Taking action My friend, Bill, and I were visiting recently about a meeting he had with about 15 younger fathers and fathers-to-be. Each of them was attending the meeting to learn how they could be or become the father they wanted to be and knew they were supposed to be. The common request in the […]
Girl Dad Last Thursday noon at Northwest Bible Church, we had our monthly Fathers Forum. Joseph Hildebrand was our guest speaker. He was raised in a family with all boys and found himself married and the proud father of three young girls. Including his wife, four girls. Joanne and I were blessed with two girls […]
Preparing for survival Amazing how God works! I was asked to write a message about a comment I made to Bill Dotson, founder of Abiding Fathers. A comment to his devotional writing on Joel 1.3. “Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.” This reminded […]
Role of a Father Pop… is the name that some children call their father while others use the term, Pops. I don’t hear it as much today as I did when growing up. It is an affectionate title, like dad or daddy. Even grandfathers are referred to as Pop. Some might find it disrespectful, but I think […]
The Blessing When someone I just met tells me to ‘have a blessed day’, I know I’m most likely speaking to a believer. There is something very spiritual about the word; blessed, or blessing. Many families, mostly Christian, pray a blessing at mealtime. Rare to see that in public today. But pronouncing blessings is good […]
Being a father When you have a speaker at one of the Fathers Forum events, you assume that person is an expert. You expect that the person has gone through training to become knowledgeable. But I have fallen many times as a father. I have gotten back up by the grace of our Lord, Jesus […]
Friendship Recently, as I left a coffee meeting with my friend, Kevin, I thought of how grateful I am to have such a friendship, and how randomly it began. Five years ago a mutual friend in North Carolina called and told me his friend (Kevin) was moving to my neck of the woods, and asked […]
Family dysfunction Growing up was hard for me. My parents were both alcoholics and I never knew which version of them I would see when I got home from school each day. My two older sisters, Gail and Melinda, have been God’s great mercy for me. We all had to deal with the trauma of […]
A father’s love I was on vacation, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of a lodge or restaurant somewhere with my oldest daughter, Nal, in my lap. She was 2 years old or so at the time, and had her head on my chest, awake, relaxed as we soaked in the moment. An […]