STORIES FROM THE STEPS, VOLUME 3 CHRONICLE 16 – LISTEN TO YOUR DAD:

Dear 3 year old standing by your dad,

Last week we shared a birthday. On Father’s Day, I want to share something else. I believe this life is a one act play with no dress rehearsals. If it’s not, I’ve wasted 64 years of Sunday mornings & no telling how many that fellow you’re leaning up against, your dad, did. But just in case we’re both wrong, just in case I’m doing the dress rehearsal & the curtain’s just rising on your main performance, I’ve got some advice for you. Listen to your dad.

Listen to your dad. It’s easy now. For the next few years you’ll think your dad can’t beat up everyone else’s father. You won’t care how tired he is when he gets home so you can have a catch & he won’t either. Listen when he gets home the day after you lost a fly ball in the late evening light & lost two teeth. Listen because he’ll throw fly balls, he’ll encourage you until you’re not scared of losing the ball in the sky anymore or your teeth.

Listen to your dad when you hit your teens. Listen with your eyes because he’ll be at every game, every orchestra performance, everything. He’ll relish being your biggest fan. He’ll agonize with you when you finish a baseball season going 0 for 26 but he’ll get you to school in the summer so Coach Moser can work with you. He’ll be overjoyed the next spring when you are handed an All City trophy. He earned part of that trophy. Thank him.

Thank him when you see him in his seat in a gym that one day will be gone. Second section, fourth row, at the end. Before that gym goes away, you’ll sit in that seat, alone in that gym & wish you had.

Listen to your dad. You’ll be glad you did the Friday Coach Moser fired you from starting point guard & he’ll tell you you’re still part of the team & he expects you to be at practice on Monday. Three weeks later you’ll come off the bench & play the greatest basketball game you ever played. It happened because you listened to your dad.

Listen to your dad. A little more than a year from that baseball trophy, spring football will bring 3 torn ligaments, a foot grotesquely locked at 11 o’clock, your 16th summer in a cast from mid- May thru July, your career over. He’ll tell you there’s more to life than ball. There’s being a good man, a good husband, a good father. He’ll be right.

Listen to your dad when you are in college & you tell him you’re leaving school to work in sales in the sporting goods industry. He’ll be right when he tells you God gave you two gifts. He’ll be right when he say that sales isn’t one of them. He’ll tell you to write. He’ll tell you to teach & coach. Listen to your dad or else you’ll be like Moses, wandering for 40 years, only the desert will be of your own making.

Listen to your dad. In those 40 years, you’ll have gains & losses. You’ll gain a wife, sons, their wives, their children. You’ll gain people that will be family with different last names on their mailboxes. You’ll lose people you never thought you’d lose too.

Listen to your dad. You’ll lose jobs. You’ll lose the confidence of others & the confidence of the eyes in your mirror. You’ll never lose the confidence of your dad. He’ll tell you that every crisis, no matter the size, reveals the quitters & the keepers. Your dad will give a master class in keeping.

Listen to your dad. Find the keepers. The ones willing to give you a hand up. The ones willing to kick you in the tail. The ones like your dad, who sometimes was the only keeper for miles.

Listen to your dad. In late 2023, God will tap you on the shoulder & tell you to get out of the desert. Unlike Moses, you’ll have an opportunity to step into the Promised Land. Be less reluctant than me. Your dad will tap you on the shoulder from beyond too. Listen to your dad.

Listen to your dad. Listen to both the earthly & the Heavenly. A little school with a little gym will need you to do what your dad said you could do. A little later, you’ll be given a place to send your writing, that other thing your dad said you could do, anywhere on this spinning ball. You will find redemption, peace in both places. Listen to your dad. Both of them.

Listen to your dad. Don’t deprive yourself of 40 years. Don’t deprive yourself of countless students you’ll never touch, the readers you’ll never touch but don’t throw a pity party over it. Your dad wouldn’t like that.

Listen to your dad. Embrace the keepers, they’re not hard to spot, they’re the ones standing in the fallout. Your dad will be right about them too. The ones that tell you to embrace now, the students you meet & can influence positively, the students who provided 51 Milky Way bars during teacher appreciation week, the readers you’ll never meet but can impact, your grandchildren, the 17 years worth of students in your church.

Listen to your dad. Now is all you have. Use the gifts God issued you. Now. Be a keeper. Now. Be in the second section, fourth row, the seat on the end regardless of the form the gym takes. Now. LISTEN. TO. YOUR. DAD. Listen to your dad…