Tools for the Trade.

“[Fathers], God has given you a unbelievable gift …
the gift of investing into the life of your children, into your children’s children.
And somehow,
somebody has convinced us that the best thing
we can do with this gift is give it to someone else [for teaching and training].”

-Voddie Bauchman

 

 

The crisp wintery temperatures could not keep the bounce out of the step of our six year old this morning.

 

For on this Tuesday, her daddy was giving her a gift.

Not a gift of monetary value. Not a gift that can be wrapped. In fact, our second born daughter, with her two brown braids bouncing as she jumped two steps at a time down the stairs of our home, probably will not recognize her gift until she is many years grown.

Just after a hot breakfast of oatmeal and brown sugar, off the two of them went, hand in hand, as they walked to the funeral home. It wasn’t long before this energetic-girl was donning safety glasses and swinging a hammer as hard as she could, ripping drywall into pieces and doing her best to lift the 4 lb sledgehammer.

 

While walls were being torn down, a relationship was being built up. Life skills were used. Hard work ethics were excersized.

For you see, this daddy of hers … he has a strange, hard to understand, job … his schedule is a  difficult one to grasp from an outside perspective … and often he will not come home long-into-the-dark hours of the night … he works around the clock with the grim realization of death and sadness of losing a loved one and the end of this earthly life … and yet still finds his job as a ministry to others. Besides my own father, he is one of the hardest working men I know.

But this calling, this parenting job, this being a daddy, a parent, to five girls … it doesn’t, it can’t, it won’t take a back seat or be pushed to the back of a busy, working schedule.

Together, this happy mortician and his wife desire to train and raise up a family of God-fearing, Jesus adoring, hard working children. This is *our* job, this is what God has called us to do. It’s not the church’s responsibility, it is not the grandparents’, it is not the school system’s job.

When the idea of homeschooling surfaced three years ago, it all felt so God-led. This would be a way we could still teach and train and raise our children as a family unit.  Knowing our children would be able to see their daddy beyond the traditional school hours and weekend breaks, working our lives around the end of another’s … being sensitive to when he was needed and called upon to minister … but still [desperately trying] to put God and our family first.

Teaching them, training them, keeping the family together as a unit …

In a world that pulls children and parents apart, it may seem strange and counter-cultural  to hold our children so close …

 

but we have realized that as a father [and mother], we are held responsible from God.
Discipleship.
Teaching.
Investing spiritually in our children.

There is no substitute.

There’s no one like a daddy.

 

 

“If you’re a father, you are a builder.

Your children will become what you’ve made.

Please do your best, please don’t forget,

God gave you the tools for the trade.

He gave you eyes to see where your child might go wrong,

and feet to lead them safely through,

Hands to hold their hands

and lips to say ‘I love you.’

And your knees are for playing,

but they’re also for praying

that God will watch over your child.

If you are a father, then you’re a builder.”

-S. Chapman