Thursday night the doorbell rang. There was a man with a two and a half foot long sword standing on my front porch. Not to worry. He was coming to our weekly Raising a Modern-Day Knight meeting. This is a book and study that the men from our church small group are in the middle of right now. Raising a Modern-Day Knight by Robert Lewis is about raising our sons with a sense of what it means to be a man. It is an excellent program and you can check it out at www.RMDK.com.
A Father is a man, but what is a man? From the book Robert Lewis states that a real man is one who rejects passivity, accepts responsibility, leads courageously and expects a greater reward. (Raising a Modern-Day Knight p.60) As I studied this definition I, of course, was applying it to myself and trying to see what I needed to do to fit it better. Then I thought, “Well how did my Dad fit this definition?” As I gave it some thought, I realized, He nailed it.
My dad was the poster child for rejecting passivity. While there may have been a lack of tact at times, Dad would always take the bull by the horns. You never have to wonder what he thinks about something because he will tell you or you can just sit back and watch the sparks fly. Whether it was politics or social issues or where the Church was not being as frugal as it could, he never backed down from what he believed was right. He is often the one who has to be the bad guy to get things said that need to be said.
Dad accepted responsibility. He taught us from birth that we were responsible for our actions and we had to accept the consequences for those actions. He taught us to have pride in a job well done and that if something was worth doing it was worth doing right. He was responsible for our Family. It did not take a village, it took parents who loved one another and loved their kids enough not to let them be little monsters. Not too long ago at a local town government meeting in the small town I grew up in a prominent local official came up to my dad after the meeting and said, “Mr. Smith, I don’t know if you remember or not but once when I was a kid you gave me a whippin’.” Dad said, “Well I don’t remember doin’ it but I probably did.” The official said,” Well sir you did and I deserved it and I just wanted to say Thank you.” I know how he feels. I too got quite a few of those whippin’s, and I too deserved them and am a better man for them! He taught us to be involved in politics and that it was our responsibility, as citizens of the great country, to vote and to know what we were voting about.
Dad led courageously. It took a lot of courage to turn down promotions that would have meant an increase financially and in status at work. He knew those promotions would take him away from home more and require a move from our small town in Texas to Wilmington, Delaware and that was not where he wanted to raise his family. Dad always said our family was a democracy and we could all have a vote. Then he would cast his “Thousand votes” and that is what we would do. The thing is it was never a selfish desire that drove him. It was always what, in his wisdom and greater experience; he knew was the best for us all. He was right.
Dad expected a greater reward. Dad did (and does) not live for himself. He was the leader of our family and what he did, he did for us. Instead of burning vacation days doing things with his friends he saved them for us. Every summer we went on a family vacation. Now don’t picture fancy hotels or exotic destinations. Picture five or six kids in a station wagon or his home-built camper shell on the back of his truck pulling a pop-up camper. Picture us stopped at a roadside rest stop eating cold cut sandwiches and drinking “Bug Juice” (Kool-aid for the uninitiated, as an aside, you never drank it all and just added new flavors as it ran out. By the end of the trip it was mud colored but sure tasted good!). We stayed at KOA’s (a pool!) and state and national parks. We traveled cheap but we saw this Country and learned to love it like he did. He did this because that is what a Dad did. His reward was not fame or fortune but a family that to this day loves to be together. This is the reward God has for us and it is the exact opposite of instant gratification. When you are in the trenches of child rearing it’s hard to see but I saw what my Dad did and that’s good enough for me.
I have my own wife (Holly) and family (Noah-15, Kylie-13, Tabor-9 and Sydney-6) now. I have my own life to mold into that definition of what a real man is. I must reject passivity. I must accept responsibility. I must lead courageously. And I do expect the greater reward. I have a leg up on most men in this. I watched a man live this out. My Dad.
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