Culturally Irrelevant

I can’t think of a better healing story than the one I’m about to share…and on Easter! It’s longer than a blog post should be, but it’s worth it. Here’s a story written by my Dad about healing in a family (my family), restoration in the closest of relationships (between a Dad and his children, between a husband and his wife) and a fulfillment of Malachi 4:5-6:

“See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”

I can’t even begin to say how proud I am of my own Father. Dads are the door to their family. They let in either blessing or cursing, peace or confusion, life or death. I am so thankful that God has given me a natural Father who has sought after life and allowed blessing and healing in our family’s front door.

Clay - “My pastor, Jim Hennesy of Trinity Church in Cedar Hill, Texas, announced that his theme for 2009 is ‘Wholeness.’ This confirmed a word I had received over Christmas for our family that this would be a year of healing in all areas. It continues and expands a personal journey of relational healing that began for me in last fall’s Bethesda class at the church.

I had the Bethesda training several years ago when my wife, superintendent of Trinity Christian School, brought in Dominic Herbst, the founder of the program, to train TCS staff and others. I shared at a table discussion an early wounding I received as a toddler that my mother had mentioned to me. But I didn’t really know any details and just talking about it didn’t seem to have any effect on me. It was the only thing I could think of at the time, since I couldn’t remember any other significant traumatic incidents in my otherwise normal childhood.

Since then, I have learned even more about the Bethesda relational healing process through helping my wife with her dissertation on the impact of the Bethesda program in the school, and benefiting from the videos and discussion in the Bethesda class at church last fall. However, it all became very real in October when I received a letter from my mother. I think a discussion she had earlier with my wife about Bethesda might have prompted it. The letter detailed how, at the age of 15 months, I was put in the care of three other families over a six month period because of my mother’s health issues that were related to my brother’s birth. My father moved to another town to begin a new business, and I only saw my mother once during this time.

As I learned from the Bethesda class, this was a classic case of abandonment during the critical time that a child is supposed to be bonding with his mother. Even though I have no memory of this period, it had a dramatic impact on my personality, i.e., my soul. I changed from being cheerful and outgoing to being quiet and resentful, as evidenced by a serious habit of biting others while a toddler and having a difficult relationship with my mother even through the teen years. This continued into my adult life with the “fruit” of a critical spirit, outbursts of anger, lack of open communication with my wife and children, and a reluctance to reach out to friends and co-workers.

When I received my mother’s letter, I knew how important it was because of the Bethesda training, so I traveled to Tulsa the next weekend. We had a wonderful visit and discussed my childhood and hers for several hours. I prayed for her and then she prayed for me. Her prayer was so anointed that I cried for the first time as a man in her presence. I knew from the Bethesda training that this was a part of the supernatural grieving process that would start me on the road to relational healing. The next day in Tulsa, I visited one of my sons to confess my offenses towards him. I asked him to bring up other incidents that I had forgotten so I could repent and ask his forgiveness. We also prayed and cried.

Then the following day, back in Cedar Hill, I had a similar conversation with my daughter, followed in the next few weeks by visits with my other two sons and one of their wives. It was very humbling, or should I say humiliating, to listen to their sensitive but frank memories, some distant, some very recent, of my dysfunctional and offensive behaviors toward them and their families. The Holy Spirit prompted me not to even try to defend myself, which unfortunately was not hard to do since my guilt was so apparent. Of course, I saved the hardest confessional until last, the one with my wife. She had done her homework, and I was devastated to be reminded of just a few examples of the many, many incidents in which I had offended her over our forty years together.

After each of these conversations I wrote a letter reaffirming my confessions, asking again for their forgiveness, and committing to building a healthy relationship with them and their families from now on.

This experience has been the most significant in my Christian walk after my salvation and being filled with the Spirit. While I’m ashamed to admit that I blew it so badly for so long, even as a Spirit-filled believer, I am forever grateful to my Savior who provided the perfect opportunity for not just my healing, but my entire family’s. He has given me a supernatural ability to enjoy and love in a new way my mother, my wife, our four children and their spouses, and our nine grand-children, and to be more open and warm toward others. I know, like salvation, that this is just the beginning of a process, and that there will be tests and occasional stumbles. But I also know now that I was destined for wholeness in this life, and I am determined, by His Grace, to receive every good and perfect gift that He has for me.”

This testimony is also available online at Bethesda Family Services Foundation.

Frosted Flakes, a Curious George DVD, a tent of blankets, a cold, windy morning and a 3 year old. The perfect Saturday morning for this Dad. 

Now that we’ve had a few adventures (the park, camping and Saturday cartoons), I need more ideas. Any of you Dads out there got some adventure ideas we can try?

part 2 - Ahaz and raising kids

Yesterday I stopped with a grandpa with leprosy, a son with nauseatingly dying faith and a grandson on the way. Enter Ahaz. Here’s what Kings has to say about this young man:

Unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God. He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. He offered sacrifices and burned incense at the high places, on the hilltops and under every spreading tree.  (2 Kings 16:2-4)

Now how did that happen? His dad and grandpa weren’t slouches. Sure, they didn’t follow through with the entire covenant, but they did their best, right? Well, I’m realizing maybe the problem’s right there. They did it part of the way. They were half-hearted. They knew what God desired and chose to keep a little back.

The Bible is silent on the details of Jotham and Ahaz’s father-son relationship. Whether or not Jotham was an absentee father who didn’t teach his son, or if Ahaz was somehow emotionally scared by some tragic event. So it’s probably complicated and we’ll never know. But it looks like the saying “like father, like son” is not always true. Yes, Jotham was like Azariah. But because Jotham didn’t advance, there was little chance for Ahaz to stay on the same course. This story tells me that sin is like spiritual entropy, constantly decaying things that don’t move or grow. Chances are that my faith will grow from what my father imparted to me or it will fall way, but it probably won’t just be the same. So Ahaz saw something irrelevant and powerless in Jotham’s life that he didn’t care for, or he just didn’t want anything to do with Yahweh because he wanted the pleasures of sin more.  Either way, it didn’t take. The baton didn’t get passed.

So what can I do to make sure my boys “catch it”? Well, I’m a new dad and I’ve never done this before, but here’s the way I’m approaching it. First, I’ve learned that I’m a steward over my kids. God has trusted me with their care, but ultimately they don’t belong to me. So, everything I do had better be pleasing to their heavenly Father because I’m going to stand before him one day and give an account for my words towards them, my actions towards them and my choices to steward and nurture the gifts within them.

Starting there, I believe my primary responsibility is to protect them and provide for them according to the gifts and grace God has given me. But in the middle of all that is the “how”. And at this point in my life I believe the most influential thing I can do is to chase God wholeheartedly. Really. I mean, to grow in my faith, to have a personal, intimate walk with God that is open and desperate and real. And then, I need to include my kids in that relationship, to let them look in and see it, and to be consistent with it and to let it affect the way that I treat them and talk to them. Katy and I have gathered basic teaching and discipline tools from Scripture and godly counsel, but even good tools are useless if my heart’s in the wrong place. But when my relationship with the Father is right, everything else seems to fall in line. And ultimately, when I’ve done that, it will have to be my kids’ choice as they grow up to pursue God or not. And I believe that they will because of what’s being deposited on the inside of them and the example that’s being lived in front of them, both from us as well as other mature believers who surround them.

Our neighbor’s snow “family” went untouched all day. I guess our kids are a little different.

part 1 – questions and a little history

As a dad I’m asking myself, ”Are my kids experiencing the love of the Father through me? What’s getting passed on to the next generation of Watts boys?” I want my kids’ relationship with the Father to be more  intimate than my own. People say that what one generation does in moderation the next will do in excess. I assume that’s referring to sin, because when it comes to following God things are a little different. With godliness, it seems like what one generation does radically, the next usually does half-heartedly.

Take three generations of kings, for example. You’ve got Azariah (Uzziah), his son Jotham, and Jotham’s son Ahaz…grandpa, son and grandson. The writer of Kings says Azariah “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father had done.” (2 Kings 15:3) Now he wasn’t perfect. He let the people of Judah offer sacrifices to pagan idols. But he did, for the most part, try to follow God’s laws and serve him. The author of Kings says that God afflicted Azariah with leprosy until the day he died. His son, Jotham, had to govern the palace and the kingdom by proxy.

Jotham was basically Azariah II. He did what was right in God’s eyes (2 Kings 15:34), but, like his father, he still did not remove the high places of pagan idol worship. Even though Jotham did most everything else right, the whole national idol worship thing was a huge deal to God. So, like with his father, God afflicted Jotham. In this case he did it by raising up foreign leaders to fight against him. Even so, Jotham was a case of generational status quo. His faith didn’t get stronger, didn’t grow. And growth is a great indicator of life, which means Jotham’s faith was either dead or dying. Bottom line: status quo faith means dying faith, and dying faith is hot on its way to cold, or lukewarm, which God hates ad nauseum…literally (see Revelation 3:16).

So we’ve got a grandpa with leprosy, a son with nauseatingly dying faith and a grandson on the way. Enter Ahaz. Part 2 is tomorrow, but for now I’m examining my own faith. Is it growing? Am I coasting? Are there areas in my life and my relationships with God and others where I’m just relying on past successes, past experiences or past answers? Am I really seeking for fresh perspective, fresh understanding? Am I asking any new questions about my life or the lives of those around me?

It’s almost April and there’s at least 8 inches of snow in my yard! And it was the perfect day. After a great campout last night, complete with s’mores, a warm fire and books in our big family tent, we spent the morning doing absolutely nothing and then spent the afternoon romping in the snow and building a snowman. Seems like I haven’t done that since I was 7! But seriously, it was pretty cool because I was looking at the snow photo on Katy’s blog last week, wondering if we would ever see something like that again in Tulsa. It kind of bummed me out and I remember thinking, man, that looks like a lot of fun. I wish we could do that again. Kind of like how you feel about Christmas come May. Well, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but here we are! Thanks, God. You make this journey amazing.

I’ve learned that boys need adventures, even when they’re 3. Our last adventure was a treasure hunt at Hunter Park. This time we planned a Big Adventure Campout. All the rain and snow turned it into an inside campout, but it was awesome and Jack got so excited when we built the fire and put up the tent that I thought he was going to pee his pants! He wanted to make s’mores on the campfire but it was raining. So, he prayed that God would stop the rain, and wouldn’t you know it. It rained hours before and hours after, but for an hour and a half Friday evening, right after he prayed, it stopped raining! Just enough time to build a fire, let it settle into coals and then roast a few marshmallows for s’mores before climbing into our tent in the dining room for some stories. Thank you, God!

What makes me feel at home? What is my comfort and security when I walk through the door? Is it a nice house in a good neighborhood, square footage, comfortable furniture, better colors, good lighting, cool stuff? These are some of the questions my family has been wrestling with.

Ok, so half our house is packed up in boxes in the garage and we sold most of our furniture and “stuff” about 3 months ago in a huge garage sale. For those of you who don’t know, we’re planning to move to Pensacola, FL as soon as our house sells. I remember the first time I came home to a very bare house, complete with couch, bookshelf, TV and a rocking chair (oh, and some lamps). I was unsettled for weeks and couldn’t figure out why until one day I saw it in my wife’s face. She had rearranged the furniture, again, and I could tell she was feeling the bareness.

Over the months we’ve begun to realize why God told us to start packing up so early. Most of it is gone and now we don’t even miss it. What used to make us feel so at home and comfortable has now been replaced with the joy of having people over, the excitement of a board game or a picnic-for-dinner on the living room floor, and the comfort of God’s presence as we pour over his Word together in the evenings sitting on our one couch. I mean, it’s nice to have the stuff…don’t get me wrong. But it’s definitely not what defines “home” for us anymore.