Yes, he does. And I'm sorry.

I found this story in a 1937 edition of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. Quite convicting of daddies who spend too much time fussing and not enought time loving. It might even convict a few mommies.

It sure slapped this daddy around.

FATHER FORGETS
W. Livingston Larned
condensed as in "Readers' Digest"

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.

These are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, "Goodbye, Daddy!" and I frowned, and said in reply, "Hold your shoulders back!"

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boy friends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive-and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. "What is it you want?" I snapped.

You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightended with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding--this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: "He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!"

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.

I, too, have asked too much.

Way to go!!

Good job, Republican Party. By marginalizing the large segment of your base that is evangelical Christian, and putting a moderate like John McCain up for the presidency, you have guaranteed that a liberal will win the White House. Let's all celebrate the radically liberal judges that will be appointed, the assault on our Judeo-Christian values that will be launched, a reinforcing of abortion on demand, and no marriage amendment.

You should be proud of yourselves.

The only positive side of this is that America will be primed for the conservative values of Mike Huckabee after four years of Obama/Clinton hyper-liberalism.

Huckabee 2012!!!

GO MIKE!!!!

If you can at all afford to give, please click on Mike Huckabee's link to the right and make a donation. Let's fight to put a true social conservative in the White House.

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Elisabeth Elliot knows what I'm talkin' about.

*edited 012208*

Etta sent me a blog post by a friend of hers where she quotes from Elisabeth Elliot's daily devotionals. If you don't know who Elisabeth Elliot is you can get to know her at her website. The quote is from John Coleridge Patteson, an Anglican Bishop and 19th century missionary to Melanesia, and is as follows:

"My objection to mission reports has always been that the readers want to hear of progress, and the writers are thus tempted to write of it; and may they not, without knowing it, be, at times, hasty that they may seem to be progressing? People expect too much. Because missionary work looks like failure, it does not follow that it is. Our Savior's work looked like a failure. He made no mistakes either in what He taught or in the way of teaching it, and He succeeded, though not to the eyes of men."

This so describes how I feel about Summerlake. We are missionaries to Summerwood. Our church is not a split or splinter but a from-scratch start. Thus, we have much different expectations and time-frames than your run-of-the-mill church split. I won't belabor the point because I feel I expressed it well enough in my last post. I will say, however, that regardless of whether no one funds us (though a few are), no church sponsors us (as it appears none will), and no convention supports us (wow, the red tape), we will continue to labor. Our success is not defined by land, people, or buildings but by faithfulness - faithfulness to the call of God. By that measure, we are already successful.

Let me say again: this is God's church and God's timing. Dear reader, it may look like we are doing nothing. Often, I would agree. But we are being obedient. We are not giving up just because the road is tough or the temptation to quit fighting is strong. Noah didn't quit building because of ridicule, Abraham didn't give up because of age, Jacob didn't give up because of trickery, Joseph didn't give up because of treachery, Paul didn't give up because of shipwreck, John didn't give up because of exile, and we will not give up because of qualms, hesitation, uncertainty, doubt, and misgivings - on our part or the part of anyone else. Others may not believe in our call, and sometimes we may not either, but we believe in the God that called us. We move forward "not by might, not by power, but by [God's] Spirit."

There is your mission report of progress.