A Daddy, a Son, and a Question
My mama and I were at her doctor’s office yesterday for her routine blood work. As we were leaving, a big, burly daddy walked from his vehicle to the glass doors of the office with his little boy. The daddy towered over his son whom I estimate was about four or five years old.
Unlike when mamas walk into doctors’ offices with little children, the scene was simple — no toys, teddy bears, books, or bags — just daddy, son, and a cell phone, which the little boy carried face up between his two hands, as if he were in the middle of a game.
I heard the daddy ask his little boy, “Where’s your coat?” The high temperature yesterday was 21°. A bluff near our house looked like this when I took this picture in January of 2014, and it looked just the same yesterday.
And there was that little boy in a red short-sleeve T-shirt walking into a doctor’s office, while his daddy wondered aloud, “Where’s your coat?”
“Where’s your coat?” To me that wasn’t the question. To me the question was: “Where’s the daddy?” And by “daddy” I mean the wise and loving father who loves his son enough to correct him and to follow through until he obeys.
Parenting is tough. It’s demanding. It’s constant. It’s wearying. Still, when we think in the long term, we know somebody’s got to be the parent. And when God gives me a child, that somebody is the person looking back at me in the mirror.
For whom the Lord loves He reproves,
Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.
Proverbs 3:12