The Father Who Cares

Posted on Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 12:57

The Father who Cares

First Presidency Message, September 2006 Ensign.

Our church has a monthly magazine and at the very start of each issue, you will always find a short message from the First Presidency of the church. Thought provoking and inspiring, these messages fill me with the spirit but rarely does one touch me the way that this months did.

The topic: Fatherhood.

One might wonder why the topic of fatherhood would touch a woman. After all I am certainly not a man nor am I a father, but the message wasn’t just for fathers. In fact, it was more for me as a wife and as a woman than it was for my husband.

The article begins as you would expect: talking about a father and his family but it then abruptly changes to quotes from the article of a veteran criminal court judge entitled the following:

“Nine Words That Can Stop Juvenile Delinquency”

The nine words suggested were: PUT THE FATHER BACK AT THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY.

Here’s where I sat up and began to take notice. I had been praying about this very subject. I know that my duty as a wife is to “hearken unto my husband as he hearkens unto the Father” and I know that there is a significant difference between having a righteous man at the head of my household and an unrighteous one.

Many women rebel against the dominion of a man in their household, believing that this give them a measure of control over them, but this is not the reason that God has ordained the men’s and women’s roles in the manner in which he did. God does not intend for a man to rule over his wife, but rather for him to guide and direct his family in a manner that is pleasing unto God. God is in charge of our marriages, not the husband. Many times I have to step back and remember this when I feel thwarted or angry at my husband’s rightful place as the head of the household.

The Importance of Marriage and Family

As a Latter-day Saint, I know only too well the purpose and meaning behind marriage and family. All around me I see marriages crumbling, taking the families well being with them. Fatherless children, fighting parents, unstable situations for our children and the results that accompany the downfall of marriage and a mans God given authority. There are women who rebel against allowing a man to do what he was hardwired to do: provide for his family, to protect them, and to take care of them. Men and women were designed differently for a purpose. Men know instinctively that their position is to be at the head of the household just as women know instinctively that their position is to nurture and care for the family.

Women need to stop thinking that we are the same as men because we simply aren’t. We don’t think like them or act like them. We are not as physically strong as them. We are different and that’s a good thing.

How many marriages may have been saved if the man took his position at the head of the home because his wife allowed him, even asked him, to do so? Are we as women, in a modern society with modern thinking undermining our men to the extent that we are emasculating them and preventing them from being the men that they are designed by God to be? If this is the case, are we in part to blame for our men’s attitudes towards marriage and family and subsequently the way that our youth are acting in society?

If more women were to uphold their men and welcome their ability and desire to “take care of” and “protect” and “lead” our families I have to wonder if there would be a significant change in the number of successful marriages, extra marital affairs and fatherless children. What if a man felt that his presence, his very being was necessary? Would they deal with themselves, their women and their children differently? Would more men seek to remain in their marriages, provide for their children and lead their households? It has occurred to me, on several occasions that men no longer feel needed. Women can work; they can bear and nurture children. They can support themselves and their families. Aside from biological necessities why do we need men? How does this make a man feel? Is it any wonder that men are so quick to walk away when they have fathered a child? After all there isn’t any NEED for them to remain.

Strengthen Your Men

President Faust offers these simple ways to strengthen your men: sustain and respect the father in his position and second, give him love, understanding and some appreciation for his efforts. Further, he says the following:

“Let every mother understand that if she does anything to diminish her children’s father or the father’s image in the eyes of the children, it may injure and do irreparable damage to the self – worth and personal security of the children themselves.”

Wow. How many times have I caught myself mumbling things about my daughter’s father in their presence? How often have they seen me rebel against my husbands leadership and what is that doing to their image of him and potentially their image of their future husband? I know my man and I know that if he doesn’t feel respected I might as well have had an affair. The affront to him is just as great if not greater.

Have your children hear you raise their father up and allow them to see the wonderful man that he is. Keep your own insecurities and opinions of their father inside of yourself. Bring it to God if you must but never, ever belittle or bemoan their daddy before them. If I was raising sons what type of men am I guiding them into being if I am not respectful of the very man they want to emulate?

The Affect it can Have

I have a daughter with an absent biological father. At 14 she is just starting to really ask questions about her biological father and just now am I seeing the affect that his not being here for her has had even though she has a full time loving father in my husband. When I got pregnant with my oldest daughter I was only 19 – and by the time I was 8 months pregnant her father was gone and didn’t want to see her for his own reasons. Now I am in the process of taking him back to court for child support and am faced with having to see him for the first time in 13 years. Only now do I see the pain that his leaving has caused. Having another daddy isn’t enough to erase the feeling of abandonment and pain that my daughter feels at the absence of her biological father. She doesn’t ever remember meeting him. She doesn’t know what he looks like, and yet in the background his presence is always there simply because of the pain that she feels.

There are so many young women out there today having children without the slightest regard for whether or not their baby’s father will remain to assist in raising the child. Their thought is that they can do it alone. That they don’t need the baby’s father and they are right. They can. But the truth is that their child needs their father. They need to know where they came from as if having that father present means that they are whole and complete. Even if, in the future there is another man in their lives that loves them and who they call daddy isn’t enough. Certainly it helps and if that man is willing to step up and be a true father all the better but that child will eventually want to see their lineage. Compare their nose to their fathers, wonder if they have their father’s feet and see WHO their father is and, more likely than not, want to know WHERE he has been and WHY he has left. In our situation, my daughter’s pain is made greater at the newfound knowledge that her biological father has remarried and through this relationship had another child and is expecting a second one. Although she hasn’t voiced her feelings, I can feel her pain as she wonders why SHE wasn’t good enough for him to stay around but he will stay for the other children.

Raise up your Husband

Women, raise up your husband and place them at the head of the household. Honor them as God would have you do. Take your place beneath him confident in the knowledge that his position is ordained by God as is yours and that your Heavenly Father knows what it best for you. By doing so you are not being obedient to your husband, but obedient to God. Your humility and unquestioning willingness to do so will be pleasing to HIM.

Realize that once your husband sees your humility and your willingness to do what God has commanded, he will rise to the occasion and be everything that God has commanded him to be. Don’t fear that he will overtake you, rule with an unrighteous dominion or try to “be the boss”. If he is a true man he will not do that. Instead, he will honor you in return, and bring you up to stand beside him. Your blessings will be beyond measure. Your husband will cherish you and treat you with more dignity and respect than you ever dreamed possible… simply because you let him do what he was designed to do.

Your sons and daughters will see the changes in your marriage and within your family and they too will grow up to raise Godly sons and daughters who will in turn marry Godly partners. The generations will continue and changes will happen within our society… and all because you accepted your calling with dignity, knowing that your Father in Heaven would never give you a calling that was not the greatest one on the earth.

Scooby.

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, as unto the Lord.

For the husband as the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body.

Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it."

Eph 5:22-25

You can read the entire article HERE.

For more wonderful articles like this one, you can view this months Ensign HERE,

 Todays Journal Prompt

What are your feelings on the idea of having your husband be the head of your household? How can you be more humble and lift him up?

 Quote of the Day  

"A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but really mean your mother"

fathers

Posted by Anonymous on Monday, October 2, 2006 at 06:59 - Link

Awesome. I know... I wish more people got it, but alas, even in the church we are in the minority. Well, hopefully things will change... :) texasblu