A  FATHER’S   PRAYER

A father wonders about his kids. 
 
Different: at times he often worries.
 
“Am I treating this one fair?”  “Am I treating this one too easy?”
 
He doesn’t tell anyone about these worries. Well once and a while,  he mentions it to his wife or a friend at work.
 
Television stories of other people’s kids – or what happens to the son or one or the guys at work trigger these thoughts – or sometimes it’s just a boring basketball game or a hated meeting – and off he goes with his wondering and his worrying.
 
These become his prayers – the down deep prayers – that he doesn’t even know he’s praying about.
 
And they slip out without his even knowing it in his behaviors – a surprise trip for a hamburger with his kid – or a $20 dollar bill slipped quietly into a shirt pocket when his kid is going on a school outing – a man’s way of saying, “I love you.”
 
Then the teenage years appear. Both he and the kids are older and different. Distancing is happening.
 
It’s all part of the package of being human.
 
The worries and the wonderings become more scary: drugs, sex, car accidents, the wrong crowd….
 
The possibilities of a new way of doing life pops to the surface.
 
Fathers begin saying things to their wives they never said before.  Conversations and listening become longer.
 
Fathers begin to say prayers to God they never heard themselves saying before.
 
And sometimes teenagers see their parents holding each other – going for walks or a hamburger – saying a prayer together.
 
Each is beginning to get a greater awareness of what God has gifted them with: family, faith, future, questions, more wonders and more worries.
 

 

                                                                                         © Andy Costello, Reflections 2022