The Most Difficult Thing about Being a Father
If you ask a number of dads what the most difficult thing about their role is, you’d like get several different answers. Some might say that being consistent in discipline is the hardest part. Maybe the most common answer–especially among dads with kids in high school or college–would be “letting go.”
I don’t want to say my answer is “the” right answer, but I want to share what I have found to be the hardest part about being a dad for, now, almost 20 years.
The most difficult thing for me has been knowing how woefully inadequate a picture of my kids’ heavenly Father I have been.
When a child is very small, we start trying to instill in them that God is their Father. If they are raised by parents who love the Lord, they probably start praying to Him as “Father” at a very tender age. As they grow and learn, they see what He is like…
…and then they see me, and the pictures too often are not even close to alignment.
God is perfect in love, perfect in justice, perfect in grace, perfect in mercy, perfect in presence…oh, and He knows everything on top of it all.
Me? I sometimes don’t remember where I left my keys.
And I certainly don’t get the love, justice, grace, and all the other traits right. I fail to discipline sometimes. I over-discipline sometimes. I don’t listen like I should sometimes. I don’t give good advice sometimes. I am too lenient sometimes and too strict at other times.
And on and on it goes.
All the while, I know my children are told that I am their earthly “father,” and I wonder how skewed I have made their view of their perfect heavenly Father.
But, thankfully, He’s also my heavenly Father, so He gives me perfect grace for when I fall short and perfect advice for doing better tomorrow than I’ve done today.
What a joy to know that, despite the imperfect and terribly flawed picture I give my kids, He still loves me…and them.
AUTHOR: Adam Faughn
