Mormon Buzzz

Tag: Fathers

  • When You Thought I Left

    When You Thought I Left

    My little brother was a late bloomer when it came to sports like golf for which in case you also wan to try, get some gear at pclubgolf.com. In high school he actually became quite athletic but when he was eight-years-old he was pretty small for his age and would rather play with his gargoyle action figures than play any sport.


    This was much to the dismay of my dad who loves sports and had big dreams for his firstborn son. You can imagine he was pretty excited when Spencer said he would like to play midget football. Meanwhile, for sports fans out there who are eager to bet on their players, they can head out to sites like 먹튀.


    He registered Spencer and they went to his first practice. Bless Spence’s heart, he couldn’t even do a jumping jack correctly during warm-ups and the practice just went downhill from there. Less than halfway through this season-opening practice, Spencer came over to my dad during a water break and told him that he just didn’t feel like football was for him.


    “Let’s go to Sonic and get some milkshakes,” Spencer remembers telling my dad.


    My dad told Spencer that he wasn’t going to let him quit and that he needed to run back onto the field. “My dad told Spencer that he wasn’t going to let him quit” My brother repeated his argument for why he didn’t want to play football anymore and then again suggested they stop wasting their time and go to Sonic for milkshakes.


    To make it very clear to my brother that he was not going to let him give up, my dad climbed into his car and began to drive away with Spencer still begging him to let him in the car. My brother said that in that moment he thought my dad was being completely insensitive and he couldn’t believe that his own dad would leave him there to suffer and embarrass himself.


    However, 11 years later, when Spencer was serving a mission in California, he began to appreciate what took place on that football field all those years before. He said that each time he felt like giving up he remembered that his dad had not raised him to be a quitter and it kept him going. He wrote to my dad and thanked him for leaving him there on the football field that day.


    My dad wrote him back and told him something he had never told him before.


    He told Spencer that he vividly remembered that day and how hard it was for him to say no to Spencer’s requests to leave. But then he told Spencer that while he did drive away, he didn’t actually leave Spencer there alone.


    He told him that when he thought my dad had left, he actually just drove over to the other side of the football field where Spencer couldn’t see him and he watched his little boy the rest of the practice. He made sure that he was okay and rooted silently for him.


    This story is typical of my dad. He is so good and so loving. “We’ll thank Him for not letting us quit.” But I think this also illustrates a powerful message about our Heavenly Father. We often go through hard things. We feel like quitting and we beg Heavenly Father to excuse us from our trials. But sometimes we feel like He gets in the car and drives away.


    I am a firm believer that He never actually leaves us on the field alone. He just goes to a spot where we can’t see him and he watches us as we fight through our trials. He roots for us and He makes sure that we’re okay. He does this because these experiences help us grow and he knows that farther down the road we will thank him. We’ll thank Him for not letting us quit and for loving us enough to let us go through these hard experiences, no matter how bad it hurt Him. We’ll thank Him for leaving us in the midst of our trial. And He’ll tell us that He never actually left.

    This article originally appeared on thefaithfriends.com and has been reposted with permission.

  • A Letter to Dads in a World that Doesn’t Get Fatherhood

    A Letter to Dads in a World that Doesn’t Get Fatherhood

    Image via the LDS Media Library. 

    Dear dads,

    This one’s for you.

    The men who step through the door like clockwork at the end of every workday and try to slip out of work clothes while children climb over and clamor around you. The men who stay at home and hold children in your arms, change diapers, cook meals, and deserve all of the credit in the world for it. This one’s for the grandfathers, the godfathers, and the stepfathers, the men who’ve ever been fathers, acted as fathers, or wanted to be fathers.

    This one’s for you in a world that keeps throwing you under the bus.

    Society is pretty obsessed with all of the things that you men do wrong these days. You don’t understand anything, they say. Boys are stupid, men are babies, you’re privileged, you know nothing, and you’ve had your turn, they say. Within that society are thought leaders and women who shove you into a corner as if being a man means you have nothing valuable to contribute anymore. They ignore your problems, telling you others have had it worse. They look past your victories, telling you it’s time for someone else to have their share. They strip you of your respectability and your dignity. They don’t give credit to your manhood, something that isn’t defined by your ability to be tough, but by your character and your ability to be decent.

    Often, society demeans you by lumping you under the term ‘the patriarchy,’ which has come to be defined as a system where men control and subdue, a system that needs to be crushed and attacked. Interestingly, it’s a term that historically has meant family and father.

    Whether intentional or unintentional, this rhetoric makes you seem like brutes and bad guys, and I wonder if it affects how you feel about your fatherhood.

    Being a father is a tough job, and the world makes it look like a useless one. Daytime television seems dedicated to paternity tests and men who feel fatherhood is both a waste of their time and a burden no one wants. Nighttime television is dedicated to men who cheat, abandon their families, or remain in a state of perpetual, non-committal bliss. Love of children and loyalty are not often associated with the men the media feeds us, and strong father figures are few and far between. Even outside of the media, fathers are infantilized, considered incompetent, and not often given the same amount of credit we give mothers and wives.

    But you should know that you dads mean everything.

    You don’t have to be a perfect dad to be a good dad, and the lessons you teach most often come by example. Because of dads, we know what hard work means. Because of dads, we know the difference between The Beatles and The Monkees. Because of dads, we feel protected. Because of dads, thousands of us know how to drive (and lots of us know how not to drive). Because of dads, we know exactly what we did wrong and how we need to fix it. Because of dads, we know that problems don’t fix themselves. Because of dads, we know what tough love means. Being a dad is more than being a figurehead. Being a dad is being a part of one great whole, one that would be missing something enormous without you.

    The world is filled with bad dads, mediocre dads, and men who don’t want to be dads at all. To those men, I’d say this: if you think being a father is a lot of work, it’s because it is. If you think fatherhood changes the way you live your life, it’s because it does (and should). But if you think that fatherhood is a worthless job that doesn’t make a difference, it’s because you don’t really know what fatherhood is. You don’t know what it means to your family.

    Please don’t listen to the world when it attacks your importance and worth, when it tells you that fathers are unnecessary or that fatherhood is a joke. Don’t look at yourselves through the eyes of society, but through the eyes of your little girls and boys, your wives, and the people who love you. You might see a champion who can do nothing wrong. You might see a normal man who makes mistakes. But what you’ll definitely see is that being a dad matters.

    So this one’s for you dads.

    Thanks for doing the dirty work, but most of all, thanks for being ours.

    Love,
    Me