Rational people will often say, and other rational people will agree that fathers—good fathers—are a very key and crucial element to a healthy and functioning society. I believe that every single ill that humanity has to offer can be traced back to broken families, and specifically, lack of fathers.
This is not some sort of crazy hot take, but I want to move past the talking points and get vulnerable with you for a few moments. I want to share something more personal.
I’m 33 years-old. I have five older sisters; one older, and four younger. People who find this out often assume that I grew up understanding women, and thus knowing how to treat them well. The assumption was this, and that my profound knowledge of the opposite sex was taught to me by my mother and sisters. That is only very partially true.
The truth of the matter is, my mother and sisters taught me a lot of things, but how to respect and treat women well was essentially taught to me by my father. Looking back, I understand that there are very crucial lessons that are really reserved for a man to teach a boy, and it may not always be the lessons we think they are. Through real life scenarios that I handled extremely poorly, my father taught me how to be a man, and what that meant.
The year is 2008, and I find out that a friend of mine from our church has her prom coming up. We go to different high schools, but somehow I find this information out. I was a senior, and she was a junior. I decided to be her date to her prom. She says yes, and the planning begins from there.
At some point later that day, I let my parents know that I’ve asked her to her prom. Great. Nothing wrong there.
I don’t think 72 hours passed before I realized taking someone to prom required me to have some kind of funds on my end; had to get a suit, maybe pitch in for transportation, food at some point, etc. Now, the prom itself was a few weeks away, so there definitely was time to get my finances in order for that. Stupidly, that is not what I did. I told the girl that I can't take her to prom anymore. And if that wasn’t enough, I delivered the message to her via text message.
And if that isn’t enough, I didn’t think anything of it. I think about today how I tend to overthink things and stress when trying to tell someone something difficult. That certainly was not the case when I sent her that text. I remember in about a span of five minutes, I realized how little funds I had, pulled out my phone at school during lunch, shot her a text, and carried on like nothing happened.
I don’t remember things very well, but certain moments in my life, because of how life-altering they were (even though I only see just how life-altering in retrospect), I remember to a T. This next scene of my life, I will never forget; and I’m sure I will even have flashbacks of it when my sons are older. This is what happened shortly after I sent that text:
I’m sitting with my friends in the school newspaper room at lunch–the same lunch where I sent the callous prom-dumping text–and I get a call from my father. This call happens probably about 8 or 9 minutes after I sent that text. I answer the phone, again, without any of the prom stuff in mind. To me, that was already ancient history. When I answer the phone, my father, as he usually does when he’s livid, starts with a question. For the sake of this story, let’s call the girl ‘Celia.’
“Son, why did I just get a call from Celia’s mom telling me that you’re not taking her to prom anymore?” My father asked. It’s even at this point that I do not notice how big my screw up was. I heard the intensity in his voice, but I figured he just doesn’t have the context. I’ll simply explain to him I realized I didn’t really have the money and so I felt the best thing to do was call it off.
I don’t know your philosophy on parenting, but among other punishments, my siblings and I got spankings. I was too old for one of those, but the way my father ripped me a new one over the phone at that moment, it made a whoopin’ seem like a walk on the beach.
Among the many things he said to me on the phone, one thing he said that I’ll never forget is that I can’t just swoop in and play ‘hero’ when I felt like it, and then abandon ship when I didn’t feel like it anymore. He told me that Celia could have easily gone with someone else, but since I decided to insert my Black… um, behind, into her situation, I had an obligation to commit to the end. Damn the money issues. Figure it out. I made a commitment. I had to see it through. I was to call Celia on the phone (not text), apologize, and then have the best time with her at the prom.
I gave y’all the PG version. 😉
After hanging up the phone and picking my face up off the floor, as soon as school was over that day, I called Celia, apologized, and prom was back on for us.
But that’s not the end of the story.
I can’t remember if it was a few days or a couple of weeks later, but I know we were getting closer to prom. Celia and I were texting back and forth about prom stuff, and I mentioned in the text that I was stressing about paying for this tux rental. When I texted her that, she texted back something along the lines of prom itself being so expensive for us. Somehow, I interpreted her text as her giving me an out, which I took right away. I texted her back that I’m glad she understands and that we should just not do this.
Again, I thought this was fine, and I never thought about it again. Or at least, until later that evening. My parents are in the front seat of their car, driving us home from bible study, and my father loses it. And just like the first time, among the many things he said to me, this I will never forget. He told me that it doesn’t matter if I thought she was giving me an out. She may have been, but a woman giving you an out doesn’t necessarily mean she wants you to take the out. Because I flip-flopped on her one time, she may have been thinking she doesn’t want to make me do something I don’t want to do. That was supposed to be the moment I reaffirmed my commitment, not taken the bait and said ‘well SEE YA!’
The car ride was only about 15 minutes, but it felt like an hour. We got home, and I had to call Celia again, apologize again, and try my best to let her know I really am looking forward to going to prom with her, which I really was. That was the kicker. We got along well, I liked hanging out with her, and I felt we’d have fun together. My issue was not with her at all. I just acted on how I felt in the moment with no regard for the feelings of those around me. She just happened to be the unfortunate recipient of my stupidity, and the injured party in this life lesson I had to learn.
What I learned as I got older is that millions of young boys made similar decisions that I did with Celia, only they did not have the blessing of having the disruptive intervention that I had. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 17.8 million children, nearly 1 in 4, live without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home. That’s millions of young boys who, unless their single mothers had the time and capacity to deal with these issues, did not have a father to intervene and correct their course. So as a result, these young boys biologically got older, but did not grow up.
Learning to honor your commitments is not something you learn by osmosis, and shirking responsibilities is not a phase you grow out of on your own. Something—someone—has to shake you out of it and push you in a direction. That is not to take responsibility away from young men today; quite the opposite, actually. I believe this puts a heavier weight of responsibility on us to take what we grew up with, whether good or bad, and use it to be better for our own families.
1 Corinthians 13:11 says:
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”
But Proverbs 22:6 also says:
“Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
These two verses go hand-in-hand. Becoming an adult and giving up childish ways of thinking (meaning selfishness, self-centeredness, etc) requires training. Throwing someone away when life gets a little tough is what a child does. Making breaking promises when you don’t feel like keeping them anymore is what a child does. If my father had not intervened the times that he did, I probably wouldn't be married; let alone to the wonderful woman I am married to now.
Of course, I am, as we all are, far from perfect, but another principle my father taught me is that being a man isn’t perfection; it’s trying your best to live up to a godly standard, taking accountability when you do wrong, and accepting that as a part of life. That lesson is one he taught me when I was a freshman in college. One of the most liberating lessons I’ve ever received.
Those moments in my life are why fathers are important. There are pivotal moments in life where course corrections need to happen, and some of those course corrections can only be made by a father, or a father figure.
This means no disrespect to the mother. I could write a whole separate article about the crucial moments between me and my mom that forced me to grow; moments where, in her very motherly, nurturing way of dealing with me, caused me to break down in tears, and make a drastic change in my life. The story I’m currently thinking of in particular is when I was eight years-old. Perhaps I will write that soon. This article, however, is about fathers.
In these embarrassing anecdotes, I pray that reading this helped someone out there. I pray we all can experience having someone in our lives that alter our courses for the better like my father has done for me.
If you want to dumb down and eventually control a society, start with the fathers.
But that’s another article for another day…
You, and your family, are a breath of fresh air.