You can tell a lot about a man by looking at his children. You can’t tell everything. It isn’t the only measure and it certainly isn’t a comprehensive measure, but it’s one way. I always felt like I knew Fred MacMurray’s TV character best by looking at how Rob and Chip and Ernie were doing.
I know a man who turns 95 this week. I’ve known him for just over thirty years. If a television show told his story, it would not be called “My Three Sons”, it would be “My Three Daughters.” Their names are Colleen and Patricia and Debra. And I can tell a lot about this man by looking at his daughters.
Each of his daughters has part of him in them. They certainly all bear beautiful resemblance in heart and soul to their mother. But each of them has a spirit that clearly connects with his and flows from him. In the daughters, I see his fierce commitment and fiery passion. In them, I observe his strong sense of justice tempered by surprising grace.
Each of them, like him, loves their families with every fiber of their being and every beat of their heart. The girls learned from both their parents that the hallmark of a strong family is not what happens to you, but what happens when things happen to you--pulling together instead of falling apart; getting better, not just getting by.
In him, they witnessed a man’s toughness and they felt a daddy’s tenderness. And at different times in each of their own lives, they have needed to demonstrate both. What they always knew and never doubted, was his forever love for each of them.
But perhaps more than anything else, they bear in their lives a practical spirituality they learned from him. He has lived long enough and broad enough, to know what counts, what really matters. He knows that few things are worth fretting over and there are a lot of things that, if they can’t be forgotten, just need to be forgiven.
A lot has happened since he was born in 1912. He has worked hard, lived humbly, loved well (married to his sweetheart for 67 years), grieved honestly when she died, and through it all, he has kept a clear and simple, uncluttered faith. I see the fruit of his life, the attributes that will extend well past his life, flourishing in the lives of his three daughters and the generations that follow.
You can tell a lot about a man by looking at his children. It’s a good reminder for the rest of us. And on a bigger scale, I can’t help but wonder what we, as children of God, are revealing about Him? Let’s save that question for a later time. For now, let me just say, with deep gratitude and abiding affection, “Happy 95th Birthday” to my father-in-law, Loy Lee Stockburger.
Dennis Lynn
