Two images set fixed in my mind always. One projected by my hopes and sweat and prayers, the other locked forever in sweetest memory. Both hold beginnings. One day the projected image will exist. My job is to make sure it is not some maladapted version of what I see and hope for now.
For each of my daughters, I hold two images. I will forever remember the first moment I held them as newborns sucking in life and breathing out identity.
Each time, my heart melted completely different, like it never had before. As their little eyes opened they couldn’t see much or make sense of what was all around them. They squirmed and cried announcing arrival and beginning. That is when the second image began to form: who they would one day be.
The two images fixed in place hold each other in supportive tension.
God had much to do with their first beginning and arrival into the world. I have a momentous and deeply impressionable role in what I think of as their second beginning when they stand on their own cutting their own way in life.
For now, I am protector and guide to them, and if what I read about father/daughter relationships holds true, years from now at the end of their lives, I will be on their mind. That’s such a heavy and strong thought that keeps me praying and shaping them with what I learn and know. So I try to envision the end of their lives, what they might think, remember, have lived through and most importantly how they may have made it.
Did they live well? ...risk all for dreams and desires? ...love deeply and forever?
What I can’t handle is the opposite possibility of what I hope for in their lives.
I never want them to live hemmed in by fear, insecurity or whatever clings and pulls them closer to the ground, remaining small and insignificant. The thought of them at the end of their lives regretting, lonely for dreams formed in youth, loved incompletely and somehow misaligned from what we once hoped for, absolutely breaks my heart now.
This heartache serves to be a very capable guide for me as their father. Beyond parenting strategies and developmental challenges, those two images fixed together in my heart in cause and effect relationship, uncover resolve and undying determination to love them despite difficulty and guide them through precarious. Courage and god-like bravery defy any distortion of who I hope them to be in life.
After all, God made me for this, for them. And them for me. I’m sure of it.
As a parent, it is likely easy for you to fall into ruts and routine cut into your relationship with your kids by fear. Fear that our effort will one day reach a threshold where they overcome by normally accepted statistics and hormonal changes. I hold tightly to the truth that perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4:18.
As God perfectly and completely loves me, fear has been displaced. His love teaches me to love fearlessly as I love and teach my daughters the same.
At the end of their lives, when I’m told I will be on their minds, I want them to still be breathing in life and exhaling identity. The feeling of satisfaction and love deeply rooted in their hearts as they think of their own kids that they helped steer and establish from the heart that I helped form within them from the beginning of their lives.
“We are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”
from “Ulysses” (Tennyson)
In moments heavy, thinning in the heat of an everlasting day, when I’m not quite sure my heart has clarity to see and feet the fortitude to move another eternal inch, an error clouds thought every time. I slow to a crawl, forget what got me this far and act like a child or alien to difficulty. As if this particular time, in all its weighted glory, is the first time my heart feels strain, beats quicker and shallower in the face of difficult circumstance. I doubt ability, lose sight of tomorrow and beyond and shrink to the size of the moment ...or smaller.
Gone are any traces of faith or courage, valor or bravery, displaced and decayed by worry, fear and everything wrong.
My mistake is to value trust as an option. Trust is never an option. That is, it should never be reduced to only an option.
Maybe you’re like me in that trust is yet to mature beyond the grasp of circumstance. If so, I’d imagine you, too, wrestle with not trusting enough, often responding in difficulty with a heart bent toward doubt and uncertainty.
At any given moment straining, doubt could certainly be seen as a much higher value in my life. Because they remain opposing options, to trust or to doubt, the one with the higher value, the one that makes more sense and seems inevitable, wins.
Perhaps trust needs no measuring at all.
Maybe trust does not need to be matured to any certain size, but constantly present in the heat of a day burning out of control just as in the cooling calm of an afternoon breeze whispering comfort.
Time and circumstance will weaken you. You will fall. You will fail.
Strength comes to those who allow the slightest bit of trust to mix into doubt clouding. From their knees they rise again standing in a moment much too big. Where they have failed, they are found.
All we can ever really do is trust.
Proverbs 3:5-6 :: To trust God with all of your heart requires nothing more than the confession that you are not enough; not your actions, nor your ability or heart.
No moment is ever too big for a heart abandoned to trusting God fully.
Years settle deep. Lines carved within the years weaning, faded into the work resembling him. Days push back. Bones creak at the sound of dreams demanding.:::::::::::
In regard to dreams (i.e., life’s ambition), there is a foretelling difference between those who wield their dreams, owning and shaping them perfectly and others who are slaves to their dreams, owned by them.
::slave
Dream, ambition, goal, reach and the pursuit of, owns the whole, the man. Happiness and value are found in the work and accomplishment.
::owner
The man remains a man apart from the dream.
Each man wants to make a difference, find significance and give cause to their existence. No one aspires to exist as a shadow. We reach because we want.
One day we find it, the dream. A worthy pursuit deserving of our effort and affections. One that gives meaning to our days and strength in our steps. The discovery (and pursuit) of the dream finds us, unlocking more of ourselves than we’ve ever known. We work longer and harder, tirelessly accomplishing and reaching. During late nights and earlier mornings a diligence to the dream forges and we are connected to a sense of meaning that touches our soul.
Tirelessly we work and trade time for another step closer to the dream. We work. We think. We rethink. We obsess ...and craft and tool our dream.
All the while accomplishing more and drawing closer, somewhat.
We immortalize the dream and the dream becomes us. Our words, our thoughts, our relationships, all owned by our dream. Somewhere along positions are traded and the dream drives us. All that we are and hope to become hangs on and is validated by the dream.
The dream is not enemy.
For the past two weeks, I’ve been much busier than usual. We moved into a new house which required time after my work day and ran late into the evenings. There are still mountains of boxes to unpack. After long days, the last thing I wanted to do, or was mentally able to do, was write. Work on my book halted even though first round editing is now complete. My blog stagnated and quieted to an activity-less silence.
I felt diminished and guilty, even depressed. Not a word written.
As a writer, still insecure in the dream and admission of being an actual writer, not writing for two weeks caused all sorts of emotion, most of which pointed back to some derivative of failure. Thoughts of shelving the book unfinished and abandoning plans of my writing career were constant all because my dream wasn’t being given proper attention.
Here’s the reflective bottom line. Never should your dream, no matter the brilliance or genius, own you ...or your time ...or your worth.
If your dream owns you, your affections, your motive, your emphasis and all desire, you are slave to it; a thought, an image or a goal, your master.
You must own the dream in every way.
I need time to rest from my pursuit and determine the pace at which I will run after and toward it.
My dream is writing. Yours may very well be something different. Whatever it is, it is yours: own it. Don’t serve it.
I miss home. The smell of fresh cut grass. Air heavy and sticky hanging on shoulders slowing time and holding memories. Playing outside until it’s too late to see. Laying under stars still brightly shining. The ease of day holding tomorrow comfortably and capably when what is yet to come comes in dreams pleasant and waiting; never rushed to get too, for the day still is where you want to be. The way life used to put together and make sense.
I woke up this morning missing the life I once knew, wanting to go home, forget about where I am, lose myself in her familiar embrace. I say her of home because she embraced me well.
I am a sojourner moving at the speed of yesterday’s sound. I once felt found. Now, I’m more lost. The path buried beneath leaves of a season past.
Hope rings in my ears a bit louder, clearer and sweeter, with each passing day. And now, I’m just walking from there to somewhere every step forward further and closer defining what will be.
It’s not c’est la vie. We are not bound to life’s swing and circumstance. The path is not life’s to lead. It’s ours to follow.
I heard a friend share a promise yesterday that I no longer believed in. Until he reminded me, at least.
“...that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.”
Promise. It’s the magic of home, why all makes sense, why you would never want another day too badly.
All roads of promise always lead home. No matter the detour, impasse or difficulty; the gaps in life you don’t want to remember and the days you wish would burn away, promise reigns over all whether you bow in thankful exhale and submission or break and run in anxiety and fear.
I still miss home today. Days will rest easier again. Until then, God’s promise to keep at it guides in the up and down, the twisting and falling and the reach to summit.
Recently I scheduled time to sit down and share a meal with a friend of mine who scales the level of tremendous in my life ...and in the lives of many others. My buddy John shines no less than brilliant in life. The absolute best thing about him is you get the sense that he is as sure as he is unsure of what he is doing in life right now. It's not that John is unclear or unknowing. He clearly knows what he wants to do and must do in life. How he does what he wants to do is the challenge that he daily rises to. Day in and day out, John has tirelessly thought of questions to ask on how to launch a ministry and help lead men out of hurt into hope and tomorrow. In this way particularly, John encourages me deeply without even being aware.
John was a child who tragically lost a father and grew to become a man defined by hurt and abandonment. Yet through God's grace and miraculous forgiveness, he became a father refusing to lose his own children. John simply is a tremendous man with a dream too big for his shoulders. That's why he trusts God fiercely.
And this trust has led John to start a project called, The Father Effect.
I'd like to introduce my friend John Finch to you and let you in on the high points of our recent conversation captured in the 5 questions below. After reading through our conversation and hearing John's heart, watch the short film he made and share it with your friends.
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One on One: interview with John Finch
What led you to walk away from stability in an established 17 year career to pursue launching The Father Effect?
Everything began to change when I hit one of the lowest points in my life. February 20, 2009, I reached a point of real brokenness. I was an alcoholic and on a particular work trip I scheduled to see a customer, who was also an alcoholic, we stayed up drinking until about 5am. I somehow arrived back at my hotel room and laid down for about an hour before I had to be up to catch an early flight back to Dallas. As I drove to the airport, still drunk, I remember thinking that if I got pulled over, I could get busted for a DWI. I also went into confession mode like countless times before, telling God that I would never drink again. All the while, I knew very well the next time I hit the road it was game on. At one point on my way to the Nashville airport, I said out loud to God, "you are going to have to slap me up side the head to get my attention". And that's exactly what happened shortly afterward. February 20, 2009, our world came crashing down around us - both of my in laws were diagnosed with cancer, I had knee surgery, the stress on my relationship with my wife and kids was being strained because of all of my travel, and I had recently walked into an emergency room because I thought I was having a heart attack, just to name a few of the things.
I don’t think God did those things to me, but I believe he surfaced in the midst of them and caught my attention. Little did I know that that was only the beginning.
Nearly a year later at the beginning of 2010, God had really started to stir my heart. Part of what God was impressing upon me was the fact that I was gone so much - two or three days a week - for as long as I had had kids, and it had started to take a toll on my family, both my wife and kids. I also began to get a picture of just how massive a problem absent fathers had become to most everyone that I knew. One weekend in early June of that year, I starting praying for God's direction and guidance about this stirring. I asked God to give me some kind of confirmation. I determined to spend the weekend praying and devoted to quality family time. At the end of a long day on Saturday, laughing having great time together, I put them to bed and walked back down the stairs to pray and think a bit more. Within 5 minutes, my middle daughter came down the stairs with the oldest not far behind and she simply asked with tears in her eyes, "Dad, why are you traveling so much?" Before I knew, they were both crying. Neither one of them had ever asked me that question. There was my confirmation from God. I assured them both that I was going to stop traveling and be home more. The next week, I put in my two weeks’ notice.
Tell me about the first day of your new life. What was it like?
The first day of my new life was freedom and healing like I’d never known before. This quote that I once came across describes the feeling best. "I was homesick for a place I had never been." I cannot explain it other than I felt God in every detail. I felt as though I had a new perspective about everything. I had a father wound and needed healing. One simple question that God posed to me turned my life upside down. Almost instantly I discovered forgiveness. Really, I think forgiveness found me in the question - "How could I be so angry, bitter, and resentful towards a man who did not know how to be a dad?" It was as if God had given me a new pair of glasses that made me see everything in a way that I had never seen them before. My relationship with my wife was new, my relationship with my kids was new, and even the world was new. All because the baggage of my past had been lifted from my shoulders. I had spend 30 years of my life living in the past blaming my dad for all my troubles.
Three days after I left my job to launch the ministry I met a guy named Charlie. Charlie was the car transporter who had come to pick up my company car from the job I had just left. Within 5 minutes of conversation, Charlie asked me what I was going to do now that I had left my job. I told him a little bit about all that I had been through, and he began to cry as he told me the story about his father. Charlie said that when he was 5 years old, his dad took him to a ballgame with some of his dad's friends. He said that his dad bought him a huge bucket of popcorn and bragged on him to his buddies like he was superman. Charlie said that he doesn't remember much after that because his dad left the family. For many years, Charlie said that he would get this strange feeling of peace when he went to the movies and bought a bucket of popcorn. In his mid 60's, some fifty years later, he soon realized that it was all because of that day at the ballgame with his dad.
What are the most valuable lessons learned or truths realized since starting The Father Effect?
I am continuing to learn so many things that it would be impossible to list them all here, but here are a few of the important things. I am not alone, we are all broken, and I could be a better father. Satan had convinced me for 30 years that I was all alone and that I was the only one going through the struggles and issues. Once I realized that everyone else had issues and struggles too, I didn't feel alone. And when I came to understand just how widespread the Father Wound was, I didn't feel alone, understanding that everyone has issues and are wounded in some way because of the experiences of life. I, like many men, thought that I was a pretty good father, but I was satisfied with only that, being a pretty good father. I soon came to understand that I could be a great father and the importance of striving for that made me a better father. I began walking in daily awareness of my actions and words as a father. And part of becoming a better father was loving my kids’ mom. Understanding that the way I treat my wife is how my girls see normal to be was eye-opening for me. Knowing that they were watching my every move and that I was setting the standard by which they are going to measure every man, and more importantly, their future husbands.
What are your hopes for the film? What's the next step?
My hope for the film is that it ignites a movement of fathers who walk in daily awareness of the significant and lifelong influence they have on their kids because the words and actions they use every day. I hope that it results in us being able to equip, educate, and encourage men with the resources they need to become great fathers. I pray that God uses it to reach millions of men and that it is seen in thousands of churches, universities, and addiction treatment centers all over the world, freeing men to be the fathers God has called them to be. The messages that need to be told are numerous and they are the catalyst for conversations that need to be had between fathers and kids and between husbands and wives.
Twenty years from today, what do you hope to have accomplished?
Twenty years from today, I hope to have helped redefined what it means to be a father. I hope this film and many others we make have changed the lives of generations - children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren - because it changed the hearts of fathers. My hope and prayer is that I have been obedient to what God has called me to do. And, twenty years from now, I hope to be sitting on a beach somewhere in Maui with my grandkids telling my wife "We did pretty good, huh".