![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2012\/07\/fatherhood.png\" "\\"fatherhood\\"")
<\/a>I recently saw a brief clip<\/a> of a ten year-old girl in her classroom who looks up to see that her soldier father has unexpectedly come home from Iraq. I confess that I am a complete sucker for this. I couldn\u2019t describe the video to someone without getting husky voiced, which is just plain embarrassing. I watched it on Youtube a half dozen times, and then\u2014because the Internet is of the devil\u2014I was presented with the opportunity to watch other videos that the Youtube algorithm deemed similar to the first.<\/p>\nSo of course I watched them all.<\/p>\n
Some are exploitive\u2014parents and principals and news anchors all conspiring in elaborate, hours-long hoaxes to maximize the surprise of children, and ensure that it\u2019s all captured on high-quality film for consumption by suckers like me. Others, like the video that pulled me in, are simple and brief and lovely.<\/p>\n
I suppose one could argue that all of it is exploitive. These homecoming videos are certainly the essence of sentimentality, an unearned emotional manipulation of the reader or viewer that is the hallmark of bad film and fiction.<\/p>\n
All the same, I\u2019m glad I saw the good clips, as well as the bad ones. The bad ones reminded me how we want to turn everything into reality-show glam\u2014capturing real people on film but not real lives, only the outsized and contrived parts of their lives: over-scripted homecomings, family interventions with drug addicts, the pornographic coupling of plasticized bodies.<\/p>\n
The good videos are simple and sweet and last only a few seconds, after which they hand back to these families the bulk of their privacy and dignity. I know I\u2019m eliding a point here, which is that they\u2019re only relatively good in that regard because they don\u2019t violate familial privacy to nearly the extent of the most exploitive in their genre.<\/p>\n
They remind us that there are families suffering daily in the latest modern American war\u2014a perpetual conflict with no widespread sacrifice or commitment on the home front. They remind us that there are happy endings, sometimes, quiet victories, homecomings not taken for granted.<\/p>\n
My children don\u2019t cry when I come for them, which is a good thing, because it means they still love me, but are not so heartbroken over my weekly absence that they can\u2019t contain their emotions. They don\u2019t cry, but all of them run to me, they nearly knock me down with their love, they bury me in it and so I am weekly healed, just a little, and strengthened, and filled up with a love that you either know or you don\u2019t know, there\u2019s no describing it otherwise.<\/p>\n
When you are divorced, there\u2019s no end of people who feel licensed to tell you what\u2019s best for your children. You feel scrutinized at every turn\u2014what you let them eat, how often you give them Bible lessons, whether you\u2019re using the right sunscreen.<\/p>\n
Because I know a few people who style themselves as Christians, I also get, on occasion, the fire and brimstone message that I will very likely smoke a turd in hell for my sins, past and present\u2014an extra-large turd, because I\u2019m a terrible father, the chief proof being that I\u2019m no longer married to the mother of my children.<\/p>\n
The truth is I\u2019ve always been afraid I\u2019m a terrible father, so I gobble up those words when they get hurled my way. I choke them down and let them brood like a poison, working into my flesh from the inside out.<\/p>\n
As I watched, on Father\u2019s Day, the video of that little girl tearfully welcoming her father home, I couldn\u2019t help but think of a story Chuck Colson told, about how one Mother\u2019s Day his prison fellowship team offered cards and stamps to all the prisoners in their care. They ran out, the demand was so great.<\/p>\n
Bolstered by this success, they made the same offer for Father\u2019s Day. They got not a single taker.<\/p>\n
Here we have two extremes, then, of fatherhood. At the one end, we see children both young and grown, rushing headlong into the arms of their fathers. At the other end, we see grown children, embittered and alone, living as if their fathers are dead.<\/p>\n
Maybe all parents balance along that line, each word, each action, inching us closer to one end or the other in our children\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps it\u2019s closer to truth to say that nearly everything we do, so long as we love our children, keeps us moving closer to the full heart-knittedness that we yearn for with anyone we love. Maybe what set all those fathers of men in prison the wrong direction, more than anything else, was their inaction.<\/p>\n
I like to think so, because I don\u2019t trust my own judgment. I love my boys and so I feed them and talk to them and chastise them and wrestle with them, and I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m doing all the right things or enough of them, but I do know it\u2019s all I can do. And I pray it\u2019s enough, and that they\u2019ll always run to me, even if I don\u2019t deserve it.<\/p>\n
Tony Woodlief<\/a><\/strong> lives outside Wichita, Kansas, and is the author of a spiritual memoir, Somewhere More Holy.<\/em> His essays on faith and parenting have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The London Times,<\/em> and WORLD Magazine.<\/em> His short stories, two of which have been nominated for Pushcart prizes, have been published in Image<\/em> and Ruminate.<\/em> His website is www.tonywoodlief.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently saw a brief clip of a ten year-old girl in her classroom who looks up to see that her soldier father has unexpectedly come home from Iraq. I confess that I am a complete sucker for this. I couldn\u2019t describe the video to someone without getting husky voiced, which is just plain embarrassing. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1080,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[142,408,329,169,62,413],"class_list":["post-765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tony-woodlief","tag-family","tag-fatherhood","tag-motherhood","tag-parenting","tag-parents","tag-sentimentality"],"yoast_head":"\n