The Fatherhood Theme Park

By Janet Morris Grimes –

Father’s Day. It gets me every time.

As a child, it was as if I was standing outside the gates to a theme park. I see all the families entering, hand-in-hand. Their Daddy clutches the tickets, counting to make sure he has enough for everyone. No one goes in alone. The lines are long, but the wait just makes it better once they click through the turnstiles of triumph.

Costumed characters welcome them with waves and hugs, their plastic faces etched with permanent smiles. But the smiles of the kids are even wider. Cameras capture a thousand photo moments before they reach the first ride. Even walking, together, is an adventure inside the theme park.

The scent of something wonderful wafts over me. Maybe it’s cinnamon. Fudge? Or corn dogs? Definitely a mixture of all of them; as if happiness were a smell. Ten different versions of carousel music provides the soundtrack to the day. Their day.

Screams of delight ruffle through the tall trees that hide the fun things they get to do. Just enough of a roller coaster taunts me from above. A train of silver buggies crank their way to the top. They careen down the other side, twisting in ways I didn’t see coming. Terror turns to thrill on their faces. They line up to do it again. Just because they can.

The sun drops behind the trees, bringing a breeze that didn’t exist before. Maybe it will cool off the sunkissed cheeks of those who are now leaving. Strollers are filled with too many shopping bags to hold the children who once belonged there. Instead, their parents carry them, asleep, draped across their shoulders. The leftovers of something sticky and wonderful still dribbling down their smushed up faces. They wear hats, or ears, or both; something they didn’t have when they arrived.

There expressions reveal the most perfect of days. Content. Exhausted .Together. As if whatever they anticipated before entering was even better than expected….

Peering through the bars is no way to experience a theme park. It’s impossible. I would have given anything to get inside. Not for the rides, the characters, or the ice cream. What I longed for, more than anything, was to be that little girl sitting on top of her father’s shoulders.

But you have to have a ticket to get inside. And I never had a ticket.

This is what it feels like to be fatherless. No matter how many times you watch, from a distance, you can’t imagine yourself being allowed to go inside.

But you know you are missing out on something wonderful.

PRAYER: Father God, bless the fathers and the families that You created. Give them strength to shine for You. Mend any broken relationships, and thank You for being such a loving father to each of us. It is because of You that we know how to love unconditionally.

Behind the Battle Lines

By Jennifer Slattery –

A few summers ago, our family spent a week in Branson. While there, we met a woman passionate about the life movement and we engaged in conversation. She told me a story of a pregnant girl she reached out to her. One day, she spoke with the girl’s single, impoverished father who asked her, “Are you going to be here to help pay the expenses once the baby’s born?”
What he was asking was, “Do you really care, or are we just an agenda, just a battle to fight? Will you, so focused on speaking truth, walk with us when we put action to your words?”

This stuck with me, and is something I ask myself every time I’m tempted to engage in a battle. And there’s plenty of battles to fight, aren’t there? If we want to, we can spin from one to the next, Bible thumping every unsuspecting passerby hard enough to leave them dazed … and enraged.

At Easter, we’ll fight the Easter Bunny. Come Christmas we’ll write articles, boycott stores, and give long-winded sermons fighting for the phrase, “Merry Christmas.” Then we’ll grab our picket signs and line every street corner in protest of abortion.

Oh, how easy it is to hold a picket sign for an hour or two. It’s much harder to become actively and consistently involved in a young girl’s life.

Here’s the thing, while we’re drawing battle lines, people are dying. And seeing a “Merry Christmas” or an “abortion is murder” sign isn’t going to save them. In fact, I often wonder if most often our long-winded debates fall on deaf ears because it is impossible, yep, impossible, for man to understand spiritual things apart from Christ (1 Cor. 2:14). There’s only one way to change societies, and that’s by changing hearts. And there’s only one way to change hearts, and that’s by bringing them to the cross.

Let me explain it another way. Or, better yet, read how the Bible explains it:

Romans 1:21-28
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.

You see, absence of God leads to depraved thinking. Many of the battles we fight are the result of depraved minds—deceived thinking. So how do you fight a depraved mind? You don’t. You introduce the depraved mind to Jesus and let Him change them from the inside out.
Think about it for a moment. What if every dollar and hour we spent on picket signs and protests we spent on outreach, instead? One-on-one, demonstrating, relationally, the love of Christ? How many lives would be changed? How many souls would be saved? And once those depraved minds were transformed by the love of Christ, how many issues would there be to fight. Folks, what if we’re merely chasing fires? Instead of fighting fires, would it not be more effective to start making people fire proof?

Now, I’m not saying never speak truth, but I am saying never let your truth mask your love. The next time you’re ready to fight a battle, before you enter into that debate, ask yourself, “Would I die for this person? Am I ready to stand by them and to walk with them?”

Jesus answered both questions with a resounding yes. A yes that drove Him to the cross.
I believe He wants us to offer the world the same answer, because truth without committed and consistent love is painful, destructive.

Repellant.

The Keys to my Heart

By Connie Cavanaugh –

Four drivers, two keys, one car – no matter how you add it up, it equals frustration. No one has the time to get more keys cut because we’re too busy hunting for the two keys we allegedly have.

I was working at my desk when my iPhone™ alerted me to a haircut appointment in fifteen minutes. Grabbing my purse, I lunged for the key rack. No key. Where was the one all by itself on a Free Willy key chain that I shared with our two driving daughters?

I ran to my youngest daughter’s bedroom and barged in. She was working a string of night shifts as her summer job and had to sleep during the day. Our encounter was not something I’d recommend in Good Parenting magazine.

“Where is the key to the Volkswagen?” I demanded.

“Mrrphh kublah, zzzz.”

I waded into a room that looked like it had been recently vandalized and began flinging clothes aside in an effort to find the floor and perhaps, the vagrant key.

Peeking out from under her pillow she moaned and mumbled, “I never drove the Volkswagen last, mom, you did! Please let me sleep!”

“If I drove the car last, the keys would be on the key rack!” I huffed, all righteous indignation.

Sitting up in bed with tears beginning to spill over, she reminded me she hadn’t slept properly for a week and now she probably wouldn’t be able to fall sleep again. She assured me she had nothing to do with the lost key.

By now, I was hopelessly late, frustrated and not totally convinced Willy wasn’t somewhere under the one of the piles surrounding me. I called my husband at his nearby office and he came to my rescue. He rushed into the foyer where I waited, ready to hand over his Volkswagen key when something caught his eye and stopped him cold.

“What’s this?” he asked. He stepped over to the key rack, bent down and picked up Free Willy from the floor directly below. “It looks like Willy made a break for it….”

“I am the world’s worst mother!” I wailed, tears bursting forth. Gerry was a bit dazed by my emotional reaction but he gallantly assured me that it wasn’t so. I managed to get a grip on my emotions long enough to endure the haircut while seated in front of an acre of mirrors that reflected the person I most despised at the moment – The World’s Worst Mother. Every barren woman I had ever known, biblically and literally, came to mind as I wondered why I was chosen to procreate and not them. I questioned God’s wisdom.

On the way home I stocked up on some provisions. Tiptoeing around so as not to reawaken my exhausted daughter, I set up a shrine outside her bedroom door with two 12-packs of cola and several gift certificates for free pizza. Atop this was a lengthy note confessing my grievous sin and begging forgiveness for blaming her for my own misplacement of the key. I left again to run more errands.

By the time I returned home hours later, ready to grovel, my daughter was already up and gone. She had obviously read my note, removed a can of cola and taken the pizza certificates. Ripping off a corner from the note I had written, she penned a response I’ll never forget: All is forgiven. Hey mom, you can yell at me again tomorrow. This could be a lucrative enterprise!!! xoxoxo.

I no longer questioned God’s wisdom. Thank God for children. They teach us grace.

Living Squinty-Eyed

By Cheri Cowell –

Sunglasses in Florida are just a part of life, but that part of life gets more complicated when you wear prescription glasses. This past Saturday, I knew we were going to be out in the sun all day and decided to wear my contacts, keeping my sunglasses on a string around my neck. This was a much easier method swapping between my regular glasses prescription sunglasses. The only real downside to this decision is I can’t really see with my contacts. Oh, I can see to walk, but don’t ask me to read anything. I end up squinting, a lot, when I need to read.

Jesus actually talked about living a squinty-eyed life versus a life lived with wide-eyed wonder.

This passage in Matthew approaches the idea of light and eyes from two different angles. One being the eye as the window through which light enters, and the other as the lens through which man visions the world. Jesus uses both interpretations to teach the lesson that seeing the way God sees is the only way to see truthfully. If you and I want to live a life full of light, we must do so without squinty-eyed greed and distrust.

PRAYER: God, I Praise You for helping me see things with more of a God’s eye view. Help me to live more wide-eyed and less squinty-eyed so I might be filled to overflowing with wide-eyed wonder.

“Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!” (Matthew 6:22-23 MSG).

A Dream

By DiAne Gates –

SCRIPTURE: “How precious are Thou thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with Thee” (Psalm 139:17-18 NAS).

A dream. A realistic dream. A dream that remains alive and vivid hours later. A week later. What about you? Ever had such a dream? Did you dismiss it? Miss it? Or forget about it?

In the early hours of last Tuesday morning, I had such a dream. I’ve never put much stock in dreams. But this one—so lifelike, so clear, so intense.

Monday night I went to bed mulling over a problem and the dream opened with me telling two men about my problem. One, a dear friend, the other the pastor of the church where I grew up—Dr. Homer Lindsay, Sr.

I finished stating my problem. Dr. Lindsay got up out of his chair, came over, and put his arm around me. He leaned close to my ear and said, “DiAne, you remember Jeremiah 29:11, don’t you?”

I replied, “Yes sir.” And we quoted it in unison, his voice recognizable and intelligible. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.”

The dream ended, my eyes flashed open, and a sense of comfort and hope that only God can give wrapped around me and carried me through the morning with a renewed sense of security and joy.

Until four A.M. the following morning when my husband woke me. “DiAne.” He spoke in a voice I’ve come to understand means trouble. “We have a problem. It’s my heart. I want you to drive me to Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.”

We were in Longview, Texas—two hours away from Dallas and Presbyterian Hospital.

I sprang from the covers and pulled on yesterday’s jeans and a shirt. “O Lord!” my mind raced and my heart quaked. “What’s he thinking? I can’t drive two hours with him. In the car. About to have a heart attack.”

Another thought zipped through my mind. Look at his color. I turned on the light and looked at his face. His color was good. Warm. Not the pasty gray of a heart attack. Immediately the dream of the previous night flashed across my consciousness and the peace of God took control of my terrified heart and I heard—drive him to Presbyterian in Dallas.

We made the drive in record time. And for the next thirty-six hours, the medical staff at Presbyterian Dallas accomplished the necessary tests to confirm that my husband did not and was not having a heart attack. His previous bypasses and stints were unchanged and blood was coursing through his arteries as it should be.

For once in my life, I rested in the promise God confirmed to me the night before all this transpired, and reminded Him of that promise during that two-hour drive Wednesday morning. I traveled through those thirty-six hours at peace with the knowledge God was in control—not me.

Almost a week has passed and I paused this morning to contemplate how many times I’ve missed or dismissed God’s instructions and warnings. Choosing instead to race ahead of the stresses and strains of life. Always running. Refusing to be still. Neglecting to rest in Him.

Father in Heaven, help me remember. Remember to listen and heed your Word and Your warnings. Remember that You are the same yesterday, today and forever. And remember that You think of me—all the time.

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