I titled this \u201cBeing a dad is a marathon\u201d. It\u2019s the greatest race. I should probably parenthetically suggest that I\u2019m on mile 14. I\u2019ve got a long way to go. Dads are vital to kids\u2019 development, as we all know, and the absence of dads is what\u2019s scarring society.<\/p>\n
Let me pray first. \u201cFather we love you. We thank you for the institution of fatherhood. I\u2019m grateful for it, never having perceived or conceived that I might be a dad. I thank you for all that entails. I thank you for the struggles of fatherhood. It\u2019s a privilege to be a dad. It\u2019s a privilege to be a husband and now a granddad. It\u2019s an amazing thing and it\u2019s a privilege to know you are our ultimate Father. Thank you for that. Because absence that, my life would have been a lot different and I think different would have meant bad. I thank you for the dads here, for the men that stand in the gap every day for their kids. I pray for the dads here, recognizing even though distance may prevent as much interaction with our kids as we want, they\u2019re still our kids. I don\u2019t care if they\u2019re married or whatever they\u2019re doing. They\u2019re still our kids. Lord, we love you and we thank you for today. I pray that the things I say today are not my words but yours in how you\u2019ve impacted me. In Christ\u2019s Name.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been married 38 years. I\u2019ve known Kelli for 41 years and I\u2019m 61, so I don\u2019t know what that math means, but it means stability. I think that is a critical element to a lot of this. I\u2019m going to tell you about some influences I\u2019ve had in my life- some likely and some really unlikely. Absent my heavenly Father, for a period of time, I didn\u2019t have a father.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any greater role on earth than being a father. I\u2019m convinced of that and there\u2019s not a day I don\u2019t look forward to receiving a text from Whitney who\u2019s our oldest – \u00a033, got three kids, my son-in-law\u2019s an associate pastor – \u00a0where I\u2019ll get up, look at my phone, and it will be my daughter: \u201cDad, I love you. Have a great day\u201d. Or my daughter Hillary leaving me a voice mail in her big gushing voice: \u201cDad, I love you. Have a great day\u201d It makes me melt. It makes me melt do say it.<\/p>\n
I do I have a regret, I\u2019ll admit. I didn\u2019t have a traditional father-son relationship, which I\u2019ll unpack in a minute. It\u2019s a void that I\u2019ve had in my life. Men have filled it. Bill has been an unbelievable model and mentor to me. Marshall Edwards has been a great friend and my father-in-law who turns 87 in a few months has filled a lot of the gap. There\u2019s still a little bit of a gap there because my real father and I never got along, for reasons you\u2019ll understand as I go on.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to chase through chapters of my life with you as it relates to fatherhood and I\u2019m going to leave out some pieces, but I think you\u2019ll get the gist. There\u2019s a verse in Hebrew 12:9 that says \u201cMoreover we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live?\u201d I can honestly say for a long time I didn\u2019t respect my earthly father. My dad was probably my greatest influence in my life in sort of a backwards way. Not for the reasons you\u2019d expect. He did the diametric opposite of what most of us in this room would do.<\/p>\n
He passed away 30 years ago and I still haven\u2019t completely reconciled with everything there, I confess. It\u2019s something I think about and pray about and there\u2019s still some emotion surrounding that, which I\u2019m glad because when he passed, there wasn\u2019t a whole lot of emotion. My dad was married 4 times, died at 57. He might have been married 14 times had he lived longer. He was fired from a number of jobs. My mom said that he had a job for every year they were married. He made a million and lost a million. He borrowed money that I knew he never repaid. I won\u2019t belabor, but he was really tough on my mom.\u00a0 I saw some things that kids shouldn\u2019t have to see. I knew he\u2019d had numerous affairs. I didn\u2019t really realize it until I was in my teenage years and came to realize that a lot of the travel he was on was not appropriate travel. I think he regarded my brother and I only when it was convenient. You say from all of that \u201cWhat did you learn?\u201d Well I do just the opposite. I feel pretty good about it. He was an example and I often wonder why the Lord placed him in my path because he seemed to have a pretty miserable existence. Was he my sacrificial lamb? I don\u2019t really know and I am still searching though all those reasons and thinking back. A lot of those memories fade.<\/p>\n
I have to tell you, in 1984 Kelli was pregnant with Whitney. My dad had remarried for the fourth time. I was in Dallas and my dad called me and said \u201cLet\u2019s go to lunch\u201d. I always felt like my dad wanted something from me. There was an ulterior motive. Remember Jojo\u2019s on Beltline Road next to LaQuinta? I remember it like it was yesterday and it was 30-some years ago. I remember we ate lunch and my dad looked at me and said \u201cI need to borrow $5,000\u201d. This was 1984 so $5,000 may have been what I had in the bank. It was meaningful money. I spilled a glass of tea. I was shaking so bad. I was scared to death.<\/p>\n
I went home and told Kelli and she sobbed for hours. She said \u201cYour dad is going to end up on our front porch. This is the worst thing in the world\u201d. And I had a choice to make that I don\u2019t think a 30-year-old should have to make. I knew he wasn\u2019t going to pay it back. If he\u2019d just said \u201cWill you give me $5,000?\u201d that might have been a different story, if he\u2019d been honest with me. I had a choice to make. I thought about it; prayed about it. I could either have a relationship with my dad or my wife. It couldn\u2019t be both. She just could not handle that pain or that fear. It was really just fear. Maybe I\u2019m just a callous son of a gun. I called my dad and said \u201cI never want to see you again. You lied to me. You weren\u2019t intending to pay the money. I don\u2019t ever want to see you again. I\u2019m done. We\u2019re done.\u201d I had a choice to make. That was spring of \u201884.<\/p>\n
In the spring of \u201888, his fourth wife called me and said \u201cyour dad\u2019s dying\u201d so I saw him a few times before he passed in 1988. It was platonic at best. I feel like if I had met my dad on the street we would have said \u201chello\u201d but probably wouldn\u2019t have had a relationship. We had zero in common.<\/p>\n
I lay that out because all of this shows that there was somebody there watching over me.\u00a0 I had the propensity to be just like him. I didn\u2019t emulate him, but that was my model. I had to believe there was something more and something better. I knew that the Lord had better.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019m not saying that I\u2019m completely over it. I had a little bit of a pity party going on that I just kissed my dad off, so now what? What do I have? Who do I turn to? My family had become very estranged over the years because of the divorce. My mom got remarried. My dad was off doing his thing. My brother and I had really grown apart. So, when I hearkened back to the verse I read you about human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them, that isn\u2019t true for me. He didn\u2019t discipline me and I sure as heck didn\u2019t respect him.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to read you something from another testimony that I\u2019ve given. It says \u201cIn this all out match against sin, others have suffered worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through.\u00a0 So don\u2019t feel sorry for yourselves if you\u2019ve forgotten how good parents treat children and that God regards you as his children. My dear child, don\u2019t shrug off God\u2019s discipline but don\u2019t be crushed by it either. It\u2019s the child he loved that he disciplines. The child he embraces, he also corrects. God is educating you. That is why you must never drop out. He is treating you as dear children.\u201d When he said \u201cnever drop out\u201d, I had dropped out. \u201cThe struggle you\u2019re in isn\u2019t punishment, it\u2019s training and the normal experience for children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? We praise our parents for training us and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God\u2019s training so we can truly live? While we were children, our parents did what seemed to be best to them\u201d \u2013 And maybe he did do what was best to him. Maybe he had a different paradigm he was looking at things through. Maybe the best thing he could do was distance himself from me or put the hand up because he knew how bad an influence he could be on me. \u201cBut God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God\u2019s holy best. At the time, discipline isn\u2019t much fun. It always feels like we\u2019re going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely because the well-trained find themselves mature in their relationship with God\u201d.<\/p>\n
What he did probably drove me closer to the Lord in sort of weird way.\u00a0 So that\u2019s been my greatest influence as a dad. The second piece is the anticipation of being a dad. I was scared to death of being a dad. Was I prepared? I said my father-in-law was a great example. My wife grew up in a great home. Her sister and her parents are still alive. They\u2019ve been married 67 years. Unfortunately, my mother-in-law doesn\u2019t know where she is right now, but she\u2019s still alive. So, I sought a lot of guidance.<\/p>\n
Something that really struck me is a friend of mine\u2019s wife, a few months after we had Whitney in \u201884, came up to be and said \u201cI\u2019m so proud of you\u201d. I said \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d and she said \u201cI thought you\u2019d be the worst dad in the world. I thought you\u2019d be horrible.\u201d I said \u201cWhy do you say that?\u201d Because she saw an older me, and I\u2019m not saying that I\u2019m not still brash and arrogant and can get in people\u2019s face, but she saw a side of me that wasn\u2019t fatherly, that wasn\u2019t nurturing. And there was a change that I can only attribute to the Lord.<\/p>\n
I read voraciously and I have to contribute a lot of kudos to James Dobson helping me to prepare for childhood, prepare for daughters, I\u2019ll tell you in a minute about preparing for adolescents. And I mean, I didn\u2019t just do book learning, but I was determined not to be my dad, so I was on a sort of crusade. On one hand, I was revolting against the father that I knew, that I didn\u2019t think modelled well and I was trying to merge that with what the Lord wanted of me. I was trying to reconcile the two so I was in a bit of a conflict.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, having a wife like I do in Kelli keeps me grounded and she\u2019s patient with me, Lord knows. She was a levelling influence. Through the first pregnancy, it really turned into excitement. It\u2019s funny, I\u2019m looking at Whitney in the nursey and my father-in-law comes in and puts his arm around me and says \u201cWell, boy, you\u2019re not going to be at the baseball fields\u201d because he knew how much I liked sports. But that was significant. This was a guy who had clubbed feet that he had fixed at the hospital in the 1930s. He has one kidney and he was born deformed. He played football at Poly Highschool in Ft. Worth. He\u2019s a tough old bird. But he\u2019s been there for me. He\u2019s 87 years old, lucid as ever. He\u2019s been great.<\/p>\n
The first lesson I learned about being a dad, first hand, was my daughters were already smarter than me the minute they were born because they had me wrapped around their little finger. From that day forward I realized I was leading from behind. My wife and I planned that I would do the early morning feedings, and that really helped me out. That was the most amazing thing. I recounted some of those experiences at both of their rehearsal dinners, things that I had never told them. I was saving those for that time and it was a blubber fest at both rehearsal dinners because I remembered the things that happened during those 4 AM and 5 AM feedings like they were yesterday. When I talk to young dads, I encourage them to participate in the motherhood side of things too. Don\u2019t just participate in the fatherhood side. Nurturing is not just mom\u2019s job. She had the baby in her womb for 9 months. They know each other already. They might recognize your voice, but you\u2019ve got to get to know them. It\u2019s one of the best things I did and I still remember it almost 34 years later.<\/p>\n
One of my concerns was \u201cdid we treat them the same?\u201d and I think we did. We have two tough daughters. Whitney is sweet and pleasant and meek and Hillary\u2019s in your face. So I think back and my brother and I were as different as night and day. One thing that really helped me out a lot was being a youth counselor at the Methodist church we were attended. I got to work with kids from their confirmations through their senior year and when I was done, my oldest daughter had turned 13, so that was nothing but providential. One thing we did that\u2019s worked well for us through now is I took them both on Dobson\u2019s recommended adolescent weekend. Greatest thing in the whole world. It ratified our relationships. It gave me the courage when my daughter Whitney was 17, while she was studying \u2013 now she\u2019s a pretty girl \u2013I went up to her and I said \u201cwhat do you think guys think about you?\u201d and she said \u201cwell I\u2019m nice and I\u2019m sweet\u201d. And I said \u201cAbsolutely not, don\u2019t hate them for it. There\u2019s hismones and hermones going on. This is what they\u2019re thinking, so don\u2019t provoke it.\u201d And I was pretty graphic when I explained it to her. But what allowed me to do that was when she was 12 years old, we went on this unpacking weekend for three days in Austin, TX with James Dobson about how to deal with teenage kids and to this day I assure you they both remember that weekend, they both have the letter I sent them to set up that weekend. And that\u2019s what given us, at almost 34 and almost 29 years old, we can talk about anything. Sometimes I say \u201cGo talk to your mom about that that\u2019s a little TMI\u201d.<\/p>\n
But being a granddad, there were a lot of lessons learned. I can\u2019t share them all, but I can tell you that the most gratifying thing is when my daughters seek advice from me. I feel a little bit confirmed. Now with grandkids, my oldest daughter asks me to teach my four-year-old grandson things. She\u2019ll say \u201cDad, I want you to show him this. You showed me this and I want you to show him this.\u201d That feel really good because I\u2019ve been careful not to emasculate either one of my sons-in-law who are terrific. I\u2019ve learned a lot from them. One is an associate pastor at a church and he has a love for the Lord and a love for people. I have another son in law that I\u2019ve known since he was 7 years old. They didn\u2019t date. They were like brother and sister and one day they figured it out and they\u2019ve been married four years. So, I\u2019m a privileged man in that regard. I\u2019ve got sons-in-law that model for me. They\u2019re better men than I\u2019ll ever hope to be. I\u2019m anxious for my youngest son in law to be a dad. He\u2019s chomping at the bit. I think that\u2019s probably next year.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t like to give lots of advice, but as a dad and a mentor to young dads, I have two two-word phrases: \u201cLove them\u201d and \u201cbe there\u201d. Forget the rest. I\u2019m not saying it doesn\u2019t matter, but those are the things that matter most to me.<\/p>\n