364 (part2)

My children have a terrific father 365 days a year and I try to teach them to honour him every day (it's much easier to teach a lesson I myself am struggling to learn. We won't talk about who is doing better at it either).

It really started me to thinking about fathers and fathering.

Because Brad is away to often for work, the kids and I spend a lot of time just us. I certainly am not fathering them during those times, although I've heard single women remark that they are both Mom and Dad to their kids.

In our family Dads are for pushing the baby way too high on the swing and somehow never seeing or caring how dirty the kids are. Dads have the kind of confidence in their offspring that allows them to teach a 5 year old to both drive and shoot a gun (while Mother increases time spent in prayer). Going to town with Mom is a chore, with Dad it's an adventure. Dad believes ice-cream is a great dinner option because of all the calcium in dairy.

Dad's are for modeling, however imperfectly, the love that God the Father has for his children.

and then I can't help but think of all the fatherless children and I am just beginning to understand what a great lack that is.

I'll be honest, my husband is terrific, but his heart is not for the fatherless. I feel disloyal saying that but if he was crushed to think of our kids spending one day without their earthly father where they needed him to be when they are so blessed by him so many other times, perhaps he's not so far away from there as I thought.

Sometimes I'm so deeply disappointed and frustrated with him (as I'm sure he is with me at times) for his ability to completely disregard anyone outside of his sphere of contact. Poverty plays an important role in population control, he believes...ugh.

And yet, he is this amazing Dad to the two children we are parenting and it all seems so close and so far away at the same time.

So I pray each day for God to touch his heart, to change him, to open his ears to the cry of the fatherless...because when it happens and he is able to show that kind of love to others..well I just can't wait to see what will happen then.

"He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.."

I can't believe it took me so much rambling work out that thought...phew.