{"id":194,"date":"2009-11-05T14:46:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-05T14:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianmashburn.net\/?p=194"},"modified":"2009-11-05T14:46:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-05T14:46:00","slug":"daddy-affirmation-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/?p=194","title":{"rendered":"Daddy Affirmation Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a powerfully intense few weeks. I\u2019m an intensity junky of sorts, so it\u2019s been good, but it has taken it\u2019s toll. A toll I\u2019m glad to pay, but a payment to be paid nonetheless. I commonly experience myself as someone who notices he is weary in spirit way too late. But my kid\u2019s love shook me to awareness early this time in a beautiful and creative way.<\/p>\n

As I started home from work, I grabbed my phone and there was a missed call from my wife\u2019s cell phone. It was this lengthy message from my youngest son, Jakin, who is age 6 (read it as if it is one sentence with the cutest little boy voice you can imagine).<\/p>\n

\u201cDad \u2013 I just wanted to tell you that I wanted to give you a kiss when you get home, and hug, and I want, um\u2026to tell you\u2026um\u2026because you work good cuz, um, I love you cuz, um, you do good stuff and I love you too much and I want you someday to take to\u2026um\u2026I actually don\u2019t want to go to Chicago for our trip, I want to actually go to where Callie, um, went to and do everything Callie did and I wanna ask, uh, to stay at the same room in the hotel, and, um, if we can, and I want to, um, and someday I want us to go the beach and see some penguins and, uh, I just love you and mom loves you to\u2026when you get home, give her a hug and a kiss\u2026bye.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I smiled and laughed out loud and played it several more times as I drove home. \u201cI love you too much,\u201d<\/em> just kept ringing in my head and calming my soul. It was cool.<\/p>\n

On the homefront, my wife Carrie has been a trooper with some major pain in her lower back. So when I got home, I took my oldest son Shade to soccer practice, picked up my daughter from gymnastics, then with her back to Shade\u2019s practice till it was over, then home to feed \u2018em, bath \u2018em, do homework, and get \u2018em to bed before my men\u2019s group that meets in my basement starts at 8:30. <\/p>\n

While Carrie was coaching me on what to do for lunch prep for the next morning, I saw my daughter Callie (age 7) quietly and intently drawing or writing something on the couch. A while back, she made both me and her mom \u201cmailboxes\u201d out of paper and hung them next to our respective sides of the bed. As I was busily hurrying about, she disappeared and reappeared and informed me, \u201cDaaaad \u2013deeee\u2026check your maaaaail booox.\u201d I smiled with a polite \u201cOkay\u201d as I dashed by and gave her a pat. But after I put them to bed, I remembered, and pulled this out.<\/p>\n

\"brian001\"<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Of course, I love all the hugs and kisses from my daughter, always, but what really captured my attention was her 3-stage representation of my \u201cgrowing up\u201d. She identified me as a \u201ckid\u201d, then advancing to \u201cbasketball player”, and finally to \u201cprecher\u201d. While I wonder why she chose these particular images to mark my progression, the most affirming thing to me was what she drew to represent \u201cprecher\u201d! It wasn\u2019t me standing behind a pulpit talking. It wasn\u2019t my nose in a book (or The Book) studying, and it wasn\u2019t even me with another person shepherding, all of which would\u2019ve been okay and accurate of some of the things she sees me doing. Instead, it seems her image of a \u201cprecher\u201d is a strong, intense-but-smiling, determined sort of character who is ready for some sort of action. I tell you what, if this is anything close to what I am being seen as by my kids as they observe me as \u201ca preacher\u201d, then I\u2019m just plain thrilled. Admittedly, some of this comes from my past & current judgments of preachers, oftentimes unfair and false (and yes, it\u2019s not lost on me the divine comedy that God made me one), but still\u2026it was nice, since it is so important to me to not be a \u201ctypical preacher\u201d (let the reader understand) that my daughter represented me as a preacher in an atypical way. It just felt great.<\/p>\n

Finally, 8:30 rolls around, kids are tucked in, and about 8 of my buddies from the Basement Boys start showing up. Shade (age 9), has a routine of asking me if my buddy Heath is going to come to group, and if he is, then to send him by his room on the way down the hall for him to say hey, because my son loves him. But in the event Heath doesn\u2019t come, he usually names another guy from my group to send in, as a backup. Last week it was Shane, but this week, he told me to send in Chris. <\/p>\n

Chris happened to have \u201cthe floor\u201d last night, which means, it was his turn to sit in the \u201chot seat\u201d and initiate the raw and real, hopefully transformational conversation that we all gather in the basement for. So as we all declared it time to descend, and void of Heath\u2019s presence, I mentioned to Chris to make a quick stop in Shade\u2019s room to say hi.<\/p>\n

After a few minutes, Chris comes bounding down to the basement where the rest of us are just visiting amongst ourselves awaiting his arrival in the hot seat that we left empty for him. He busts out with a big smile, and then says, \u201cLet me tell you what Mashburn\u2019s son just said.\u201d <\/p>\n

Chris said that after he visited with him, he told Shade that he probably needed to go because he was going to talk down in the basement, and added that he was a little nervous. Shade told him, \u2018Oh, yeah. Don\u2019t worry about it. You\u2019ll do good. I\u2019ve done it before. I\u2019ve talked in front of the whole church. You want me to tell you what to do?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSure,\u201d<\/em> I imagine Chris saying in a very Chris-inviting way.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust pretend, while your saying what you need to say, that all the people aren\u2019t even there.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the cool part.<\/p>\n

Shade added, \u201cExcept my dad.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Chris was beaming in the basement, for me I think, as he said that it was exactly the way he would want his son to talk about him! He said that it was said in a manner that communicated, “No need to pretend my dad\u2019s not there. You\u2019ll want him there.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Wow. <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until this morning that I put together this trifecta of child-delivered, massively-meaningful, attitude-changing, energy-fueling, uncontrollable-smile-producing, peace-giving, not-common-at-all daddy affirmations all happened yesterday, densely packed into a mere 3 hour block of time. <\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know it at the time, but now looking backward, and looking inward, I\u2019m pretty sure it was a little gift of fuel to propel me forward that came from upward. <\/p>\n

I instantly thought about blogging about them, sharing the experience with all of you, when I quickly realized how extremely self-exalting it is for me to record and publish just how great I\u2019m coming across to my kids.<\/p>\n

So I decided not to.<\/p>\n

I did share it with my close friend Doyle, and somewhere in the midst of the thrill and joy of it all, I changed my mind. I had to record it, and share it, not because I think I\u2019m \u201call that\u201d, but because of the sheer depth at which my children\u2019s honest and spontaneous affirmations of me as a dad satisfies and affirms my soul.<\/p>\n

May I never short change my short time with my kids. And may their gracious perceptions of me become true as I am becoming truer. <\/p>\n

And may the same be so for all you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve had a powerfully intense few weeks. I\u2019m an intensity junky of sorts, so it\u2019s been good, but it has taken it\u2019s toll. A toll I\u2019m glad to pay, but a payment to be paid nonetheless. I commonly experience myself as someone who notices he is weary in spirit way too late. But my kid\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pO6nf-38","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}