This coming Sunday is Father’s Day. With that being the case there has been a lot of focus on the radio about fathers. My girls are usually in the car with me listening, I rarely go any where without them. As we have listened to these father focused radio bits in the car there have been two moments that have stuck out in particular.
The first occurred last week….
We were driving home from church listening to my least favorite radio personality and she began sharing some statistic study about mothers and daughters taste becoming more and more alike in certain areas as the daughter aged. She shared several areas and one of the areas was that the mother and daughter begin to share the same interest in men. The radio personality honed in on this and began to rant about how awkward and weird that was…
Then my Shelby gave her father what I believe is a man’s greatest compliment.
Shelby, obviously aggravated with this woman as much as I, expounded from the backseat of the car, “Why is she saying all that, shouldn’t every girl want to marry a man like her father?”
My heart warmed as she said these words. I took them, as a “Mary moment” (Luke 2:19) and treasured them and pondered them in my heart… saving them to share with my husband.
In the real world of marriage and family, life gets ugly sometimes. We see our own faults magnified and we often feel like we will never be more than complete failures at life. That’s a lie though. Satan likes to lie to us.
I am thankful to be married to a man who is willing to grow, willing to change, willing to love, willing to sacrifice.
My husband and I started this marriage thing with a whole lot of baggage between us and no Jesus in the middle of us. Our girls have been there to witness us through the growing pains of grace.
They have seen us struggle, they have seen us fight, they have seen us cry, they have seen us pout, they have seen us doubt.
They have also seen us rest, they have seen us forgive, they have seen us laugh, they have seen us smile, they have seen us assured.
Most importantly they have seen us not give up.
They have seen us fight the good fight of faith… faith in God and faith in Christ and faith in covenant love.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
The truth.
My husband and I are not always patient with each other, we are not always kind to one another, we are sometimes jealous, we do sometimes act unbecomingly, we do sometimes seek our own interest first, we do sometimes provoke one another, and we do sometimes pull out the old record book that records every hurt and wrong ever done and caused… but here’s where it ends… neither one of us rejoices in this.
We do not walk away from these moment rejoicing in these actions. We are not pleased with ourselves when flesh and sin take over for these moments to happen. When the dust settles and clears we see them for what they are… an attack of the enemy against our covenant with one another and the image of God that the covenant displays.
We see the lies that the enemy used to instigate, manipulate, fabricate, and fuel the flames of self, flesh, and sin. We see these and we choose to rejoice in the truth and repent… to God and each other.
It is here that we truly love.
When we choose to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things… because we know the truth… the truth that love never fails.
Love never fails, because God is love (1 John 4:8) and God never fails.
When we we choose to live out the Word of God in our marriage, to work out our salvation (Philippians 2:12) in our homes not just out for the world to see… it is then that we see daughters who can look at the way their father’s love their wives and say, “…shouldn’t every girl want to marry a man like her father?”
So to my husband, Patrick Vaughn, the father of my daughters… this Father’s Day know that you have received the greatest compliment that any man could ever receive… to be a man that his daughters see as an example of what a future husband and father of their own children should be.
We both know that our kids know that we are far from perfect, yet I believe with all my heart that they do know they are perfectly loved and they know that we perfectly love one another. Because perfect love is loving one another amidst all the imperfections… yet still pursing perfection all the while.
Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,
Philippians 3:11-13
I love you, my husband!
Happy soon coming Father’s Day!