Parenting
I was beginning to feel that my happy little plan to take the family on a horse-ride was a serious mistake. Earlier in the day, fancying myself as an evangelical John Wayne, the idea of saddling up and riding through the sun-drenched Oregon trees had been appealing. I’d even taken to calling my wife “Pardner”, and suggested that we “mosey on down for a ride”, although I confess I do not know what it is to mosey.
Now, as I bobbed up and down aboard this sweating brown monster that possessed neither a handbrake nor a safety belt, I was having second – and third thoughts. How was one supposed to steer this thing? Did this animal have any intention of being directed anywhere anyway? I was tempted to abandon the reins, and just hold on tight to Dobbins’ ears with a grip that would have turned his eyes bloodshot. I wanted the ride to be over, now.
I tried chatting with the horse, but it was useless. I even tried a couple of horsey gags: “Say, horse, why the long face?”, etc. He ignored me, and then broke wind at length and with great volume. Like most men who think that flatulence is the sport of kings, I was impressed. My friends looked over their shoulders back at me with accusing eyes, utterly appalled.
“What? It’s the horse….”
Twenty minutes later, my worst fears were realised. I was fifth in a line of about thirty tons of puffing horseflesh, when a cry went up. “Kelly has been thrown!!” I imagined the horror of my then ten-year-old little girl, hurled like a rag doll into the air, and landing with a disabling thud. I panicked, kicked Dobbin, who responded immediately, and cantered up to where my daughter was laying on the ground, our friends already down at her side. She was screaming in pain, and her face was a mask of blood. I quite literally fell off my horse and ran to her side.
Every parent knows that fear travels through the brain at lightning speed. I thought that her neck was broken, and a speeded up film ran wildly before my eyes: scenes of wheelchairs, hospitals, and surgeries. I was beside myself with panic. Dr. Chris, our friend, was already checking her prone body for serious damage. Thank God he was there. We were miles from the nearest hospital.
Richard, our son, was kneeling beside his sister, and he was crying too. Why was he in tears, I wondered? “I just love her, I just love her…”, he sobbed out. I was momentarily distracted. This uncharacteristic display of brotherly/sisterly affection was a miracle something akin to the raising of Lazarus.
My mind snapped back into focus as Kelly cried out again. Her back was in one piece, but she had broken an arm and separated her chin from her jawbone. Her face was smeared now with tear soaked mud mingling with bright red blood.
Something snapped inside me. I know that I should have been the mature father, someone to bring a sense of calm spiritual order into the chaos that we were feeling at that moment. Perhaps I should have gathered the family to pray, or just whispered words of comfort and care. But I didn’t.
Instead, I chose to vent my pent up panic by throwing my head back and yelling a swear word at the top of my voice. I’m not proud of my stupid reaction, but it’s the truth. And what happened next came as a complete surprise. Kelly stopped her screaming with pain, and turned her attention to her swearing Christian father. “Dad! I can’t believe you just said that word. How dare you….and you – a Christian leader! You should be ashamed of yourself!!”. And with that, her high velocity rebuke delivered to a now sheepish parent, she turned her attention back to some more full-blooded screaming.
A few hours later, after Kelly had sat bravely in the local casualty ward while they picked debris out of her lower lip, we laughed at the moment when she had given me a good telling off. But I learned a lesson that day; it dawned on me that for impressionable Kelly, a father acting in a manner contrary to his publicly stated beliefs (I think the short description is hypocrite) was more painful than a broken arm and a mashed chin. Parents – and leaders – are called to be an example; children – and God’s people – are like wet cement. We who lead are blessed with the privilege and responsibility of this mysterious thing called influence. We have the power to bless or stain the lives of those around us.
When Paul prodded Timothy with the pointed exhortation to “be an example”, he was reminding the young warrior that leadership is more than gifted oratory, or theological dexterity. It is not just about acquiring managerial skills or having the ability to motivate people to action. We are called to be examples – the greek word is “tupos” – which means to inscribe a wax tablet. Other lives are profoundly affected by our wise calligraphy or selfish scrawl.
But example is not to be confused with projecting the right image. I often meet Christian leaders who are anxious about being truly human. Frightened of “letting the side down”, they step back from any reference to their own fears, doubts and sins, and instead present a facsimile of virtue, which, ultimately, their very human followers fail to identify with. Even Jesus the sinless leader refused to present an unreal image to his friends, but begged them to watch and pray with him in his dark Gethsemane hour. And the intrepid Paul was willing to write to his contentious flock at Corinth and announce that he had been feeling the “sentence of death” in his heart. Imagine that in a prayer letter from an international ministry:
“Greetings, prayer partners, hey! We’ve been feeling suicidal this week….”
Our example is not in the suggestion that we are without fault, but rather in our determination to push ahead to follow Jesus, even though we struggle with the same things that beset those that we lead. Our commitment to holiness is expressed, not in the notion that we enjoy a false immunity to sin and temptation, but in the grace kissed choices that we actually make each day as we choose the right pathway.
Hypocrisy is hurtful. Pretending helps no-one. And I never want to be on Dobbins’ back again. Or indeed, standing behind him.