It's Daddy! It's Daddy!!!

With the end of primary school, Sunday school also comes to an end, and now both kids attend their own teens' service. So yesterday, I brought the younger one around and told him where to meet the sister after service and their respective cell groups to take the bus home.

Along the way, the older one asked me how conflicts with schoolfriends should be handled, and what to do in a situation where you don't know anyone (she was heading to a prayer meeting but both her leaders were not around).  After sharing my views, she turned to her brother, without a hint of sarcasm, and said, "Daddy's always so inspirational".  Ah, the words that a father of a 14/15 year old longs to hear :D

With the kids settled down at service, I went back home for my afternoon nap!  After a good zzz, I hopped over for a quick dinner at my mum's place, then walked to church for evening service.

From a distance of about 50m, I saw, in the twilight, two figures walking towards me from the bus stop.  Then, one of the figures started running, and about 30m away, he turned back and yelled, "Che Che, it's Daddy! It's Daddy!"  Then he ran full pelt and LEAPED into my arms!  He's already 12, coming 13, so you can imagine how I had to brace myself!  Then he jumped off, yelled "that was FUN!", ran back 15m, then SPRINTED back for another bone crunching leap and hug.

These are the things that make a Dad's day.  Then they went up for dinner at my mum's place, and I headed off to service, with my heart light!

I say these things not because I'm a great Dad, but because I'm thankful that my kids appreciate their imperfect father.  I've missed concerts and performances over the years, though as few as possible.  I get caught up in my work and have uttered the dreaded "not now" to my kids at home many a time.  I do try, in my own faulty way, to show them what's important to me - obeying and serving God, loving family, and being excellent at work, in that order.  But I do lose my temper, I do get impatient, and I do get lazy.  Yet despite all all my failings, my kids still think I'm great.  Amazing.

The joy that I feel when my daughter looks to me for guidance and asks "What should I do Daddy?", and when my son looks to me and says happily "it's Daddy!", must be similar to the way that God feels about me when I look to Him for guidance, and when I delight in being with Him.

I'm forty plus, but that night at service, I literally had tears in my eyes, because I felt the same way my kids felt - I have a Good, Good Father.  And He always has time for me.  I know who He is, I know who I am, and I know whose I am!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life as a pie chart

Image
Someone told me recently about a "life exercise" in which one compiles all the stuff that makes up your life, and puts it in a pie chart.  So let's say for me, something like this. The idea is to visually demonstrate to myself that, in the event I lose one of these things, then I can see that, hey life is not so bad, that wasn't such a big deal.  Say for example, if I suffered a blown ACL, and couldn't run or play basketball any more, like this: At first blush - I'd say, hey, I still have my wife, children, parents, career, church life - so, chin up, things are not so bad.  Pretty good life visualisation tool to bring some optimism back into play! ... But what if, a month later, something happens at work, and boom, career gets sidetracked, I lose my job, or get put in cold storage somewhere, like this: Oops, now only half my life is left!  With only half of life's meaning left to me, what do I do? And what if something happens to
Read more

Bullying? Stand up!

Image
When I was a kid, I remember being bullied a fair bit.  I was small for my age, bespectacled, shy.    The teachers didn't help by putting a target on my back by making me Vice Head Prefect.  I would get my stuff just taken away from me by bigger kids, dragged out into the field to be tickled until I collapsed (much less fun than it sounds), and pushed into the storm drains.  Not all the kids were full-blown bullies of course.  But I remember some of them standing by, and politely holding my spectacles (so they wouldn't be broken) while the bullies did their work on me. Most of this stopped when I got to secondary school, where a much larger proportion of my fellow students were now just as nerdy!  And of course I grew up too.  I don't really look back on those days with any kind of animosity, because I think it never occurred to me that it was unusual.  But I do think my experience made me a bit more sympathetic about people around me who are being bullied. When you
Read more

Family AND Team

Image
I heard an interesting viewpoint this weekend. A family is not inherently a team. Hmm.  Sometimes at work, often in church, and most of the time at home, you hear people say to each other that we are family. And often, we really are. We care for each other above and beyond transactional matters.  It matters to me when my colleagues and cell group members (and of course my actual family members) go through illnesses or family issues or work challenges. I root for their success at presentations and projects and relationships. I care about what they care about, even if it has little direct impact on my own life. In a way, a family is sort of an amalgam of people who support each other in pursuit of each member's personal goals. For example, as a father, I support my children in their academic, career and ministry goals. But where they go to school, the grades they get, and the careers and ministries they build - they're really their goals, not mine.  Ditto for my role as a church
Read more