Tori and Fallon always make the cutest artwork at pre-school especially on special days like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. I especially love the ones where they make something out of their little hands, feet, and sweet little faces. I can’t bring myself to throw it away so it is pretty much taking over my home office. Someday I need to work on a better filing and organization system for all of it. If anyone has a brilliant system I would love to hear about it! So evidently the teachers will periodically ask the children questions about their parents and incorporate it into their artwork. I am always amazed at the fact that it is usually spot on and have often wondered, is Tori really answering these questions or are her teachers just paying really close attention to the parents and keeping records of what we like and what we do? Hmmm, maybe they see us post things of Facebook? Last Thursday they sent home Tori’s Father’s Day card she created for Jeff which had several questions she answered about her father. One of them was “You like to watch Jesus” and I just cracked up because I knew that had to come from Tori.
The church we attend has several life groups they offer in the Fall and Spring, anything from Bible Studies to Supper Clubs, great opportunities to develop community and for the church members to learn, grow and serve together. It is one of my many favorite things about our church. I have an obsession for learning and my husband is always having to reel me in because I would literally have every night booked if it were completely up to me. Thus far, I have participated in three bible studies, Armor of God by Priscilla Shirer was my first and favorite bible study, life changing! Then last season I talked Jeff into doing the Dave Ramsey, Financial Peace course which we both loved and learned so much from, highly recommend it! Jeff is a good man, he is a believer and he loves God but he’s not like me where he wants to get up at 5am to read the bible or attend a bible study course and do bible homework every night. He is “all about that bass” so the majority of his free time surrounds around, playing his bass, reading a book about basses, learning something on YouTube about basses, going to guitar center to scope out basses…and his other favorite hobby is what are we going to eat? He is a bass nerd and a foodie…he likes to watch politics and Batman…and of course, he is a really good father.
This past spring season we took a course called Alpha. It is a course that explores the Christian faith in an informal environment, includes food and discussion, sort of a safe place to ask questions and share your thoughts. I asked Jeff if he would like to attend with me….after all, free food is provided and Jeff LOVES food. He agreed and as a result my husband is now obsessed with the Bible. This course really makes you think about some of the most important life questions, like “Why am I Here?” As a child many of us just kind of accept the standard life plan….go to school, graduate college, get a job, get married, have children, have grandchildren, retire and die. I think many of us have times in our life when we question, what is the purpose of all this? I was that child at a very young age who questioned everything. When I was in elementary school my father and I spent many nights in the bible debating scripture….usually when I was trying to convince him of something I wanted to do and he was trying to explain to me (using scripture) the reasons he would not let me. I decided in elementary school that I wanted to be several things, but the most near and dear to my heart was to be a cheerleader and a country music singer and to my dismay, those were against my religion. Now that I am a parent, I can see how it would be hard to explain to a five year old why they were not aloud to do those two things. Needless to say, there were many debates, and my argument usually was, “It does not say, thou shalt not be a cheerleader!?” AND “It does not say, thou shalt not be a country music singer!?” My daddy’s heart was in the right place, he only wanted to protect his baby girl. Now that I am a mother, now that I’ve lived in this world for 39 (almost 40) years, I completely understand his heart and his fears….but at five years old it made no sense. These days I find many of us are questioning if we even want to send our children to public school.
The other night, Jeff was sharing with me all the things he was not going to let the girls do and I started having flashbacks of my youth and realizing I have married my father, lol…of course it is only because he has the same heart my Dad did, which was to protect his little girl.
That said, I always struggled internally with many aspects of religion, there was so much my young mind could never make sense of and around the age of 25 I completely stopped attending church which lasted for about 6 years. Thankfully, I found my way back to my faith, I have a strong heart knowledge of God but intellectually there are things I still question. I have learned how to let those things go and not allow them cause division between myself and God like they did in my youth but there have been times when I am having a conversation with someone who also has questions and I have wished I had the answer…naturally, when I saw this course I was immediately intrigued.
I said all of that to say, since attending the Alpha course, Jeff and I have been using a variety of resources to study and learn but the bible DVD’s are one of Jeff’s favorite methods. The visual learning is much easier to comprehend. Lately we have spent our evenings watching Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, The Bible Series, The Bible Series AD, The Apocalypse, etc. So the girls have been watching Nick Jr. in their playroom…while we “watch Jesus.” I am not exactly sure how it started but one night Fallon and Tori came in the living room while we were watching and when asking questions I told them that we were watching Jesus and it has now become a common phrase in our home, “Mommy and Daddy are watching Jesus.” They actually enjoy watching with us but I send them to their playroom when all the warring starts, probably not good for little eyes to see men stabbing each other.
My father is in heaven now so I can’t tell him but I am so thankful for his heart of protection now that I understand it. I realize that his heart resembled the heart of our heavenly father. God is not trying to keep us from doing the things we want to do, he is merely trying to protect us from the evils in this world.
On a side note, I did actually win the cheerleader argument, after six years of debates. One out of two is not so bad ?
Fatherhood is a beautiful calling with great promise. Happy Father’s Day to my Daddy in Heaven.
Happy Father’s Day to my husband and to all the many Super Daddy’s out there!
Psalm 127:3-5 Behold children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.
Proverbs 20:7 The righteous who walks in his integrity, blessed are his children after him.
Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
