Responsible Father

Last year, at the end of January, I posted some of the contents of our Christmas letter, with an explanation.

This year, I’m even later. Can you figure out how I determined the order?

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JAMFAM BY THE NUMBERS – 2009

Ages of our kids as of Dec 16: 6,7,8,9,10,11 (years) and 12 (months)
Degrees outside (and inside) when we drove home from the North Shore with the van heater not working: -4
Fighter Verse sets recorded in song: 2 ½ (half of them)
Years Debbie has led K/1 choir and Scott has led K/1 Wednesday night class at Bethlehem: 4
Months with no TV reception (so far): 6 * Dozens of cookies made this month with grandparents: 13
Recording sessions to record 15 songs (including 2 sessions in Arkansas): 15
Miles biked to the Mississippi River with the three older boys in September: 15
Years of joyful marriage for Scott & Debbie (celebrated on the North Shore, just the two of us): 15
Number of MN State Park official geocaches found: 20
Years in a row that Scott has been to the Bethel Festival of Christmas: 25
Pages of stories from this year’s kids’ journal that we had to trim down to a half page: 28
Percentage of our kids who took swimming lessons this year (funding/transportation by Grandma): 85.71
Earliest picnic: March 15 * Picnic count (beat last year’s record of 81): 92
Pages now in our kids’ journal (all years): 300+
Weight of all of our children (on the big scale at the pumpkin farm): 416
Lord of the Rings pages read (as a family)(now at Helm’s Deep): 529

James 1:17 – Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights
with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Percentage of good things we enjoy that are from God: 100 (JamFam give thanks.)

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Later this week: What was on the flip side

At times discipline, wisely administered by loving parents, will sting.

This does not make you a mean Dad or Mom.

Yesterday, in one sitting, 22 pound son Foster dranks a cup of milk (8 oz – along with regular solid food). This is not uncommon for him nor is it uncommon for a typical 14 month old, which he is.

If I were to drink a comparable amount of milk, I would have to drink a half gallon plus a pint.

I figured this out comparing my weight to his. Here’s your homework:

1. How much do I weigh?

2. What interesting my-weight-to-Foster’s-weight factor currently exists?

I’m doing something that I haven’t ever done before – reposting something I have previously put up.

I’m doing it for a few reasons:

Firstly, it was a fairly well received post, secondly it makes more sense to have it here at the father blog than my other blog.

But the main reason I’m doing it now is – Earlier this week I commented (with a link to the previous post) over at Stuff Christians Like and lots of people have come from that post. Several of them have written out their divorce and almost divorce stories. They are quite interesting. I recommend you go over and look at it.

Here is the post. But please know that it is not my intention to judge people who have divorces in their history.

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I’ve got a few years before I put this in play, but I am thinking about something I’m going to start telling my kids in their teen-age years (i.e. before they start Dating/Courting).

It would go something like this:

Asking someone to marry you, or saying ‘Yes’ to a proposal is a pretty big step, and a pretty strong commitment, but during your engagement period, even if it’s the day before your wedding, we will support you if you really want to break off marriage plans.

We might encourage you to rethink your decision, and suggest that maybe you are just getting cold feet, but if in the end you don’t want to get married to this person, for whatever reason, we will support this decision.

But (and here is the main point), once you get married, if things go bad, we will not support your decision to divorce your spouse, except for extremely extreme reasons*. We will encourage you in a hard marriage, we will protect you in a dangerous marriage, we might encourage temporary separation, we will pray for your marriage and we will hold you and cry with you. But we will not say that it is okay for you to end the marriage.

So it will not be grounds for divorce (from the perspective of our family) if you feel like your spouse doesn’t love you anymore, or isn’t really a Christian, or is abusive, or is a workaholic, or really bad with finances or lazy or mean or whatever.

(Again, I would tell them this before they find The One, so they don’t think it’s about that person.)

What do you think? Too harsh?

I feel like I want to get them to agree in writing that we are reasonable in saying this. But that may be a little over the top.

*The big question is, what would be the extremely extreme reasons. Severe Physical abuse? Only unfaithfulness? Pastor John wouldn’t even agree to that as a reason for divorce.

Seriously? Enough Quotables From One Sermon? Yep. It was an extremely impressive sermon. I could have made this a two weeker, but decided against it. If you don’t have time for the whole thing, let me recommend skipping down to the last one – It’s my favorite – good content, good family story and funny. And I’ll note again in passing that none of these are in the written transcript.

 Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Children, Racial Harmony And The Gospel I Learned From Pastor John’s Sermon Last Week

 The US Census Bureau says that by 2042 whites will be a minority and non whites will be a minority and since I’m pretty sure that’s the way its going to be in Heaven, I’m okay with that. Just statistically, what’s happened in history and where it’s going today, we just better be okay with that. *** Children, if you can understand what I’m saying, listen up. Here’s my goal is for your parents. Your parents love you really well, they really love you. You know that. Parents love their kids a lot. But parents are always growing in how to do it well. *** So dads: a special focus in this text, indeed in the Bible. Dads have a special responsibility, a special authority, a special role – Mom’s have their own special <role>, but this is special. And dads have a special responsibility for not angering, but rather bringing up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord and the Lord has a lot to say about racial harmony. *** You can teach your kids about race at one year old.  *** Help the children . .. when I say “Help”, “Help”, “Help”, I mean, Model and teach. If you teach but don’t model, you’re a hypocrite. And kids will pick it up really quick. And they’ll be gone, real soon. If you model and think teaching’s not important, you just sacrifice one of the precious means of grace, and that’s not going to go well either. . . . Be what you say . . . I’m assuming that parents have impact when those two come together with authenticity  ***  Most little children are wonderfully free from fretting about their bodies. *** This starts at age . . . 9 months? You don’t start this at age 11 when the crisis happens. Month and after month after month. He made you. He made you. He made you! He’s wise! He’s good. It is not a self esteem issue, it’s a God issue. *** A one year old can get this. Questions! Where’d I come from? God made you. Whoah, how? Challenges! Join the club. *** If you teach a kid he is the end product of animality, he’ll act like an animal. *** It doesn’t save a kid to teach him the golden rule, but you teach him the golden rule! Law-giving usually precedes gospel-hearing. ***  Oh, the gift of parents, who can get this into a little pagan at four years old. *** The issues for our kids are all about God. Everything is about God in these families at Bethlehem. If everything doesn’t relate to God, you don’t get it yet. *** Elbows on the table, No? It relates to God. I could do an exposition of 1 Corinthians 13 – don’t act unseemly – and show you how the Gospel relates to elbows on the table. *** There will come a point when their conscious comes alive, and you need to capture, with great discernment that point. ***  Teach the children that their own sin is uglier than anybody they think is physically unattractive. Sin is not a funny blunder. Sin is not a noble flaw. ***  If our children are ever to grasp the gospel, they must grasp this about themselves. And we parents must feel it about ourselves first… There will be a flavor. Dad has authority in this family but it is a broken hearted authority. It’s a humble authority. It is a ready-to-admit-wrong authority ,an ask-forgiveness-from-a-five-year-old authority. *** Our children will never cherish the gospel if they aren’t sickened by their own sinfulness. They need to learn they don’t just do bad things, they’re bad. And I know there are a lot of people who say you should never ever say that to a child. “Just tell them they did a bad thing. Don’t say he’s bad.” Sins don’t come out of nowhere. ***  . . . I’m corrupt, I’m proud, I’m selfish, I am this way. And until I own this, the Gospel won’t land with power. I will always be healed lightly. *** And then you gently, lovingly help your kid get this. It doesn’t damn them, I promise, you it doesn’t damn them. It frees them to get the gospel. It makes the gospel the sweetest thing in the world. *** So now, we tell them and we tell them a thousand times! When God sent his son into the world, he was demonstrating his infinite love for you! In your sin! In spite of your sin! ***  Knowing Christ Jesus for the Christian is more valuable than anything. Teach them that. That is a work of the Holy Spirit in their life. You cannot make that happen. But you can tell them it’s true. And pray night and day.

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Number 8, the last one. Teach the children to love others who are different from them – I’m going to do it this way: Last night, I went into Talitha’s room. She said “Are you going to say that at church?” I said “Probably.” She went, “Ohhh!” She didn’t say no! So she’s not here. She’ll be here tomorrow morning and I’ll ask her tomorrow morning again. So I sat down on the bed like I always do – she’s fourteen – with my hand on her head and I blessed her and sang my little song and I said, “Can I ask you a question? This is the last point in the sermon tomorrow and I want to see if you get this. Okay, finish this sentence for me, Talitha: ‘The Children – you – should love people different from yourselves not in order to be accepted by God, but because. . . ‘ and I stopped, and she said “because . . . I am accepted by God?” I just came out of my chair! Yes! Yes! Yes! She thought that was so funny. Just like you did. I tell you, you could not pay me a million dollars for that moment. That’s the gospel. All Daddy’s do’s – Do this! Do this! What are they? Ways to get God on your side?  And she knows: No. . . . He’s on my side because of Jesus.

What if you heard about two brothers who had large homeschooling families and these families decided to make a movie based on the history behind the Arthurian legend?

How good would you expect the resulting film to be? Not as good as “Lord Of The Rings”, certainly. But almost certainly you wouldn’t expect it to be as good as this:

Our whole family (well, the kids between 6 and 12) watched and enjoyed it.

Don’t mistake me, it’s not perfect. But as a person who has been a leader of another artistic project while not being a professional artist, it was inspiring to see what could be done by amateurs.

So don’t buy it looking for Oscar worthy acting. See it for the history, the pretty good special effects, the costumes, sets and the impressive plot.

Also, it comes with a free Soundtrack CD. It’s good music.

. . . said my daughter to her sister.

And this was the situation. All throughout suppertime, our middle two boys, especially Barrett (9 years old) were telling Debbie and I that they had something prepared for us in their bedroom, and kept asking us if we were done so we could go down there.

Finally we were and we followed them down. They had set up, in their room, a fairly impressive restaurant. This included two candle lit tables with checkered tableclothes and chairs. The room was decorated and the “walls” (blankets over the bunk beds) were lit from behind. There was music playing.

They had set up a kitchen in the closet. They gave us menus with several items to choose from. And then they took our orders and prepared the food for us. And at the end they gave us ice cream that they had made. I was impressed.

Adelyn – younger sister – was aware that her brothers were going for a certain atmosphere, and when her sister said something that went against that atmosphere,  she made the suggestion (as noted above):

“Don’t wreck the restaurant.”

She was saying - the boys have gone to a lot of work. Don’t screw it for them.

This, I deem, is the responsibility of guests. To allow the Host or Hostess to serve them. To not go against the plan. To let the plan flourish.

Husbands and wives, I suggest that you follow this advice with your spouses. To her or him who has prepared and worked, give them the decency of letting them enjoy the fruits of their work. And if you enjoy it, make sure they know.

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So how do you like that? Moralizing and Bragging Dad all in one post.

If you go to our church, at our campus, and attend the 9:00 service – you may disregard this post. In fact, please do!

Parents, do you want your kids to feel more apart of your church service? Do you want it to feel more real for them? Do you want them to be more interested?

Move up to the front. Your kids will be able to see better. They will feel more present. You will feel more a part of the worship.

We choose the second row. Obviously you don’t want to sit in the front row. It will make you feel uncomfortably bare. Because obviously, the worship leaders or pastors may pull out their laser guns and shoot you. You need at least one pew to act as a sort of barrier or shield. But only one is required for this kind of protection. And the closer you are to the front, the greater the chance your kids won’t be directly behind some 6’4’’ hulk (like me) that will make it so they can’t read the words on the big screen.

A word on behavior: One thing that keeps people from sitting up near the front is the fear that their kids will act in a negatively impactful manner. And this will be more visible to more people if you’re up front. True.

But these are behaviors you could attend to no matter how far back you are. Attend to them. Bring the child out of the service. Administer whatever discipline you use for your kids. Then bring them back in.

Having your children enjoy and think about worship is more important than not looking bad.

You might be thinking: But Jamsco, your kids never give you problems, right? You’ve never had to deal with behavioral issues in the middle of a church service! Au Contraire. And consider this. If your children are closer to the front, they may be more interested in the service and be less distracted and less prone to act in distracting ways*.

Other Perceived Downsides:

(1) Sitting up front, you risk people thinking you think you’re a better than average family.

(2) You also risk thinking you’re a better than average family.

But read some of the passages in Proverbs about pride and humility. And think about how really good looking families on the outside are sometimes the most dysfunctional behind closed doors. Considering these things will help Downside 2 go away.

And then Downside 1 isn’t really a problem, right? If it is, find other ways to appear humble.

Worship happens in all rows of the sanctuary. But kids who can see are more likely to hear from, learn from, and participate in the worship.

*And can we recommend practicing sitting still at home? We call this “Bible Time.” My wife does this daily with our kids.