Feelings don't get votes

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

This weekend, many of us will celebrate the fathers in our lives. WORLD Commentator Seth Troutt remembers lessons his dad quietly taught him about how to live in a way that honors our Heavenly Father.

SETH TROUTT: When I was growing up, my dad never read a parenting book. 

He didn’t talk about parenting strategies or develop a philosophy of fatherhood. He just lived his life, working hard, loving my mom, and loving us kids, with wisdom leaking out of him all along the way. 

One of my earliest memories is when, as a small child, I woke up in the middle of the night and called out for him. He came down the hall. I asked if I could sleep in my parents’ room. He said yes, but gave me one instruction: “Do not wake your mother.”

I said, “I’ll try.”

My Dad’s response was, “Trying won’t be good enough.”

To some, that sounds harsh, but I heard something different. I heard a father who believed his son was capable.

That was one of Dad’s recurring themes: Responsibility wasn’t something to fear, it was something to embrace. Capacity for action was a gift. 

Years later as a preteen when I wanted to quit football halfway through a season, I told him I didn’t want to go to practice.

He responded, “That’s okay. You don’t have to want to go … you have to go.”

Feelings and desires mattered to my Dad, but they didn’t get the final vote.

My father had a way of reducing life to sentences you couldn’t forget. 

Here's another example: One day, when I was a teenager, he pointed at the beer he was drinking and asked, “Do you see what I’m doing?”

“Uh, drinking a beer?” I answered.

“Yep,” he said. “So when your dumb friends think they're super cool for drinking, just remember your dad does it too, and it’s not that cool.”

That was my Dad. He was confident. Direct. A little funny. Unembarrassed. Off the cuff. 

Most of what fathers do isn’t dramatic. It’s thousands of small moments that accumulate over years until they become a way of seeing the world.

A few years ago, I wrote down many of my father’s sayings.

One final example I'll give you stood out above the rest.

Basketball was big in our family. My senior year I decided I wasn't going to play. I broke the news to him. He turned and said to me, “You can be anything you want. But you cannot be a loser.”

Now, he wasn’t talking about money or fame. He meant that for a person made in God’s image, they have too much capacity, too much responsibility, and too much opportunity merely to drift through life making excuses or being a bum. 

As a father now, I find myself understanding my dad better than I did even when I was young.

The older I get, the less I think my father was teaching me how to succeed. I think he was teaching me how to take responsibility for the life God had given me.

And perhaps that’s one of God’s gifts.

Children spend years learning from their fathers. And then one day, if they’re blessed to be fathers themselves, they will—like I did—discover that they are still learning from their fathers. 

Happy Fathers’ Day.

For WORLD, I’m Seth Troutt.

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