Dear Reader,

I first wrote the core of this blog nearly 10 years ago. Initially I was really taken back at how it made its way around the country and the world for that matter. Over time, I have received a great many encouraging emails from people who were personally moved by my retelling of a deeply personal journey. Along the way I discovered that my story was not unique. It seems most of us have complicated relationships with our parents and in turn when we become parents with our own children. In looking back over life, I would have to say most all relationships are complicated and difficult to maintain for any length of time. Family relationships are held together by a deep bond of shared history and blood. They are not easy to get out of which forces us to have to deal with each other in our individual brokenness. It is in that struggle where we develop strength of soul and find out who we really are. For those of you not familiar with the story, I thought it might be helpful to revisit it again with Father’s Day in the US having just been celebrated on June 18th.

WHEN GENERATIONS COLLIDE

I have been debating for a while as to whether or not to tell this story, my hang up has been the story is quite personal. I’ve been pondering as to whether or not I really want to be this vulnerable with the rest of the world. I tend to be a somewhat private person and find myself cringing inside when others share too much information. I don’t want to be one of those people Living Out Loud. Over recent years I’ve shared my journey with a few close friends somewhat reluctantly but thinking it might be helpful in the right context. They in turn have encouraged me to share it with others thinking it is relevant to other struggling father and son relationships. Here we go…

The intrinsic conflict of perspectives between generations is not unique to our time. It has been going on across the ages. The reason those conflicts seem more extreme over the last century, is the significant increase of access to knowledge. This rapid increase of information has allowed for substantial change to happen in relatively short periods of time. This has put a great deal of stress on generational relationships. It is the perspective of younger generations that technology and therefore life has left older generations in the dust. They are now obsolete in their thinking and irrelevant to where the world is currently and where it is headed in the future. This perspective often changes when marriage and children are added to the equation. Life unexpectedly becomes more complicated then and the SOS to older generations suddenly goes up after they’ve been gathering dust in the irrelevance pile for a few decades.

BE YE THE PERFECT PARENT

As new parents the thoughts which fill our minds as to what it will take to be the perfect parent can be quite intimidating. In religious circles in can be downright oppressive. The number of books written on the subject is daunting. Then there is the God factor; we certainly don’t want to disappoint Him with our bad parenting! We want more than anything for our children to have the best which means we need to be the best. My father was no different in that regard.  He was so excited when I first arrived. In fact, he already had my whole life planned out! He knew exactly what it was going to take for me to grow up into manhood and his plan was laid out from day one.

SIR, YES SIR!

Everything was on schedule and working well until my personality began to emerge. At that point things deteriorated quickly into crisis mode as unfortunately my father’s son was not the conformist his father was. My father was a member of, as news anchor Tom Brokaw once put it, “The Greatest Generation.” This was a generation of men who returned from World War II and built the world’s greatest economy with the same military precision and hard work ethic they had trained under. They knew how to take orders and get the job done. They were loyal company men who were trained to believe that conformity was the best policy and that you never challenged authority. To do so showed disrespect. These were the remnants of their military training.

My father entered into the responsibilities of fatherhood with those same military principles and philosophy as his peers. He then set out to instruct me in those very same principles. In some regards it was the equivalent of mass production parenting. No matter where you went in the neighborhood, you were told the same thing by all the dads. In hindsight I feel bad for my father. The problem he was given and couldn’t solve was me! God had given him a non-conformist for a son who asked “why” about everything. Asking “why” in my father’s world was the equivalent of treason. One never challenged authority nor made one’s superior look stupid by asking a question they couldn’t answer.

Unfortunately for him, I just wasn’t wired that way. I was curious about everything and wanted to understand how and why things worked the way they did. I wanted to understand people’s behavior; at times I found it downright strange and confusing. He wasn’t the only one I frustrated. I horrified teachers, priests and anyone else in authority with my politically incorrect questions. Things escalated to the point that my adolescent years were spent living in the basement of our house, trying to avoid too much contact with him so things wouldn’t deteriorate into another verbal war. It finally hit critical mass when at age 17 I ran away from home. I just couldn’t live in the same house with him anymore as it felt like I was suffocating. I had no idea the search for understanding could result in so much conflict! This too was confusing.

EVEN GOD CAN’T FIX THIS MESS

A year later, I had a rather intense spiritual encounter with God late at night while alone in my rented apartment. While this certainly helped take some of the edge off our tense relationship, it certainly wasn’t a cure-all. I later moved out of state and our interactions were relegated to an occasional visit home where I tried to be on my best behavior.  We rarely ever talked on the phone as in those days long distance calls were extremely expensive.

Then one day I got a call from him asking if he could come visit me in St Louis where I was living at the time. I was completely caught off guard as he rarely came into my world. In fact, once while playing High School football they called a sweep play. It is a play designed so the person with the ball runs wide around the end of the line of scrimmage instead of straight ahead though it. I happened to be the person running around with the ball when I looked up and saw my father standing on the sidelines. I was so stunned I fumbled the ball out of bounds!

It turned out the reason Dad called was he had been battling cancer and was in the middle of reevaluating his priorities. Facing death has a way of doing that. At the time it looked like he had beaten it. He wanted to drive down so we could spend a few days together and reestablish our relationship. While I was initially apprehensive, it turned out to be a wonderful time. The whole experience had changed him. The rigidness was gone, replaced by a tenderness of soul I had never experienced with him before. He now was asking questions and reevaluating life. In hindsight it was a precious time we shared for those few days together. Sadly, a few years later the cancer returned and this time it would be terminal.

THE RIDE OF A LIFETIME

As he was in the process of dying, I returned to Milwaukee to visit him as much as I could. At one point we drove down to Chicago together to visit with relatives. What happened in that car over the next couple of hours would forever change my life? 

As we drove down I was filled with so many conflicted and confused emotions.  I hurt for my father as he was facing death’s door; it was scary! I hurt for my mother who was at some point going to lose the love of her life. I was frustrated because in the last few years he and I had finally found some harmony in our relationship. Now he was going to be taken away and we would never know where our relationship might have gone. As we chatted about a number of insignificant things he suddenly became quite serious and said “When I see God, I’m going to ask Him why it is that when you are finally wise enough to be a good parent it’s too late!”

I was rather stunned by what he said. First, my father was never the philosophical type so this was so unlike him. Secondly, what he said was extremely enlightening. I had never considered the fact God had set up life in such a way that parenting was as much a learning process as being a developing child.  In other words, there is no such thing as the perfect parent. It doesn’t exist, it’s a complete fantasy! Raising children is as much about our own personal growth as that of our children. I didn’t have children at the time but I treasured his words in my heart. I drew heavily on his wisdom when it was my turn to be a father.

HE SET ME FREE

While I was pondering what he said, I turned to look at him to say something and noticed tears streaming down his face. This was a bit unnerving as I did not ever remember seeing my father cry. He tried to compose himself but finally just blurted out the words “I’m so sorry!”  I had no idea what was about to come next, but just hearing those words had me crying as well and I was the one driving. Through blurry eyes, driving down Interstate 94 to Chicago, I tried to keep the car on the road.

He then said the most freeing words to me. “I was wrong about you. I told you all your life that you were a rebellious son when in fact you weren’t. You are exactly how God made you. The problem was on my end as I never bothered to ask God who you were. I thought being a good father meant having your whole life mapped out for you. As you grew older and refused to conform to the mold I had built, I took it as a personal affront. The truth was you were crying out ‘Dad, this is not me, I can’t be this person.” I couldn’t hear you because I wasn’t listening’. 

At that point I was crying so hard I couldn’t drive anymore and pulled off to the side of the road. We sat there for the next few minutes sobbing together while vehicles raced on past us. No one driving by knew what was happening inside that car. Bridges were being rebuilt across relational canyons. He was a father in need of forgiveness and I the son who needed to know he wasn’t a screw up. His words were so profoundly liberating.

As we hugged and fought back more tears, he made me promise then and there that when I had my own children I would ask God first who they were and raise them according to His plan and not my own. He died on May 4th, 1981 and a little over a year later his first grandson was born. His words got me through many a dark night of the soul as I was being tormented by my own failures as a parent. I hope that with all I have learned along the journey, I will be a better grandparent than I ever was as a parent. After all, the whole process is a learning experience and for you young parents, remember failure is a part of the process. Give yourselves a break and smile at your mistakes!