Please check out the article I wrote for “Breaking Free.”  It’s a blog about purity for men hosted by Covenant Eyes.  This particular article deals with how our sexual sin can affect our children and what we can do, as men, to battle with the everday bombardment of images in our world.

Covenant Eyes is great online accountability software that protects your office or home computer (and you!) from internet pornography.  If you sign up for it, click on this link and you’ll receive 30 days free!  (Or, you can use promo code “purelight” when you join.)  God bless!

By Jason Nabb

There’s many things I imagined myself doing.  Lawyer, professional ATV rider, furniture builder.   I’ve even thought of myself as a famous photographer, filmmaker, entrepreneur, maybe I would own a large company someday.   I never really thought much about being a father.  It never occurred to me to consider what it means, or takes, to be a father.  It doesn’t make much sense to consider the idea of being a father unless you consider your own.  It’s been about a year and a half since my father passed away.

Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out what he meant to me.   I loved him, for sure.   I miss him incredibly, but I’m not sure what he meant to me.  I look back in my memory and try to grab ahold of some semblance of comraderie, some specific time when we connected.   I remember him being there, but, for the life of me, I can’t recall many specific moments and it’s driving me crazy.

I wonder if there are other guys out there like me who try to remember moments with their dad when you just clicked.   Like the first time he talked to you about girls, or the first time he let you drive the family car.   Once in awhile, I remember little things.  I remember how loud he could whistle when I was up to bat in little league.  He would cheer so loudly, even though I was sure to strike out.  I was only in little league for one season.  He’d whistle and hoot.  I asked him to, quite honestly, because I didn’t really have a fan club and I wanted to hear cheers from the crowd when I stepped up to the plate.   I wasn’t much of an athelete and nobody really cared much when I was up to bat.  That lone season in little league was the extent of my baseball career and saw a shining first base hit as its pinnacle moment.  Too bad the next batter fouled out to end the inning.  Even though I’ve never crossed home plate, I felt pretty good about myself and I feel as though I hung up my bat and glove and retired from baseball in my prime.  In part, because my dad came to watch.

I remember how he taught me to drive.  We used to go out of town and drive on country roads on Sunday afternoons.   I used to love those drives.  I remember one time, not more than a quarter of a mile from home.  It was a blind left turn on a hill.   I was behind the wheel of his 1969 F-100.   Three on the tree and a worn out clutch.  You had to ease it up a bit to see if anyone was coming, then sort of stop, then go again if it was clear.   We must have sat at that intersection for an hour while I killed it over and over again.  I wanted to give up.   I wanted to walk home.  I wanted to do anything except make that left turn in front of me.  He was so patient.  He just kept telling me to try again.  I finally made it and when we got home I was mad for the rest of the day.

I guess that these seemingly “little” things are more important to me than I realize.  We got along well enough.   He was never too tough on my brother and I.  He always talked to us as equals.  It’s not like he was never there for me.   He was a good provider.   He worked hard.   He tried his hand at different businesses.   He studied English in college.  He ended his career working in a nuclear power plant running a machine that required an incredible amount of mathematical and technical skill.  The machine actually eliminated the radioactivity found in the water that was used to cool the fuel rods that powered the plant.   He was sort of a renaissance man, in his own way.   He was smart, but I don’t remember a passion.  I don’t remember a bright shining light in his eyes.  I know he loved my brother and I, I just don’t remember any all-consuming desire for anything, in particular.

I think a kid wants to look at his dad and see fire in his belly.   Fire for something.  The pumping fist kind of fire that makes you want to butt heads and go kill something.  I think that’s what I wanted to see.  It really wasn’t there.   However, somehow, over the years of my childhood, he inspired me.   Quietly and patiently, perhaps more so through his inaction rather than his actions, he pushed me to do more than he had done.  I love him for that, and I always will.