The Father I am Not Supposed To Be
The title will make sense, I promise.
I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately.
Not in the normal “music was better when I was younger” kind of way. Although, for the record, it was. Admittedly, I am not sure I am qualified to judge since I listen to heavy metal worship music. Hopefully, one day I can convince Pastor David to play “How Great Thou Art” in the heavy metal genre. Here’s to dreaming.
Anyway, back to my longing for the old days. It’s been something deeper and I needed this post to help me figure it out. Recently, we took the kids to Kennywood. There is something about that place that refuses to completely move on. The old rides. The sounds. The smell of French fries. The wooden roller coasters. Even the parts that probably should have been replaced twenty years ago somehow make it better.. I have this picture of me as a 9-year-old (maybe) and my dad standing in front of the Potato Patch. It is one of my favorite pictures ever. Life looks simple in that picture.
Then, this last weekend, the CCC Worship team brought me to tears as we sang “Shout to the Lord.” If you grew up in church in the late ’90s or early 2000s, you know that gem. That opening piano progression hits, and suddenly you’re somewhere else.
“My Jesus, my Savior. Lord, there is none like You. All of my days I want to praise. The wonders of Your mighty love.”
(I must confess that the first verse hits different as a dad.)
And for a moment, I wasn’t thinking about what needed to be done next. I wasn’t thinking about work. I wasn’t thinking about the house. I wasn’t thinking about feeling the pressure of being a good enough father and provider. I wasn’t thinking about what I had accomplished lately. I was just there. Actually, I was back there. Back to the days of simplicity. Of being loved as a young kid. And I’ve been trying to figure out why that feeling has affected me so much. Finally, as I sat down and reflected on my recent infatuation with nostalgic things it was this revelation of being just loved as a kid.
Because there is this part of me that longs to go back. The football field and hockey rinks as a young kid. The video games. The birthday parties. The good life as a young kid. The simplicity of not knowing about finances. Just an immature, self-consumed kid.
And no, I don’t actually want to go back. I miss who I allowed myself to be back then.
Now, everything became a scoreboard or required checklist. There is a strange thing that happens as you get older. Life becomes increasingly measurable. Your career has a scoreboard. Your finances have a scoreboard. Your fitness has a checklist. Your house has a checklist. Every relationship has a checklist.
And parenting might have the most brutal scoreboard of all. Are your kids doing well? Are they respectful? Are they successful? Are you spending enough time with them? Are you disciplining them correctly? Are you creating memories? Are you teaching them about God? Are you present enough? Are you providing enough? Are you disciplining enough? Are you not disciplining enough? Are you doing enough?
I think I can stop before every parent that reads this is overwhelmed with anxiousness.
Pause. Philippians 4:4-8. Read it. Pray it. Focus on verse 8 too. Just soak with God for a minute and then continue reading my heart-filled post.
And underneath all of those questions can slowly develop a much more dangerous one: Am I enough?
Our culture doesn’t help. Okay, that’s a ridiculous understatement. Culture makes it infinitely worse. We live in an age where almost everything can become performance. Experiences become content. Hobbies become side hustles. Fitness becomes metrics. Vacations become photographs. Parenting becomes comparison. I recently came across an Instagram post where a gentleman posed the question, “If your kid ended up like you, would that be okay?”
It hit me like a tone of bricks because I don’t want my kids to be anything like me. Yes, I know that I am too hard on myself, but prayer to God, is they’re nothing like me but that they are like Christ. Let me be more like Christ.
My intent isn’t to be self-deprecating but to come to the end of myself.
Somewhere along the way, life can start feeling less like something we’re living and more like something we’re constantly just doing. And then feeling or imposing an evaluation on ourselves. That’s why nostalgia can hit so hard. And feel so good. Because I remember a time before I felt like I had to do so much. Prove so much. Perform so much. Provide so much. All of this landing to my worth and identity in what I can do.
Scripture has a remarkably different definition of what makes a life valuable. Jeremiah 1:5. It is my oldest daughter’s verse over her life. Another verse to just read and pray over. God loved us from before we were formed and He has a call and purpose on our life, always.
Our identity is before performance; it is before everything. I am so tempted to pull in a finance reference. Should I? Okay, here we go.
In finance, the bottom line, profits, isn’t always the end-all, be-all. There’s a ratio called EBITDA (you can look it up). But the intent is to look at profitability before all of these things are drawn out of the company. You actually add back in these expense items back into earnings. Here’s my attempted analogy: it’s tempting to look at your life or your worth by what it produces, like a profitability line. At the end of all of the resources and requirements that are pulled from you what is left (profits)? A big house? A nice car? A great career? A good family? Great relationships? Good parenting? What are you producing? After everything has been drained from you (work, family, finances, responsibilities, parenting, etc) have done enough? After all of the scoreboard and checklist items have amounted to anxiousness and exhaustion, have you kept up with the Jones’s?
But our identity in Christ is before all of the resources have been drained from us and, in fact, those items should be added back in as we walk with Jesus. It is like the concept of EBITDA in so far as these blessings that feel like they drain us and we use them to measure ourselves need to be added back into who we are as go to the cross. The main point is Jesus’ love for you is before all of the blessings. And His love never changes. And He wants to use all of the areas in your life to show that His grace is sufficient and His power made perfect. Here is the example that hopefully brings this home, after an exhausting day of parenting you don’t sit down to measure if you’re good enough but rather soak in that you’re a tired parent that is doing life with the Holy Spirit.
In my mind this analogy makes perfect sense but if not, I am sorry.
Let me clarify things. For me, the nostalgia that I am craving is when I was loved just because I existed. As a kid, I didn’t have much value to offer. I didn’t provide. I didn’t lead a family. I didn’t have a career.I didn’t own anything. Nobody needed me to have the answers. I am laughing out loud to myself because I am thinking that little-kid me was a resource drain!
But my heart loves thinking back to the tenderness of being my parents’ son. And there is something incredibly freeing about being a son. Or a daughter.
Read Romans 8:15-17, please.
You don’t earn your seat at the dinner table with Jesus. You don’t submit a quarterly report demonstrating why you still belong in the family. You just belong.
That’s what I was feeling walking around Kennywood. I remembered experiencing it as a kid. When somebody else bought the tickets. Somebody else drove. Somebody else knew where we were going. My responsibility as a kid was to live life passionately.
And I get the joy of passing that along to my kids. I watched my kids soak in that freedom at Kennywood. Their smiles. Their laughs. Their endless joy. My daughter hugged me at the end of the day and said, “Thank you for everything.” Nothing makes a tough man feel emotionally weaker than a daughter blessing him like that.
Jesus once told people who were exhausted from carrying the weight of life:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
— Matthew 11:28
I used to read that almost exclusively as a verse about physical exhaustion. That’s because I didn’t have a “mental load.” By the way, I hate that phrase, “mental load.” It is just called life, and most, if not all, of the mental load are blessings. That’s the concept in part to adding back the burdens like EBITDA. Jesus’ promise is that we will receive rest when we come to Him with our burdens.
There is a line in Psalm 131 that I’ve started appreciating more as I get older:
“I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a child with its mother.”
— Psalm 131:2
That’s an interesting picture of spiritual maturity.
Not frantic.
Not impressive.
Not proving anything.
Not stressing over everything.
A child resting in the presence of a parent.
Maturity in Christ isn’t becoming increasingly independent from God. And we know that, but like it says in Romans, we need to renew our minds on that truth frequently. I don’t know about you, but I need a daily reminder of how dependent on Him I’ve always been and always will be.
Quick side note, as dads, there is this dangerous pride that creeps in as we feel we have to hold it all together. God’s Word warns us in Proverbs that pride comes before destruction, even if it is unintended pride. Did you know dads that you were never supposed to graduate from being a son?
There is a moment in Mark 10 when people begin bringing children to Jesus. The disciples try to stop them. From their perspective, it makes sense. Jesus is important. He has places to go. People need healing. Crowds are waiting. There is serious work to be done. Children aren’t particularly useful to the mission. But Jesus becomes indignant.
“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”
— Mark 10:14
Then He says:
“Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
— Mark 10:15
We sometimes turn that into a lesson about innocence or childlike wonder. But children in the ancient world weren’t powerful people. They had no status to offer Jesus. No résumé. No accomplishments. No influence. They came empty-handed. And Jesus welcomed them. That’s the Gospel.
Adulthood requires responsibility and scripture certainly doesn’t teach us to avoid it. I’m supposed to provide, lead serve, sacrifice, and parent. I’m supposed to use whatever abilities God has given me. Those things matter.
But somewhere along the way, it is possible to confuse responsibility with identity. I am a father. But before I am a father, I am a son.
I am a husband. But before I am a husband, I am a son.
I have a career. I have responsibilities. I have people who depend on me. But none of those things purchased my place in God’s family. None of those things are more important than being God’s son.
To me, this EBITDA reference is “no cap.” (I just can’t help myself).
“The Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”
— Romans 8:15“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”
— 1 John 3:1
That’s a radically different relationship than the one our culture trains us to expect. And we can let culture creep into our relationship with God, even if just slightly. The world constantly asks: What have you done? The Father says: You are mine. Those aren’t the same thing.
Let’s land this plane. There is danger in nostalgia. We can romanticize the past. The world wasn’t actually perfect twenty or thirty years ago. Neither were our families. Neither were our churches. Neither were we. I don’t want to be a kid again. I want what God has given me, right now.
“Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions.”
— Ecclesiastes 7:10
Nostalgia can reveal something, but it is not perseverating on the past. Sometimes an old place, an old song, or an old memory awakens a longing that the thing itself cannot satisfy. Maybe that’s part of what happens when an old roller coaster or an old worship song suddenly hits harder than expected. I don’t really want Kennywood in 1998. I don’t really want to be twelve again. I don’t even really want the old version of a church service back. And you shouldn’t either.
May I pause respectfully for a second on that last thought. I believe that God is challenging all of us out of our comfort zones and preferences and into a heart that longs to see the lost saved. Every lost person saved. I hope you pray over that and consider this: worship song, sermon series, event, any and all of the above are aimed at changing lives, even if it goes against a preference.
Okay, now back to Kennywood.
Those memories remind me that I am loved without performing, known without presenting a version of myself, cared for without accomplishing anything. And Christianity makes an extraordinary claim: that God so loved me that He sent His Son so that I will live. It is like little 9-year-old Stephen putting his arms around 39-year-old me and saying, “You can put the weight down.”
Not because adulthood isn’t heavy. It is. Not because responsibilities disappear. They don’t. But because underneath all the titles we’ve accumulated, the achievements we’ve chased, the people we’re responsible for, and the expectations we’ve placed on ourselves, there remains a much simpler identity. Child of God. And God wants us to step into those responsibilities with a childlike heart.
“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
— 1 Peter 5:7
Notice what makes that possible. Not because the problems aren’t important. Not because someone else will magically handle every responsibility. Because He cares for you. Maybe that’s what nostalgia has been stirring in me. We spend adulthood becoming important. Becoming capable. Becoming responsible. Becoming needed.
Jesus wasn’t giving us permission to become childish when He told us to receive the Kingdom like children. He was reminding us how exhausting it is to keep pretending we’re the Father.
Don’t miss being His son or daughter first.
Thank you for letting me be vulnerable.