This First Father's Day

What do fathers want? This is the topic chosen for June by visitors to the Fathers for Good website.

 

Of course, there is not just one answer to the question. Fathers want a number of things, and different fathers may want the same thing in different ways. Yet I think the question is important because it directs attention on the heart of a father. The question is important not so that fathers can get things, but rather that they can know themselves better.

 

What’s inside a father’s heart? What is his deepest desire?

 

Now, I think, the answers become fewer and more focused. A father wants to know his children, in a personal way that only the man who helped to generate their lives can know them. A father wants to know his wife, also in a personal way that only a man who has “forsaken all others” for this one woman can know her, including in “the biblical sense.”

 

Now we are talking about big issues, because we are talking about the one truly important issue. We are talking about love.

 

If your mind goes kind of fuzzy and your heart bounces in all directions and your emotions run in contrasting colors and contradictory directions at the thought of love – in other words, if love means to you a bunch of competing and contrasting things that never seem to fit, don’t worry. Love is like that. It is like that because love is the one thing that can truly hurt us, and the one thing that can truly heal us. (See the article on this site, “Love – It’s a Guy Thing.”)

 

Yes, there are a million things that can go wrong in a father’s life. So many today are divorced, sometimes against their own will. So many are separated from their children. Some fathers just don’t know how to be good fathers. All of us, I think, are anxious about our own inadequacies and concerned about the future. We live in stormy times and amid economic upheavals, when the certainty and security we had planned seem to be blowing away.

 

Yet fatherhood can at times be very simple. Sometimes when I am most anxious and wondering what the future holds, or filled with anger over some incident at home or in the world, one of my young boys will sit in my lap with a book or pull my hand to go outside and play. The problems and challenges don’t disappear, but they appear in a different light.

 

Fathers for Good was launched last August, and this is our first Father’s Day as an online community, through the sponsorship of the Knights of Columbus. As editor, I wish you all a happy Father’s Day, and thank you for being a part of Fathers for Good.

 

Let’s meet together often.

Comments

[Joe G.]

"Love-it's a guy thing." What a great article. I wish every man I know could read it! Men can miss the boat on what love really means, and our TV culture really doesn't help.

Thank you, Fathers for Good

[Eugene]

Let's meet together often, indeed. I have gained a lot from Fathers for Good. It makes me proud to be a Knight of Columbus and to call you 'brother'.