He came to my emotional rescue

Mike And The Mechanics sang a song called "The Living Years". It talks about every generation blaming the one before for whatever problems faults they see in their present lives. The chorus goes on to say that it's too late when we die to admit we don't see eye to eye. I can't remember all the lyrics or I would just post the whole thing. You can even look the lyrics up online, but I'll let anyone who wants to, do that on their own.

I can see that song ring true in my own family. Grandpa worked so much, my dad told me, that he never came outside to even play catch with his sons when he was home. Admittedly, he was probably pretty beat.

Dad made a point of playing ball with us. He would get on the floor and wrestle with his kids. Even Baby Sister loved that. We boys treasure those memories.

When I was in the second grade, my dad signed me up for little league. I'm sure I was in agreement, but I ended up hating every moment of it. That was the first indication of the differences between us.

Dad loved westerns as he grew up watching black and white television as new technology. He and I used to watch John Wayne movies together to our mutual enjoyment. I still watch and enjoy them now.

The Lord Of The Rings somehow didn't reach him. The books fascinated me, and now I won't settle for anything but the extended versions of the most recent movies made of them.

The Hobbit captured me so well; I began to write in the runes that were used on the map of Lonely Mountain. My preacher dad thought for sure that I was getting into the occult.

Then he discovered I was getting into the Beatles! These were obviously Satan's favorite servants. What would he have done if I had liked Black Sabbath?

By now, my dad was filled with fear and making wilder and wilder assumptions of my spiritual condition. Things were said and done to drive me into thinking that no matter what I wanted was wrong and taking me to Hell.

I felt God wanted me to pursue my music. I taught myself to play guitar chords and practiced more than with the clarinet I played in high school band, but it didn’t seem of any value with my parents. I say parents because Mom seemed to be in on this too.

I felt persecuted. It made me feel like Jack Black in "School Of Rock". I'm going to play rock and roll and "stick it to the man." I felt rejected by my parents, which is something I heard a pastor say recently is the most painful kind of rejection.

Pile the experience from yesterday’s entry on top of this, and you can see that I was tripping hard well before my first hit from a joint or my first drink.

I told myself that Jesus Christ is not coming back in my lifetime, so I’m going to numb this pain with any and every kind of thing I could find.

Before I could get the nerve up to do myself in more quickly, the Lord came to my rescue. He came in the form of a guy who used to bully me a few years ago. He had just gotten saved, and he found me in the local video arcade.

He told me he was looking for “a spiritualist church”. As I listened to him, I realized he was looking for a church that believed in the working of the Holy Spirit. I told him my church believed this way.

All in a flash, I knew I could at least help him by inviting him to my church. I realized that I had a purpose with God and this time Mom and Dad would approve. I repented and decided I would go back to serving God. I also took this guy home with me.

I never sunk quite so low again, but that didn’t mean my problems were solved. I had started some bad habits that took a while to come out of, but God had rescued me all the same.

When Dad passed away a few years ago, I realized with the help of my cousin who is also a pastor, that I had all this unexplained anger that would boil up from time to time. It all stemmed from the despair of these years. My cousin also helped me to see that my dad had not felt self-confident about raising me because he missed the first 18 months of my life when he was stationed in Germany in the Air Force.

I went to counseling at my current church. I found that I needed to forgive him for all that had happened between us and ask for forgiveness for judging him for supposedly condemning me to Hell. I prayed this in a prayer with the counselor and felt freed from a burden.

My only regret is I couldn’t sit down with Dad to talk about this because he had gone to Heaven.

Now, my approach to my own son is different. I even shared what had happened between my dad and me with him.

My dad did lots of things right and nobly. His dad did lots of things right and even nobly, but we are all trying to pass on improvement to the next generation.