Some questions just get right to the core. But when they come from your 15 year old son, unexpectedly, they can really catch you off guard.

We’re driving home Sunday from church. Enjoying the beautiful countryside of Franklin, Tennessee.

Out of the blue, my son asks this question from the backseat, “Dad. You and Mom have been married for twenty years almost. Is life better or worse than you thought it would be twenty years ago?”

Wow. Great question!

This series of posts is winding up. It’s a story of abandonment to hope in my personal relationship between me and my earthly father. But it’s a metaphor for the Gospel too.

As I’ve covered previously, the wound of abandonment led me to restlessness; which mercifully led to a release of the Spirit, finally resulting in me being reconciled to my earthly father, the original source of my abandonment.

Once God released me of my anger I immediately felt compassion toward my earthly father. My hatred and bitterness toward him were gone. Compassion replaced hatred.

So, I tracked him down shortly thereafter. I wrote him a lengthy letter in which I told him I no longer hated him, in fact I actually loved him. I shared the power of the Spirit of God to change my life (with hopes of it changing him too), and urged him to allow me to come see him. I wanted him to know his grandchildren, and my wife, whom he had never met.

God’s timing was perfect. I had learned my father was dying. I was excited but afraid to go see him honestly. Would he accept me or would I be rejected and abandoned again? Though the fear was strong, the hope of reconciliation was stronger.

I took my then ten-year old son, Matthew, with me on October 13th, 2001 to southern Indiana. We found his apartment and parked the van. I turned off the engine and asked Matt if he was ready to meet his grandfather for the first time.

We found his apartment number 808, and knocked on the door. We heard some rustling behind the door, then it swung open and the one who had abandoned me opened the door (and his arms) to welcome me into his life! It was almost more than I could bear.

Instantly, God reconciled us in spirit and heart. My father’s eyes and arms spoke of tenderness and acceptedness. It was a moment I had been waiting for almost 40 years! It was a grand moment that culminated in a journey from abandonment to hope.

Father and son were together!

If you’ve been following this series of posts (i.e., From abandonment to hope). The last post focused on how feeling abandoned leads one to a sense and perhaps even a lifestyle, or approach to life, of restlessness. To be a restless person, one feels like a spiritual vagabond. It’s the James 1:6 principle of having “two minds”.

For me at least, I cultivated this approach to life until I was almost 39 years old. I could see its effects in my life but felt powerless to change it deeply. Instead, I expressed internal power through an illegitmate way – ANGER!

Anger can become an addiction for the restless soul that has been abandoned. My anger was like molten lava that was flowing just under the surface of my soul. You only saw it raise its ugly head infrequently but it always had the capacity to erupt like Mt. Vesuvius. I knew that and it scared me.

How did I finally find release from my restlessness (and anger)?

Tim McGraw! Yep, blame it on a country song.

I was driving home one day in the summer of 2001 listening to Tim McGraw singing a song called Angry All the Time. I was singing the song (unconsciously really) and the Spirit of God snuck up on me. Yes, the Spirit can speak through a country song!

The extended lyrics are below. The phrase that worked me over was this:

“And you aint the only one who feels like this world left you far behind
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time”

The abandonment language is in the first verse (i.e., feeling left behind).

And the sucker-punch is in the next verse, ” I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time.”

As I was singing this phrase the Lord brought my then six-year old daughter’s face to my mind’s-eye, and I imagined her looking up at me asking, “Daddy, why do have to be angry all the time?” What happened next was not pretty.

In a divine moment of soul-surgery the Spirit of God nailed me. He exposed my heart, an angry heart, and laid it open. I pulled off to the side of the road and wept hot tears of repentance before the Lord. Mercifully, the Lord released me of my anger as I poured it out to Him in that moment. It was gone. I could feel a cool cleansing descend upon me as the tears washed out the poison.

After pulling myself together, I asked myself this question, “Why have you been so angry?” To which the Spirit of God immediately impressed this phrase upon my soul: “Because you don’t know who your father is, the one who abandoned you before birth!”

Crap. I was busted!

The next post will take us from release to reconciliation.

So far, we’ve seen the wound: abandonment; which led me to restlessness; which lead to a release; which finally led to reconciliation.

Here are the lyrics to Angry All the Time (Tim McGraw)

Here we are
What is left of a husband and a wife with four good kids
Who have a way of gettin on with their lives
And Im not old but Im getting a whole lot older every day
Its too late to keep from goin crazy
Ive got to get away

The reasons that I cant stay dont have a thing to do with being in love
An I understand that lovin a man shouldnt have to be this rough
And you aint the only one who feels like this world left you far behind
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time

Our boys are strong now the spittin image of you when you were young
I hope someday they can see past what you have become
And I remember every time I said Id never leave
But what I cant live with is memories of the way you used to be

The reasons that I cant stay dont have a thing to do with being in love
And I understand that lovin a man shouldnt have to be this rough
And you aint the only one who feels like this world left you far behind
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time

Twenty years have came and went since I walked out of your door
I never quite made it back to the one I was before
And God it hurts me to think of you
For the light in your eyes was gone
An sometimes I dont know why this old world cant leave well enough alone

The reasons that I cant stay dont have a thing to do with being in love
And I understand that lovin a man shouldnt have to be this rough
You aint the only one who feels like this world left you far behind
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time

My first post set the foundation for the defining theme of my life for the first 39 years: abandonment.

The main point of this post is to communicate that a feeling of abandonment in one’s life, leads to restlessness. From my earliest days, even well into adulthood (and post-conversion) I was living out my core identity as one who felt abandoned (i.e., rejected by my earthly father),

A sense of abandonment, deeply embedded in the soul, causes one to ask questions like these:

• Why was I not worthy to be loved? I guess I have to earn love.
• How do you make it through life? I will make it on my own.
• Can you trust anyone deeply? I can not trust anyone with the deepest parts of my soul.
• Is anything worth commiting to ultimately? I can not make an ultimate commitment because it probably won’t last since people will fail me.

Those questions, and life-commitments that followed, resulted in almost 40 years of restlessess. Restlessness can be manifested in a myriad of ways:

• Inability to keep a job.
• Inability to commit to a life-mate.
• Inability to have deep, lasting friendships.
• Inability to live in one place for very long.

Do you recognize the pattern?
The next post will take us from restlessness to release.

I’m going to start telling a long story. This post is the first installment. It’s a story of God reconciling me to my earthly father after having been abandoned by him for almost 40 years.

This post will start at the beginning.

I was born October 11, 1962 – thankfully. Had my father had his way I might have been aborted, at least as I hear it. But God knew my days even in my mother’s womb, and He had a plan for my life.

But a newborn with two other kids, under the age of three, was just too much for my father – the then president of the Southern Indiana Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang. Hey, at least leadership runs in my family!

So part one is simple. My father and mother split before I was born. When my lungs breathed the fresh Fall air in Louisville, Kentucky, on that early autumn morning my mother had three boys: one just turned three, one was 20 months old, and I added to her troubles as a single Mom.

Abandonment would be my early theme, even from birth.

More to come……….

I was driving home the other day with my almost 16 year old son, Matt.

He’s a sophomore now and probably starting to give a lot of thought to what to do with his life.

So I decided to probe.

“Matt. So you think you have any idea what God’s purpose is for your life?”

“Sure,” He responded. As if I had just asked the dumbest question in the world.

“Okay,” I said. “Enlighten me oh enlightened-one.”

“I want to be a Bible translator and preach the Word of God.”

Wow!

“That’ll do pig, that’ll do!”

Celebrating Father’s Day without your father alive is . . . . wierd.

I just assume skip FD every year, except for the fact that I am too a father, and my kids also like giving me funking ties or a DVD on my “favs list”.

I had two fathers. #1 was my step-Dad and he was my “father” for 34 years. He died of lung cancer in 1996. #2 was my real-Dad with whom I reconciled to within weeks of his death to liver disease in 2001.

I remember playing softball in a church league in 1973. I was playing short-stop and not paying much attention to the batter. He hit a steaming line drive and which promptly lodged itself in my sternum, taking my breath away. I thought I was never going to breathe again.

Losing my “dads” was kinda like that. It took my breath (deep in my soul) away the day I got the “calls” – and still does, even as I write these words………………

Breathe, breathe . . .

Okay, now in my finest “told you so” kinda attitude (sort of like Dad used to do), let me admonish you guys with Dads still alive this Father’s Day. Go give him a big hug (for me) and tell him you love him.

And if you fail to take my paternal advice I will personally bust your chops the next time I see you.

Have a Happy Father’s Day!

I love being a Dad, well, most of the time.  I have three man-cubs.  16, 15 and 10.

I simply wanted to share that it’s fun being a father. I was in Border’s for lunch today. My favorite post-launch stopping grounds.  A cup of coffee.  Browsing the new hardbacks.  By the way, never buy a paperback, they’re magazines.  Always buy the real thing in a hard back spine.  But I digress.

Anyway, I’m browsing through the titles. I stumble upon Chosen by a Horse. Knowing that my 16 year old daughter would love this book, I promptly walked to the counter, plopped down my 20% discount card, and walked out with said-book in hand.  No special occasion or anything.  Just because I knew she’d love it.
Knowing how much I enjoyed buying that book for Rebecca makes me reflect on how God must love giving his children good gifts too.

What gift did God surprise you with today?

Do you remember what you got on your 15th birthday? Didn’t think so.

My son will never forget his though. His was this past Friday.

It’s not because he got what he wanted, an iPod video. It’s because he got more than he wanted. And I don’t mean in the consumer electronics department.

We gave him a little brother. We sponsored a child in his honor from World Vision. His name is Layan. He lives in Kenya.

What do you get an American kid who has everything? C’mon now, kids in America are very blessed. Parents of kids in America are really blessed too. Don’t believe me? Take a trip to South Sudan!

By the way, we’re hoping to actually adopt a couple African – Kenyan – children in the near future. This only whets our appetite.

By the way, we selected Layan because he lives in Kenya and his birthday is the day after our sons. Happy birthday Matt. Happy birthday Layan!

Okay, I’m old. I admit it. At least older than a lot of you on this site. But I digress.

My oldest daughter, Rebecca, is graduating from high school. Early. Way too early. She is only 16. She’s a smart cookie. Took the ACT first when she was twelve years old and scored higher than the average entering college freshman that year. Brains. Probably from her mother.

I digress again, but that was really a subtle form of bragging wasn’t it?

So Becca will be leaving home soon. So thoughts of, “Have we been successul raising Rebecca?” have started to pound my brain lately.

The whole “parenting with success” concept causes a myriad of questions to run through my mind, like:

a. Can she drive safely and can she find her way if she gets lost on a back road?

b. Is she a virgin and has she kept herself sexually pure?

c. Has she done drugs and/or abused alcohol?

d. Does she like ot spend time with me as her Dad?

e. Have we successfully passed on our values to her?

f. Does God really make a difference in her life and choices?

g. Can she think for herself, and critically?

h. Is she ready for the big world?

i. Is she basically selfish or generous?

My list could go on . . . . what would your list be like?

How do parents handle it when they get a knock on the door from a policeman and he says, “Sir. Maam. Your son/daughter has been arrested for murder. We suspect he is the serial killer we’ve been looking for; or the una-bomber; or the child rapist, etc.” I mean, c’mon. No parent wants that scenario to play out.

I sort of digressed again, but maybe I didn’t. Because I think a lot of parenting is generated out of a selfish parental-motive. “Just don’t embarrass me child!”

I confess I have parented out of that paradigm and still reserve the right to. “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it!” says the uber-Father, Bill Cosby.

As Becca starts to stretch out her wings and fly the coup, sooner than I might like, I look at my list of successful parenting metrics and one jumps off the page: “Can she think for herself, and critically?”

There’s so much pure ‘BS’ in our lives today. I mean the propaganda and flat-out craziness spewed from TV, radio, music, movies, friends, peers, the Internet, blogs, parents, magazines, advertising, etc., assaults one’s mind, values, and allegiances relentlessly.

Her mother and I have been successful in raising Becca to the extent that we have laid the course out for her in the context of a Christian world and life-view; and helped to equip her mind to be able to discern the difference (not between good and bad) between almost-good and almost-bad. Our post-modern culture blurs the distinctions between everything. Nothing is black-n-white anymore.

Young people today are faced, and will face, decisions and choices in their adult lives that we, as their parents, hardly ever had to face. As parents, we are successful to the extent we have launched a young adult into society with the ability to think critically, for one’s self, based on a set of values that hopefully honor God.

Wisdom is known by her fruit!

Congrats Becca. You’ve made your father one proud man!

(Now don’t screw up……like I have; or at least don’t make the SAME mistakes. Be more original.)