Fathers day 2010...random thoughts

In a perfect world, today I would be hanging out with my dad and we would be enjoying each others company. I would be doing all the things we do to honor our dads on their special day. I rather suspect we would be having a cook out in the back yard. I would be cooking and he would be supervising and pointing out everything I was doing wrong. I would just shrug and try to take his semi-constructive criticism with a grain of salt. His grand kids would be running around doing what kids do when out in backyards on fathers day. “c'mon grandpa...throw me the ball...”. He would look amused and that familiar half smile would appear. “Maybe later...you kids go on...”. Yeah, I heard that a lot. It was ok though, I was just happy to have him there and hanging out. I mean...after all...isn't that what fathers day is really about ?? Having dad there hanging out...just being the dad...and doing the stuff that dads do. Like...working on the car...shaving and leaving his whiskers in the bathroom sink...mowing the yard...dropping us off at church...letting us practice driving the car...taking us fishing...reading the paper at breakfast...and yelling a lot. It's funny how much stuff we remember and how much we forget. The painful and difficult times always seem to stand out and overshadow everything else that was good. I have discovered that most holidays, whether major or minor, are actually remembrance days. Some, like Christmas and Thanksgiving are often emotionally charged and highly evocative and reflective of the complexity of living in dysfunctional families. I think fathers day has that effect on many of us whether sons or daughters. It does me...I was like so many others and didn't have the kind of dad... that idealized one that we so often saw on television, growing up in the sixties. The dad I had was the dad that God gave me and it took me a long time to realize this and to be thankful and to be able to honor him. That is a big part of growing up and becoming a dad yourself. The unfortunate thing is when we are struggling with our earthly father child relationship we struggle with out heavenly one as well. That understanding of our heavenly father is a foundational concept in understanding how God wants to bless us and it is the essence of our relationship with Him. Our inability to forge a lasting and sustainable relationship with our biological fathers has such huge implications and ramifications for our continued survival as a society. However, our reluctance to acknowledge and strive for a relationship with our heavenly father has an even bigger impact on ourselves and others. The facts are well known...documented...discussed...and disputed. Here are just a few for you to mull over:

 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes

 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes


 80% of rapist motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes


 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in fatherless homes


 71% of pregnant teenagers come from fatherless homes


 80% of all adolescents in psychiatric hospitals come from fatherless homes

and finally how about this one to jar you out of your coma...the absence of a biological father increases by 900% a daughters vulnerability to rape and sexual abuse...often at the hands of a step father or boyfriend of the mother.

I think you get the point here...it's beyond bad and we all bear some responsibility. According to an ancient African proverb,“It takes a village to raise a child”and we are all part of that village. For all the kids living in fatherless homes today I pray we get this and someone steps up to the plate...there are a lot of us...waiting.

in the potters hands...

There is a part of me that says “YES, I can” and there is also a part that says “Uh...no...you can't” and they are always in conflict and at odds with each other. I really do believe that friction and conflict are vital elements and what makes for good stories and writing good stories with our lives, as my friend Don says. I have actually never given much thought of how this story that is me is constructed. I have never carefully analyzed the individual parts that conspire together that make the whole. But after hearing...a lot...about how good stories are seemingly simply generated from the most basic of ideas I see the absolute need for this conflict to exist. It seems all my life I have fought hard against this conflict within me and I didn't like how it made me feel most of the time. I always had a sense that I was out of balance, shall we say. Unfortunately my response to this wasn't a good one. I always gave up to the louder can't do it part of me. I was a quitter. Right now, I even hate looking at those words as they appear on the screen as I type. It is so NOT who I am anymore. But it was a long process to tone down that incessant chatter in my head defeating me at anything I tried. The bad part of that is at some point you just give up trying as you figure...what's the use? I grew to always expect the same outcome which was failure. I think there are so many places we allow doubt and lack of faith to creep in to our daily lives and determine outcomes of things we attempt. We get robbed of our potential and our dreams by a false logic that sets up in us sometimes very early in life. Once that happens ever decision we make is touched by it. We set up, in our lives, a self fulfilling prophecy that we work hard to make come true. We put a lot of effort into something that is totally based on the fallacy that we are flawed and can't measure up to someones expectations. It is a vicious cycle that engulfs us and we begin to live our lives as victims. I was a victim. I was a victim of my own making. I was determined to do things my way and that way was the hardest way I could find to do anything. The end result of all this was I became unlovable and was bent on destruction. I wasted a lot of years living that way. But, here's the good news...In my darkest hour and in my utter brokenness, God gently reminded me that He has never left me and I was the one running away. He called me to come back home. He told me he loved me no matter what I had done...of course...He knew. I never had that from my earthly father so it was a little difficult to embrace this news. But I did and I surrendered...I was tired. I literally fell into His arms and found everything I had been longing for so long. I found grace,redemption and healing. I found the me that got lost so long ago. I discovered that when empowered by Christ that my weakness was an asset and not a liability. I discovered that I was lovable and that one simple fact changed my life. So many of us wandering around today feeling so rejected and unlovable believe that lie. Slowly but surely the plan emerged and things once out of my reach became obtainable. Those are called blessings. I didn't feel the urge to quit anymore and destroy every relationship I had built. This is the true transformed life that Jesus is calling us to. All we have to do is just give up, surrender, abandon self reliance, remove ourselves away from our lives, live out of the box, and embrace a very risky faith...and I'm really doing that.

your blood pressure is...WHAT ?

So, being a nurse, one of the most basic things we are taught to check to assess how someone is doing is taking their vital signs. This usually consists of their temperature, pulse, respirations and blood pressure. This is the standard and usually applicable in almost every situation. I am sure that I have taken literally thousands of vital signs in the last almost 40 years. I can also assure you that I have seen every value from the lowest low to the highest high. I can remember many times of being scared of a particular numerical reading and really focusing my efforts on fixing the number...irrespective of what the patient looked like. It took me lots of years to relax and learn to focus on the overall picture and not one isolated element. I was thinking abut this a lot lately and pondering how when we focus too closely and intently on one thing or aspect of something we impair our vision for the big picture that God wants to see. Unfortunately, even with the best of our state of the art medical technology we have yet to devise a thermometer or other device to measure our spiritual vital signs. I have discovered this is often times the most critical and overlooked vital sign and has significant impact on all the others. It is a well know fact that the wellness of our spirituality has a direct impact on our physical health. This is where the whole concept of holistic health originated. Any one aspect of our health cannot be ignored or it will be at the expense of total wellness. The challenge is how do we not only measure but intervene to repair and improve our spiritual health. The hard part with most people is just to talk about it. It still is an area that is mostly off limits in discussions and talking about health history. We readily discuss the most intimate and personal heath issues with almost complete strangers readily. However when it comes to the issues of our spiritual health it is a very different story. We stiffen up, become defensive and feel personally challenged when questioned even in the most benign manner. I can readily imagine a conversation between you and your doctor going something like this, "well...your blood pressure is better and your cholesterol has really improved...". And you say, "yeah...I have been exercising a little more...you know, trying to watch what I'm eating...". Your doctor then says, " You still going to church ? Making time to read the Bible ? you still praying every day ? what about your small group ?...". Would that be awkward ? You bet...Would you be shocked and possibly irritable ? Highly probable...It is almost like it is the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle laying there before us but we don't want to touch it and finish the picture. We do our best to keep it private and to try and ignore the importance of our relationship with God as a barometer of our state of wellness. How do we fix "sickness" in others spiritual health. First and foremost we need to make sure ours is healthy. It is hard to be sick or wounded and try to give good advice to someone else to improve theirs if ours is broken. Secondly, our approach has to be relational and not condemning and judgemental. We have to take people right where they are at...not where we want them to be, and go from there. We need to love people back into healthiness and not shame them into going somewhere they are not ready to go. It's like losing weight when you aren't mentally ready and haven't dealt with underlying emotional issues...it just comes back on. Our spiritual health is the foundation and bedrock on which everything else rests. We certainly know happens without a strong foundation to build on...everything eventually collapses. So, the next time you see me and I am asking about your blood pressure, blood sugar and other "numbers" don't get mad or tense up when I ask you, " how are you and Jesus getting along these days ?...did you two finally work out your differences ?...No ? ...you need to or it's gonna kill you..."