My Children's Father

On this Father's Day, I'm reflecting on what I have learned from my children's father. His strength is the relationship he is careful to develop with our boys. My husband is a hard worker, taking seriously his responsibilities at work. But when he gets home, he is intentional with his last reserve of energy to engage the boys and truly LISTEN to them. Just yesterday, I was rebuked by his example. My 4 year old is a stream of endless questions. At some point, I usually just tone him out. I really don't know why crows are black, and I'm exhausted from the other 5 things I'm doing for him right now. Yesterday, our car ran over a rock that had fallen off the bank onto our driveway. What did we hit? Why did we hit it? Why did it fall? Why was it in the driveway? Our entire drive to dinner was a stream of questions about the rock in the driveway? Really, how many ways could I explain such a thing? But my husband very patiently explained it to him. Then he told me he could remember having exactly such a stream of questions as a child, and he well understood that, as irrational as the questions seemed to me, they were coming from a real place of curiosity in my son's personality. My son wasn't moderately curious like me. Instead, his curiosity is fundamental to his personality. He really needs to understand how things work. I had a choice now to squash his curiosity or foster it. And much of my choice on how I handle this personality trait at age 4 will affect how he views me long term. Am I a person he can come to with his questions? Am I a safe place to ask these things? Will he be mocked? Will he be shut down? Do I value his curiosity or scorn it? Because I see the person my husband has become in part due to his God-given curiosity on how things work, I realize that my son's curiosity is part of his unique giftings from God.

The real issue is that my husband fosters an authentic relationship with my boys not based on preconceived notions of what we want them to be but on their own personalities with their own strengths and weaknesses. He values consistent discipline as I do, but he's much more consistent than me at accurately reflecting the definition of proactive training in righteousness rather than reactive retribution for wrongs. My husband is about much more than just getting conformity out of my boys. His influence on them is not based on rules but a real relationship, and that reflects much to me on how my Father in heaven parents His children.