This year, when we piled everything into the car for our vacation, we added all five sets of golf clubs. As much as I don’t love how much real estate is taken from my allotment for shoes, I’m delighted to see how my husband’s love for golf has been passed on to our three boys.
You see, golf is one of the few things that my husband learned from his dad. Between work and the pains he battled, his dear father was absent through much. Outside of golf, most of my husband’s growing up years are filled with memories of his spitfire, Jesus-loving mama teaching the five siblings life’s lessons.
Our culture talks about generational curses, and history repeating itself, and the addictions that follow bloodlines. But from the time God began our little family 15 years ago, my husband chose to not parent from a place of fear that those things will surface. When those fears come, we’re both learning that the fear comes when there’s a gap—the fear comes in those places where he feels the deficit of what he didn’t learn from his beloved dad. He tries to use those gaps as a roadmap for leading our boys.
What we didn’t fully understand when we started our family is that God fills in those gaps. God steps in. He leads. He teaches. He guides. He heals. He comforts.
Teaching our boys to golf has been easy, because my husband learned from his dad’s gentle coaching and continued encouragement. But those things he never learned from his dad? He still learns through gentle coaching and continued encouragement, because in the absence of his own earthly father, my husband turns to the presence of God the Father. The Spirit guides and fills those gaps with Love and Truth.
Neither of us has nailed this parenting thing. But we feel comforted that the legacy that we leave isn’t contingent upon the one we’ve been handed.
Read the rest at The Joyful Life Magazine.