Macho Dad

Hello Everyone,

I've been a stay at home dad now for over 6 months! We recently finished the school year and Madison did very well on her EOG's. Anna has had a lot of success with her garden and as of yesterday her very first blue berries were ready. Sam has been playing T-Ball and if you have never watched a 4U T-Ball game then you are missing out! Sam's last game of the season will be Saturday and I'm sure he will miss it once it is over. Lucas is close to turning 1! That's barely more then a month from now.

Recently, I was given this shirt as a present. You may now bask in it's greatness.

I also do a decent Macho Man impersonation.

Which I find ironic because I have never felt all that "macho" in my life. I've never felt I was good at traditional "manly" things. Things like cars, hunting, fishing, handyman style repairs and basically anything that involves the outdoors.

These were frequent conversations I had with roommates before I got married.

I can do dishes & laundry all day long (and often times do) but this is because the laundry was my household chore growing up. Also, I worked at the homestead for 4 years which a lot of that time was spent washing dishes. After you've washed dishes for 1400 people in one night washing them for 6 doesn't seem so bad.

Now that I'm home I've had to do a lot of things that were out of my comfort zone. Madison got a necklace as a baptism gift and it promptly feel down the drain in her bathroom. Call the plumber? Nope. Instead I cut off the water, took apart the sink (scary!) and retrieved the necklace. I even successfully put the sink back together. This is a marked improvement from the last time I tried to work on a sink when the pipe snapped off in my hands and I had to call a plumber.

Then this happened.

The kids love to go fishing with papa. Most recently my 3 oldest and my nephew Mason went with Papa. That's a lot of kids to keep up with and I went down to help them. Which is pretty laughable since I knew the least about fishing. Yet, there I was. Putting worms on hooks and taking the hooks out of fishes mouths and throwing them back into the water. I imagine if there was video of that you would laugh pretty hard at me and Sam trying to scoop a fish back into the pond. I eventually figured you should grab it by the tail to do that.

I didn't realize I was doing all these things because I just did them and keep going. It finally dawned on me how much God had stretched when I tried to mow the lawn a couple of weeks ago. I went to mow the lawn and there was a problem. Well several problems. The lawn mower wouldn't crank consistently. When I finally did get it to crank the blade was making a terrible clanging noise. Then as I was riding the mower back to under the carport to check that out I noticed both my left side tires were going flat. I parked it under the carport and pouted. I just wanted to mow my lawn not have to go to Lowes and buy a new riding mower. I got the mower from sears in early 2008 maybe I could call them for repairs? Just to come out and look at it would be $100 and then the price went up from there to fix it. Well that just wasn't in the budget for May so I went to the google machine. I found a trouble shooting manual, a few YouTube videos and went to work.

First I removed both tires, took them to the tire place and got them repaired. I then put them back on. Next I removed an obstruction that was wedged up in the blade deck. Finally, I cleaned out the safety switch in the seat that was preventing the mower from cranking properly. All this was done across two different afternoons and took several hours and I typed it up in 5 minutes. I sat on the mower and low and behold it cranked! In my victory I mowed my lawn with the most joy I have ever had in that particular task.

I was telling this story to a friend of mine and they remarked "Wow. I can't believe you did any of that." I paused for a second and went "Me, either."

God uses the situations in our lives to stretch us, grow us, and show us who is really in control. I realize all these things may seem minor to a lot of you but to me they are significant accomplishments and things I would have never even considered 6 months ago.

Being a Dad is not about doing "manly" or "macho" things that I thought it was for so long. It's really about taking care of your family and that means you simply do what needs to be done. Whether  it's in your comfort zone or not.  

Have a great Fathers Day everyone!

Pastor Glen

Sola Scriptura!