Dads: Do We Father Our Kids Where They Are, Or Where We Want Them To Be?

My Dad was a father to me where I was, not where he wanted me to be. That was pretty amazing given how much I disappointed him in my youth, even breaking his heart. I am thankful that he loved me where I was; otherwise, he would have loved a dream or an illusion, not me. If he had fathered his expectations for me rather than me, I might not ever have recovered.

Although my Dad passed away five years ago, his faithfulness to me—not his expectations for me—provides relational security even now. I don’t go through life like some Ricky Bobby character in Talladega Nights whose stoned dad said to him when he was a child, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” Like Ricky Bobby, such expectations, like ghosts in dreams, haunt those who often fail to measure up, though we keep trying.

No doubt, we all have hopes and expectations for our kids. Hopefully, though, we don’t love and care for them for what they might be, or for what they could have been. We need to be fathers to our kids where they are, not where we want them to be.* God does not love illusions, but real people, sinners who fail to make a passing grade:

He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:10-14)

How easily we forget the psalmist’s words: we are dust. How easily we impose expectations on others that we can’t meet ourselves. How easily we fail to distinguish between what we want for our children’s lives and who they are and what they want, even imposing our desires as demands. Thank goodness and thank God when our kids don’t forsake us for all our failures as fathers, but accept us where we are. Happy Fellow Dust Day, Dads!

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*I am indebted to my friend and colleague Brad Harper who shared his perspective with me on the importance of fathering our children where they are, not where we want them to be.