No Respect from the Ladies

So today was a great day. First, the weather men got it all wrong by predicting a RAIN-filled weekend on Friday, only to wake up Saturday to a revised forecast of, "Cloudy and cold, with only a slight chance of a ray of sunshine." WRONG! It is warm (upper 60's) and partly sunny.

Second, today I got to hang with the boys...my two sons that is. Christine FINALLY got a day to go to mall without crying kids, which meant daddy got the kids. (It was a great treat for me, and for her.) The boys and I watched "A GOOFY MOVIE" till mid-morning, and I was surprised at how short the movie was, and how many era-famous voices made up the cast. It was a cool trip down memory-lane and Cart loved it too. The jury is still out on Jax's opinion.

Seeing that it was not 10am and I have several more hours with the boys...alone!...I decided it was time for a walk. A long walk that would entertain and wear them out physically. I mapped out my route that would be over 2 miles in length, fulfill "errands" I had overlooked during the week, and even provide a treat at the end. It was sheer brilliance!

A problem arose, however, as we hit pedestrian traffic: women! Particularly older women who felt the need to comment, not on the cuteness of my kids, but on my parenting. Honestly, I was doing nothing wrong, in fact I was doing nothing. I was pushing the stroller, Jax was asleep, and this lady freaked out that he was sleeping in the stroller! "Sir, Sir, your baby is asleep!," she screamed. Duh! No kidding, that's the goal lady.

Then there were the "other" ladies, who didn't care about my kids, but about the fact that I was a guy ALONE with kids. Some (I'm sure) were checking out the cool, good-looking dad for lustful reasons, but I got the feeling that the others were doing the opposite. For some reason I felt that everyone saw me as another "divorce'," or worse yet, "a dad who had the kids 'this weekend'." Maybe I was making all this up, but I'm not so sure I was. Praise God, I am a happily married man, who loves and is loved, by his wife; but I'm glad I could take this walk today and feel this societal shame. As a result, I now love single-dads/moms more.

I don't condone divorce, or ANY sex out of marriage, and I never will; and I am not a big fan of "stay at home dads," but no one should have to feel "excessive" guilt for their mistakes/decisions. Jesus reconciled us back to God, meaning that He took our sin and shame upon Himself to bring us back into a relationship with the Father. Paul then states in II Cor. that we therefore should be in the business of reconciliation as Christians. What this means then is the do not OVERLOOK sin and pretend it doesn't exist, but we address it and allow GRACE(forgiveness) to be extended to the offender.

Our society has no problem seeing sin/faults in others. In fact, we love it when we do find fault in other, but we never go beyond it to offer love and grace to the offender. As a result, there is now a backlash where we REFUSED to see sin, much less address it, and just pretend to live in harmony with one another. Forget that! That strategy has a very short shelf-life as people will either "crack" and explode emotionally, or worse yet fall prone to the sin they're ignoring in another's life or worse. Either way it is a dead end, an therefore the only solution is RECONCILIATION God's way: Address and Extend Forgiveness.

Think about it, if these ladies would have just addressed what they thought was "wrong" in my life, and offered me "grace," not only could I have explained to them that I was happily married and doing my wife a favor, but I could have shared Jesus with them! Love is a verb that draws us to POSITIVE action.

Hope that all makes sense...

Bottom line, I had a great day with my kids and my wife, and I even got a 7/11 slurpee and nachos out of it!!