Absent Fathers

A while back I posted about the fatherless generation. Yesterday, I saw "fatherlessness" twice. One brought disgust. The other brought disappointment.

I am one of 4 fathers helping coach the 2nd and 3rd grade girls' softball team our daughters play on. We have a wonderful team of 13 girls. I've enjoyed coaching with the other 3 guys - they all know their stuff, but they aren't in this to win. They want the girls to play hard, but have fun in the process. It's been an enjoyable season so far.

Last night was our 4th game. On the bleachers next to our dugout among the families watching the game was a couple I didn't recognize. They may have been the parents of one of the girls on our team, or they may have been parents of one of the girls on the other team. For that matter, they may not have been parents at all and simply distant family members or friends come out to support one of the girls (and for the sake of what I am about to say, I really hope they aren't parents!).

As I trotted in after the top of the first inning to help prepare our girls for their turn at the plate, I noticed the male giving deep attention to an item in his hands. I figured it might have been some sort of fancy cell phone like a Blackberry and he was getting some work done. It was between innings, so perhaps he was checking a couple of emails. I didn't think too much about these scene at this time.

As I coached at first base, I couldn't help but notice the guy again. (He was in my line of view as I looked at the girl up to bat.) He was still fixated upon the device in his hands. Once again I stopped paying attention to him and put my attention back on the team.

Then as we switched over to take the field again, I noticed this guy still working. But this time I realized what the device was. He was playing a Nintendo DS! This 30-something guy was fixated on a handheld video game while his daughter is out playing softball. Not once during the entire evening did I see this guy lift his head. The gal sitting next to him, who I assume to be his wife, appeared bored, but at least she was watching the game. Perhaps the look on her face was not one of boredom, but of frustration that her husband was giving all his attention to a video game and ignoring his child out on the field.

I could only shake my head in disgust at this scene of "fatherlessness". And then conviction came.

I remembered I had been playing "Scramble" (a Boggle-like game) on Facebook earlier that afternoon. S, my 4 1/2-year-old, asked me to help him with something. I mumbled something about "give me a minute" and kept typing away as I found words. For 60 seconds, my son Swas fatherless. Yeah, his dad was sitting right there, but his life for a moment was existing as if he had no dad. Thus, I'm disappointed in myself.

It is so easy as a guy to give my attention to games and gadgets. And being a true guy, I can only do one thing at a time. And so I made my one thing my game and not my son for a few seconds.

But as I just talked about on Sunday with one of the couples I'm doing premarital counseling with, Ephesians 5:25 instructs us husbands to love our wives (and I believe our children, too) as Christ loved the church. And (as I always ask the guy) how did Christ show His love for the church? Yep - He died for her. As a husband and father, I am asked by God to die to myself for the sake of my family. It's hard. But it's the call and command I accepted when I said "I do."

I had good reasons for playing my game yesterday: it was my day off, I'd volunteered in the morning at a Water Distribution site, I swam laps for exercise over the lunch hour, and felt I deserved a little fun while my household had "book time" (the daily quiet part of our home's afternoon). But perhaps the guy at the ballgame felt the same way - maybe he'd volunteered somewhere (maybe he had actually spent his entire day down in the flood zone helping people clean-up their homes, not just a morning doing an easy job of loading up cases of water), maybe he had ran 15 miles for exercise (and not just swam 1 mile like I did), and maybe he had spent two hours of focused time with his daughter all day and so he justified his game play during her game.

But no matter what his reasons or my reasons might be for our actions, we are each called to put our families first above ourselves. So if you are a husband or father, I encourage you to do the hard thing - to die to yourself for the sake of your wife and/or kids. Trust God to provide you with the right opportunities for fun. Give your attention to those around. To put it in Men's Fraternity speak - reject passivity, accept responsibility, and expect a greater reward. Please - I've had enough disappointment and disgust in AWOL fathers for one day.