Why The World Needs Good Fathers

She disappeared into the bathroom; a thin, stunning, maybe eighteen-year-old girl. Her boyfriend waited in the lobby. It was the morning a lesion would be removed from my vocal chords. And already, at 7:30 a.m. the room was filled with jittering patients.

I watched her boyfriend closely, until finally, his quiet girlfriend stepped from her restroom space, and slipped back into the chair, next to the boy she came with.

Her eyes red, her hands fidgeting. She whispers something to her boyfriend, until his body stiffens and He is given a tissue from the one who obviously came for surgery.

No eye contact. No words. He just stared at the floor while the girl worked through her fears.

I could see the girl eye her boyfriend. How would he respond to what she had just told him? But instead of turning towards her, encouraging and letting her tears-cried have breath and life and opinions…

He slunk up stiff and tight, as if to hide shame he might have been feeling.

There, in the waiting room another name gets called. The lady, my age, quietly stands from her spot and walks towards the door with the nurse waiting.

Then, all of the sudden, I hear a strong, seasoned, male voice. He leans in and kisses her on her forehead. His gray head leans over to the younger women, “Good luck, Honey. I love you.”

Then, the words that left niagra falling were said back to him by the woman, “Thanks, Daddy! Love you.”

One young man shrinks from responsibilty while another rises tall and escorts his grown daughter to her surgery.

We all need a good Father, but some people just don’t have them.

Some children are taken because fathers shrink in their own self-centeredness and make themselves the center, instead of supporting the women they say they love.

I get an I.V. My nurse just happens to also be an adoptive mama. She tells me of moving here from Hawaii, about Islanders and Micronesians. I learn more about people from Yap…The culture my three girls are adopted from.

I then find out, this nurse also was a foster mom. It took her and her husband three years to officially adopt their oldest. Her and her husband never gave up.

What drives a man to love someone elses children; so faithfully, so determined, so willingly and so surely. I look at my husband sitting next to me and praise God, he adopted four and I am sure would continue taking whoever God puts in our path.

No two encounters are coincidence. Not the young boy curling from his girlfriends wishes, not the older, grey gentlement, standing beside his daughter and kissing her before surgery….

Not the nurse who tells her story as we find our lives so closely parralleled.

None of it, no human happenstances are by chance. All is God led, directed and divinely orchestrated by Him.

Then, as I sit waiting for my turn to fall asleep and get rid of this blockage…I hear a deep voice behind the curtain. The little girl in me leaps. All my fears and insecurities flee as I see him emmerge and walk towards me.

My own strong daddy slips behind the curtain to where I am sitting and my courage and faith just soar.

“What are you doing here, Dad?” I am amazed.

“I wanted to see you before surgery.”

And to think, my dad woke bright and early, drove to the clinic without telling anyone, and randomly suprised me with showing his face…

Two men. Two great men, sitting to my right and left. They meet up and end up going to breakfast after they roll me away. My heart gives way.

Little girl’s are always overjoyed to see their good daddies.

My small, curtained room now had me, two chairs and two of my favorite men in the Universe. How did I get so blessed?

But then I think…

The girl. The young girl having surgery. What was she doing there? Where was her family? Was she aborting her baby as it appeared?

And why all the crying in the bathroom, whispers and pleading not changing her young boyfriend or making him rise up and be something other than a man needing love, but not wanting responsibility?

My heartcry as I write this….The world needs more good men, more father’s who will take responsibility, more parents who will rise up and be the strength their famiilies need them to be.

Adoption.

And I wonder, didn’t the girl know about adoption? That if he or she didn’t want to or couldn’t raise a baby, there were people in the world willing to raise him or her….

Including me.

And I wonder if the reason children don’t thrive is because Fathers refuse to lead.

I’ve been on bedrest the last few days. Yet, I hear them laughing. Children playing with their dad; giggling, belly laughter…

And I couldn’t be more appreciative.

Men strengthen, lead, direct, calm, create safety and provision for their families. Father’s who rise up and lead well have strong wives and happy children.

And I think the world just needs more dads and husband’s who will fight for their families.

Yet, if you sit in a home that has grieves what you’ve been missing; if your dad or husband has failed or left you, emotionally shut down or didn’t survive long enough to be a good husband or father…

There is One who is with us, always, in the waiting rooms of our lives, in the surgical centers where time passes slowly. In every breathe we take.

He rises and kisses our foreheads. He calls us blessed and He will never leave or forsake us.

In fact, our Father loves us so much, the world celebrates His entry into humanity at this season of year.

He came low and walked among us. He made this cold world His refuge so that we might go to His dwelling place when all is said and done.

The best earthly father’s intimately know THE Good Father.

And that’s why I bow my head and keep praying for the young girl, thin and trembling.

Might she know, though her boyfriend has failed her, she has a Father, a Good, Good Father in heaven who will be there, despite her decision.

I never got to see if she went back with the nurse or if she left in a hurry. If she followed through with what seems like it could have been an abortion…

But I was praying….there in the waiting room, in my own curtained room and even now…

God, won’t you meet her. Give her grace and show her, Christ came down at Christmas. He entered humanity, so that we might believe in Him…

The epitome of a good and perfect Father.

The one who kisses our forehead and tells us, “Everythings gonna be o.k.”