Good fathers matter.
They always are there for their children.
“It starts with unconditional love, the kind of rock-solid assurance that says, ‘There is nothing you can do to make me love you more, and nothing you can do to make me love you less,’” Rev. Chip Stapleton, senior pastor at Highland Presbyterian Church, said Wednesday in reflecting on his fatherhood of four sons ages 21, 19, 16, and 15. “That love is anchored in a deep faith and a commitment to building strong relationships. As fathers, we have a responsibility to model what true strength looks like.”
Mothers are our nurturers.
Fathers are our protectors.
We shower our mothers with floral arrangements and Sunday luncheons on Mother’s Day. Fathers are more resigned to neckties, boxer underwear, and socks on Father’s Day, but they are loved all the same.
Fathers are the ones who teach us to ride our bikes when we are young. They give us our first baseball glove and spend time after work playing catch in the backyard. They hoist us on their shoulders to see above the crowds. They teach us how to tie a necktie. They are the stern eyes when the new boyfriend knocks on the door for a daughter’s first date, and you better have her home on time. They walk daughters down the church aisles on wedding days, and more often than not hold back a tear in giving them away to a groom in wait.
In the Footsteps of Their Fathers
I’m reminded on this Father’s Day of sons and daughters in this community who followed in a father’s footsteps—brothers Josh and Japheth Barkman, who became respected veterinarians because their late father, David Barkman, was a respected veterinarian before them.
I’m reminded of David Hedgecoe, who followed in the dentistry footsteps of his father, the late Joel Hedgecoe.
I see the pride in Ellis Felton’s face in what Maddie Kellogg has become as director of donor services for the Cumberland Community Foundation.
I see the joy in Howard Culbreth in knowing the Cumberland County Schools educator his son, David Culbreth, has become. I see, too, the pride of Kanaf Alasri in watching his son, Mustafa Alasri, grow into a man with such respect for his parents and others. Fathers like Kanaf Alasri don’t come along every day. I’m reminded, too, this particular day of a heartbroken Lynn Kelly, who followed in the footsteps of a State Farm Insurance agent father and made Ed Miller so proud.
There is no blueprint or template, Chip Stapleton said, for what a father should be.
“Part of a father’s role, and candidly, one of the hardest parts, is setting high expectations,” Stapleton said. “But this can only be done when a child has absolute confidence that they are entirely loved and accepted just as they are. When that foundation is secure, a father can look honestly at his children and say, ‘I see what you are capable of, and I expect you to stretch toward it.’ We have to remind them that their gifts are a beautiful blessing, but they also carry a responsibility to the world around them.
“At the exact same time, we have to guard against inflicting our children with our own unfulfilled dreams or rigid ideas of what their lives should be.
“Our job isn’t to write their scripts,” Stapleton said. “It’s to give them the roots to stand firm and the wings to fly into the specific future God has designed for them.”
Epilogue
This is Father’s Day.
Not every father is perfect, but if your father is perfect for you, then nothing else matters.
Allow me, if you will, to leave you with the words of the late Jim Valvano, the N.C. State University men’s basketball coach.
“My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person,” Valvano once said. “He believed in me.”
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
