in me today.  Life is not about living. Life is about readying those you brought into this world are made better prepared for the challenges of their responsiblities as their time of service come barrelling toward them all to quickly from my example.  Life is about legacy! I want my legacy to be pure in the sight of my God and my family.  This is my Resolution .... I will be the best husband, father and grandfather, teacher, singer and friend I can possibly be everyday!  I want to FINISH WELL!

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