In less than a month, I'll turn 47. Now, no big deal...I've had touches of gray hair showing up for years, and a recent geographical survey has shown a bit of a belly. All this is true, and Brad Pitt I'm not. Though as I continue to journey with a Band of Brothers through Wild at Heart by John Eldredge (2001: Thomas Nelson, Inc.), I find a point early on in the book that my masculine journey affirms:
"A man has to know where he comes from, and what he's made of."
And, so, this has been leading me towards memories of my father, Michael. My father died in 1996, at the age of 75. As I spend time with God as He now initiates me into manhood (yes, initiation is not just for the young men of the tribe), I find myself asking, "Am I my father's son?"
I've had many jobs over the course of my lifetime. I'm not a careerist. My father worked hard in two different professions: for over a quarter century he was a bus driver in New York City, and for over a decade he worked for the United States Postal Service. I will never work as hard as my father did. But my father never invited me - or showed me, really - how to live from a deep, masculine heart.
For many, many years I was haunted by this statement: I don't want to be my father. Now, in the wake of being adopted into a relationship with God, I have to ask myself, "Aren't some of the ways I treat people just the same as he did?"
I've begun to look back at who my father was emotionally. He always seemed distant, vacant, a bit empty. But when he did appear emotionally, it always seemed skewed towards anger. As a child, I was scared of his temper: it was loud, threatening, and intimidating. In retrospect, I could also see how he handled troubles and adversity: he would grow silent.
I'm not sure what battles my father wanted to fight, or what adventures he wanted to live out, or how he felt about his beauty, his wife. I can recall him sharing stories about his youth, or being in the War, or about getting married, but they were vague, as if he didn't want to fill in the blanks or just didn't have much to say about them.
If I were to choose 10 words to describe him as a man, they would be: Angry, Quiet, Detached, Jealous, Provider, Unforgiving, Distant, Unloving, Mean, Absent. Not exactly a kind portrait painted in hindsight, but I can also ask, "If these descriptions are true, which can I use to describe me?"
At various points in my own life, I saw the legacy I inherited: the ability to detach, the times of being emotionally paralyzed, and a capacity towards anger. Like father, like son?
God, in His infinite wisdom, grace, mercy, and love, continues to show me how His fathering and the fathering of Michael all play into the same endgame. What I wanted I couldn't have. What I couldn't imagine wanting is now mine. Such a paradox, but also such a powerful reminder that I am my father's son...and that I am my Father's son.
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