The Love of the Father (Episode 28)

Janis shares about fathers, their imprint on our lives, the love, acceptance, forgiveness and healing of Our Father God and offers encouragement for men who are fathers.

The Life & Love Nuggets podcast will help you learn valuable insights into relationships, life, and love. Brent and Janis have been empowering couples through pre-marriage and marriage therapy in their private practice, Life Connection Counseling, since 1982. They recently retired after forty years of pastoral ministry and are continuing to help individuals, marriages and families in their private practice.

This podcast should not be considered or used for counseling but for educational purposes only.

Transcript:

[Janis]: Okay. I'm going to start with our scripture reading this morning. It's from Psalms 103. “God is sheer mercy and grace; not easily angered, he’s rich in love. He doesn’t endlessly nag and scold, nor hold grudges forever. He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve, nor pay us back in full for our wrongs. As high as heaven is over the earth, so strong is his love to those who fear him. As far as sunrise is from sunset, he has separated us from our sins. As parents feel for their children, God feels for those who fear him. He knows us inside and out, and he keeps in mind that we’re made of mud”. I love this scripture. It's not a surprise to most of you who know me that I'm not speaking on the lectionary.

[Janis]: I asked Paul if I could speak on whatever I wanted, and he said “yes”. So, here we go.

[Janis]: So, I'm going to talk about fathers. I know it's not Father’s Day, but I declared another holiday today, and it is Father's Do Over or Father's Day 2.0, because last Father's Day was not that great. I don't know if it was that way for you guys, but Father's Day, especially in the morning, was spent finding out who has power, who doesn't have power. Do you have limbs down? Can you get out of your neighborhood? There were so many things that were happening, and Brent spent most of the morning literally picking up garbage.

[Janis]: He went over to our office building, and Airbnbs and trash cans were out, and there was garbage everywhere. So, he spent the morning picking up garbage. So, I think he deserves another Father's Day.

[Janis]: So, happy Father's Day redo or happy Father's Day 2.0 to all of you. I know that talking about fathers can be difficult for some of us, it brings up a lot of mixed emotions. But I hope you'll hang in here long enough as I talk about fathers and my life with my father until we get to where we talk about our father, our loving heavenly father. We all have imprints from our dads. We have some from our moms and from our culture. There's a lot of them, but we have imprints that come to us. They affect us deeply, they affect how we think, how we see the world, our vocabulary. I learned a lot of things when my dad was struggling to put up Christmas trees; There was some vocabulary.

[Janis]: So many aspects of our lives are affected by our fathers. My dad grew up in a very abusive, alcoholic home. There was a lot of anger, and there was a lot of fear. His mother died of a heart attack when he was 16. He was out on a date, he had the only car that they had, the family car and his father said that his mother would have lived if he had the car to get her to the hospital. So, he blamed my father for his mother's death.

[Janis]: My grandfather was a severe alcoholic. He died at 57 of alcoholism. He kicked my dad and his 15-year-old sister out of the house, and he had a sale, and he sold everything that they had, including their photo albums. So, they left with their clothes, and that was it and my dad, at 16 years old, started driving a taxi, he got an apartment, and he made sure that his 15-year-old sister could have a consistent upbringing so that she could finish high school. He never did finish high school, but he worked very hard. He worked hard to overcome his childhood, and he worked to give us, as his children, the best life possible. He wanted us to have a totally different environment, but there were still remnants of his life. He still had imprints from his childhood, from his parents. One of them was that he could get angry very quickly and we knew that some things you just didn't talk about with dad, or you kind of kept things hidden because you didn't know what kind of response you were going to get.

[Janis]: So, I was 16, I was out with friends. I was late coming home for my curfew and so, I was rushing to get home. I was driving my 65 Mustang, which we later found out was a 64 and a half Mustang convertible, which that car caused family drama in my family for decades; let's just say that. I was the youngest, is that enough to tell you? I got the convertible. So, I was pulling into the driveway and I didn't turn quite enough, quite sharp enough and so, I'm going in really fast, and I run into the back of my dad's brand new 1972 El Camino.

[Janis]: Anybody remember El Caminos? Yeah. Dad always got luxury in the front. It's a car that has the back of a truck. So, he had luxury in the front, but he had-- What do you call it? The bed of a truck. He loved cars, and he especially loved that car. I knew I was in trouble, and I panicked. I jumped out of the car-- This is before cell phone. So, I jumped out of the car, I left my car lights on, I got up to the bumper, and I thought I hit it right there. So, I rubbed it off. He had been out someplace where there was dirt that day, and it was dusty. I rubbed it off so I could see the scratch that I made and then it was like “oh, my gosh, now it's going to be even more obvious because I rubbed it off!”.

[Janis]: So, I snuck in the house, I called my brother. He came. We spent a lot of time just taking dust in the driveway and smoothing it over that and just trying to take care of it all so dad wouldn't know that I hit his new car with a car that he had just gotten me.

[Janis]: The next morning, I woke up and I was so stressed, I felt so guilty. “What's going to happen if dad finds out?”. So, I called my mother aside and I said “mom, I did something really terrible last night, and I need to tell you about it. Will you meet me down in the basement?”. So, we went down in the basement, I told her everything that happened. Her first response was… “When you said really terrible, I thought so many things” and so, she laughed and then she said “you know, it's better just not to tell dad about that” and so, that's what I learned, there's some things you just don't talk about.

[Janis]: Now, the interesting thing was just a few weeks later, my dad was in an accident and he came home and we were all sitting at the dinner table, and he said “you know, it's so weird because I have damage over here and here, but there's also a scratch on the other side and I have no idea where that came from” and we all sat there, my brother and I, my mom, who all knew, and we went “wow, that's really weird”.

[Janis]: I was in my 30s before we ever told my dad about that particular thing and I think it came out at the dinner table over a holiday, and it was like “Oh, well…”. So, my Mustang was also part of my first miracle because my dad was picky about things. Of course, with cars. We had a day that it had snowed hard and it had melted, and then the next day it froze. So, you know how the road gets really lumpy? Well, I had pulled out of my house, and my car was just acting kind of weird. I was just kind of going all over, and I thought “wow, that ice is really bad. It's causing problems”. It wasn't very long before I realized there was something else going on. So, I pulled aside, I looked, and I had a flat tire

[Janis]: But not only was my tire flat, it kind of looked mangled and so, I don't know how I talked to my mom, but I knew to drive it to the tire place that was very near us. So, I drove in and I got there and I looked, and the tire looked even like, twisted and mangled, and it was coming off the rim and so, the guys came out and they looked at it and they went “how long did you drive on this?” and I was like “it wasn't really very far, I promise”.

[Janis]: So, I went back later in the day, knowing my dad was going to go “I just got you this car, and you don't even know to stop when you have a flat tire”. But I went in and the guys came out and they were like “we have never seen anything like this. We took the tire off, we blew it up, we put it back on again and there's nothing wrong with it. It's fine”. That was my first faith building miracle, I didn't have to face all the issues I would have had, but I also learned so many good things from my dad. I learned to work hard, to not be too good to do anything. If there's work to be done, then you do it. You work hard. I learned to live conservatively, but I also learned how to play really well.

[Janis]: Even when my dad was working many, many hours, we always had a boat. Eventually, we had a lake house. He got us little motor scooters to ride around and little go carts. We knew how to live well. Every year he would take us to the beach for a week, and generally to the mountains for a week. You work hard, but you play hard and that served me well in my life and has helped me.

[Janis]: Fathers, you leave an imprint on your kids. What you do, what you say, day in and day out your kids are watching. They want to be like you. All you have to do is watch small kids and you know they imitate their dads, which is really cute, but it's also really scary.

[Janis]: Some of you fathers are in the day-to-day life of kids. Maybe you and your wife are both working, and you're spending a lot of time dealing with viruses, colds, ear infections. “Who's going to watch the kids while they're sick today? This one's running a fever, this one's dealing with this” and some of them are getting like, viruses we've never heard of before. I mean, I think about a hand, foot and mouth. Doesn't that sound like that should be a cattle disease instead of a kid's disease?

[Janis]: But you're struggling with the day in and day out of life. You go to a meeting and you realize you have baby snot on your shoulder, or you might have peanut butter at your knee because they've grabbed a hold of you as you were leaving. You want to be patient and warm and understanding. You see them at night, and they're clean and in their pajamas right after their bath, and you want to have a time peacefully just sitting there and reading to them and praying over them, but they won't go to sleep and you find yourself saying-- And this is a quote from my favorite movie and it's one of my favorite quotes. It's from the movie Return to Me and it's Jim Belushi, and he's trying to get his kids to bed. He's got a bunch of little kids around him and he stops and screams in the middle of it all “For the love of God and all that's holy, just go to sleep!”. I could relate to that. We had a lot of that when we were growing up.

[Janis]: Some of you are in the grade school years. You look forward to having a son to play sports, and you find out he's a musician or you're a musician and you find out he likes sports. You're trying to figure out “how do I relate to this kid?”. Some of you have daughters, very precious daughters, but what do you do with their hair? I mean, what do you do with girls? With their hair especially? Now, these are total stereotypes, you guys, so forgive me if this does not apply to you, but we all know when a dad has fixed his daughter's hair or when he has dressed her. Moms at school know this. So, they don't even have to say a thing, they just kind of look at each other and, you know they're thinking “oh, dad dressed her today. Bless his heart; that's unfortunate”. Yes, we know that that's what's going on.

[Janis]: One time I was on a women's retreat and I had two friends that were there that were both family practice physicians, and we were just talking about funny things in our job and we were up late laughing, and one of the girls said “how about when dads bring their babies and small children to the doctor?” and the other one started laughing really hard, and she said “it's a little bit like veterinary medicine, you don't really get any response of what's going on” and the other one said “or you ask them something and the guys go ‘Here's my wife. She'll tell you what you need to know’”. Again, it's a stereotype, it's not true of all of you guys.

[Janis]: When our daughter Haley was five, I was trying to get some stuff done. I think it was early and when we did our-- When we started our church and I was trying to get things done, and I was rushing down the hall to get to the printer for something that I'd printed, and she was like “mom, I need you to do this. Mom, will you do this?” and I said “Honey, daddy is here. Daddy can help you with that. I have to get this done” and five-year-old Haley put her little hand on her hip; I can see her today and she goes “mom, dads are not moms”.

[Janis]: But you know what? Moms are not dads either. Dad has a special role. God put you where you are with your kids for a reason, you were chosen to be their father. You're the best dad for them and it's not so much what you do, it’s a steady, loving, calm presence that makes the difference in their lives. My earliest memory is being sitting in a grassy field. I don't even know where, and I was stung by a bee, and my dad swooped down and picked me up in his arms, and I knew that I was safe. I knew that everything is okay.

[Janis]: Or how many of you remember falling asleep in the car on a long trip and you got home and you pretended like you were still asleep when you got there because you didn't want to have to walk to the house? You wanted dad to pick you up and put you in bed. Sometimes we would fake it. There was something about that that was such a strong, solid presence to us.

[Janis]: Some of you have adult children, and it's hard to let go of the dad and mom role. You want to keep them from making mistakes, but you have to step back. They have to live their own lives; they have to make their own decisions. You don't lose your role as their father, but your role changes. Instead of giving them advice, you are there to encourage them, to accept them, to give approval to them, to be the one that's cheering them on. We tell clients all the time “what do you do with adult children? You shut up”. That's the best thing you can do and the only time you give them advice is when they say those magic words “dad, what do you think I should do about this?”. Then you can say “here's what I think”. That applies to Moms as well.

[Janis]: Dads are important. But Dads, don't let that freak you out, because you're not doing this alone. You have a Heavenly Father to give you guidance and wisdom, to help you in those times when you just don't know what to do or you don't know what to say, and God's wisdom is so much better than our own human wisdom.

[Janis]: You don't have to be perfect because you're human, you're not God. You don't have to be perfect because God is and he's there for all of us, for you, for your kids, for all of us that call on Him. We all had flawed fathers, and some of us had very flawed fathers, but our Heavenly Father is without flaw, and he's there for each and every one of us.

[Janis]: Imprint, strong. Here's another story for my dad. My dad had a stroke at 40, and he retired for a short time. We all needed him to go back to work, but he retired for a short time, then took us-- Bought a small business and worked part time. But he was home more than he'd ever been. So, we were used to dad being gone all the time and we'd come home from school or something and he'd go “where’d you go? Who are you with? Well, who's that? I don't think I know who Kathy is”. It's like “dad, you haven't been around”, but we had to make that adjustment. But one of the things is, he was very concerned about how we spent money, even if it was our own money.

[Janis]: So, I learned early on-- Back to the Mustang, I had an army blanket that I put over my seats if it got too hot. So, that way when I sat on the leather seats, it wouldn't be hot. So, what I learned to do is, if I went shopping and it was with my own money, let me clarify that. If I went shopping, I would take the bag and I would wrap it in the army blanket. I would walk through the house and go “Hi, Dad, I'm home”. Go to the laundry chute, put it down the laundry chute, go downstairs, take the tags off, put the clothes on, come back upstairs, and he'd go “oh, you look nice”. I'd go “thanks”. I'm not recommending that to people, but it was part of that “you know, there's some things you just don't tell dad”.

[Janis]: After I married Brent, I found out that I don't have to hide anything. He can see, he can know everything that I'm doing. Even if I mess up, he's not going to yell at me. He knows what I'm doing, but he still loves me and accepts me for who I am.

[Janis]: I have a Heavenly Father I learned that I can come to in all my mess, in all my sin, in my humanity and he holds me, he washes me clean, he forgives me. That's why I've come to love the confession of our sins that we do daily when we do the daily office and before we come to the table, because it reminds us that whatever mess we have in our lives, he washes us clean, we're forgiven and we're made new. I know that I mess up frequently. I'm not perfect, but Jesus has washed me clean and I love the old hymn that says “my sins, not in part but the whole, were nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, o my soul”. We are washed clean, but we know that we have a Heavenly Father that knows us and he knows that we're human. He knows all of our missteps, he knows all the things we think, and he loves us and accepts us just the same.

[Janis]: When our kids were growing up-- Well, when I was growing up, if I spilled anything, I just immediately started crying because I knew I was going to be in trouble. So, I didn't want my kids to experience that. So, Brent and I decided that we were going to borrow a line from the Bounty commercial at the time, that was “life is messy, clean it up”. So, if anybody spilt anything or they broke anything or they messed up something, we would just go “guys, life is messy, let's just clean it up”. God knows we are messy. He cleans us up, he sets us back on our feet and carries-- And we can carry on.

[Janis]: So, back to Psalm 103. “God is sheer mercy and grace; not easily angered, he’s rich in love. He doesn’t endlessly nag and scold, nor hold grudges forever. He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve, nor pay us back in full for our wrongs. As high as heaven is over the earth, so strong is his love to those who fear him. As far as sunrise is from sunset, he has separated us from our sins. As parents feel for their children, God feels for those who fear him. He knows us inside and out, and he keeps in mind that we’re made of mud”.

[Janis]: Lamentation says, “because of the Lord's great--" -excuse me- “Great love, we are not consumed”. How often can we get consumed by fear or worry or guilt or condemnation? We are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They're new every morning. Great is his faithfulness and we are children of God. We're not employees, we're not enemies. We're not people that he puts up with, we are his children.

[Janis]: 1 John 3 says “how great is the love--" Redo. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God, and that’s what we are”. Further in Psalms 103, it says “as a Father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him”. Even though we think we are all grown up, people are telling me that I should be a grown up. Even though we think we're all grown up, we are his child, and sometimes we have childish tendencies. We can be that toddler or that teenager that wants to do everything on our own. “I don't need anybody else. I have control of this”. But it's okay. Not only okay, it's good and it's right to depend on God and not yourself. He is the-- Excuse me. He is the one that can give us all that we need for life. So, let go. Let go of the things that you're trying to control in your life and go to God for wisdom and guidance, for encouragement, for all that you need.

[Janis]: He gives us free will to do things our way, and he does allow us to have some natural consequences. But when we fail or mess up or we go the wrong way, he never responds with “I told you so” or a lecture. He always responds with love, though I can't think of a time that I felt like he was quietly whispering to me “so how's this working for you?”. We all have those times.

[Janis]: Fathers, you don't have to do it alone. None of us have to live life on our own. We have a father. He's the wisest father that gives us direction and healing and he works in our lives even when we don't see it. Times that we think he's not around or he's not doing anything. Some of you have heard me say I love watching Brent when he goes to our kids houses. Our kids are all grown and I love watching him because he quietly walks around and just puts things right. So, you know, he takes the trash out or he pulls weeds or he replaces light bulbs. He just quietly does those things that need to be done that have been overlooked and, you know, I think most of the time our kids don't even know that he's done that. It makes me think “how many times is God doing things for me? How many times are there things going on in the background that I don't see, but that he's working together for my good?” I may not know it until I see him face to face, but he's always working for our good, whether we see him or not.

[Janis]: Our son Spencer put in the family chat a few weeks ago. He said “I found myself on Saturday morning walking around my house, and I had a little paper cup full of paint and a small paintbrush, and I was walking around and just touching up nicks in the woodwork” and things that just, you know, were discolored or little chip here and there and he said “I stopped and went ‘I've become my dad’”, which is so true.

[Janis]: Our father is going to do things or allow things in our life that don't make sense to us. You know, I used to always say “not thy will, but my will”. I learned that doesn't work out so well. He's bigger than we are and he sees things that we don't. Because in my practice as a therapist, in my early years I worked a lot with people who had been abused as children and so, Brent and I made a decision that we were going to try to teach the kids to trust their instincts, to trust if they felt like something was unsafe or they needed to be away from a situation, that they would respect that. So, we told them from a young age “if you're in a situation and your spirit doesn't feel comfortable with this, you have our permission to leave and I don't care where you're at or who you're with”. I remember saying “I don't care if it's your principal or your pastor or whoever it is, if you're uncomfortable, or if they try to touch you in a way, you have our permission to leave, and we will take responsibility. You'll never get in trouble from us for doing that.”, because we wanted to trust who they were. We wanted them to trust who they were and so, over the years it really worked out well for them.

[Janis]: One of our daughters, the school suddenly-- They were in a small Christian school, and they decided to do a martyrs chapel, and she was in kindergarten or first grade, and they were doing -- They were talking about all the ways that Christian martyrs had died, graphically and so, she went over to her teacher and she whispered in her ear, and she said “I'm not comfortable with this and my mom said I can leave anytime I need to” and so, the teacher took her out. It worked over the years when they were in movies, watching movies with other kids, and it was like “I'm not comfortable with this, so I'm going to leave”.

[Janis]: So, I think it helped them in many, many ways. It did backfire on us two different times, and it was both-- It was a couple of our kids ten years apart, and it was when they got their five-year-old shots and we were in there and they started yelling. You could hear them clear down the hall “I'm not comfortable with this! This is not okay! We need to talk about this! I'm not comfortable! I want to leave!” and I had to explain to them “sometimes we're going to do some things that you don't understand, but it's for your good. So, will you trust me that I'm not going to hurt you? It is for your good” and I find myself in my life sometimes crying out “I'm not comfortable with this. This is not okay”, but I have to trust God because I'm his child and he's always working in ways that are best for me, whether I understand it or whether I see it or not.

[Janis]: Our Father doesn't worry about the little things of life because he knows that very little of what happens in our lives will really matter for eternity. We can get caught up in stresses like-- Especially right now. You know, somebody has their air conditioner and it's not working, and it's going to be 1000 degrees this week. Maybe not quite that much, but-- And they don't have that money to fix it if an air conditioning person is available. So, they feel stuck or you're at work and somebody has been slandering you and you think “I may lose my job over this” or “this may cause me some problems”. Those are big deals. Those are things that are painful, but God knows about them. He knows what's going on, he cares for you, and he has a different perspective on things.

[Janis]: One of our daughters, when she was little, when she was two, she freaked out over sock fuzz. This is what you get between your toes when you have new socks on and so, she used to worry about sock fuzz. So, anywhere we'd go church, shopping centers, wherever we were, she would sit down in the middle of the floor, take her socks and shoes off to make sure she had all the fuzz out from between her toes. So, one day I was in the pediatrician's office and she stopped right there. I said “we'll be in there in a minute because she has to deal with her sock fuzz” and so, she was sitting there, she took her sock fuzz out and my pediatrician smiled and she goes “you know what? When you're two, sock fuzz is a crisis” and sometimes I think that God sees the things that we worry so much about as sock fuzz. He doesn't discount the pain; he doesn't dismiss what we're going through, but he knows that eventually everything is going to work out and eventually this isn't going to be a crisis in our lives. We're going to get over it.

[Janis]: The important things in our life are not so much about what's happening. The most important thing in our life, I think, is “do I know how deeply loved and deeply accepted I am by my father?” and “am I giving that love and acceptance to the people around us?”. I think that's what he calls us to as his children. When I see Jesus, the thing I want to be told more than anything else is that I have loved well. Even with my flaws, even with my irritations, even with my missteps. I want to know that I have loved well and I want to be firmly convinced that he loves me totally, absolutely and completely.

[Janis]: Our father always welcomes us. We're never too far away from him and we can't come back. He says “come unto me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden”. I thought about that, about coming to the table today. We're all coming to the table, but he's especially calling those of you who are weary and heavy laden. The burdens of life get overwhelmed. “Come unto me and I will give you rest”. As the prodigal was welcomed back, he welcomes us back every single time. He washes us clean every single time. He celebrates us every single time. He won't stop loving us and celebrating us because he loves us so much and he'll never throw in our face what we've done wrong. He just wants us close. He never expects perfection from us because he knows that we are but mud and so, he understands our humanness. He loves us just as we are in all of our mess.

[Janis]: So, whatever your experience was with your earthly father or your experience as a father, hold on to meditate on how deeply and fully loved you are by the father. Amen.