A few years ago I called him on Father’s Day. He told me a story of how he prays for my sister and I. He said that looking back he can’t help but see that he’s made some mistakes as a dad and done less right than he wishes he would have. So his prayer is that God would bring a “crop failure” to any bad seeds that dad’s planted over the years – and that God would greatly nurture and multiply any good seeds that have been planted.
My wife Corinne wrote a poem a few years ago that captures this sentiment perfectly:
My Child
In a field blowing with wild flowers
The air once sweet, then sharp, then sweet again
You are
A daisy
A mixture of sunshine and springtime
Standing slender in the vibrancy of the field
Tentatively swaying in the soft breeze
Unaware of your sweetness
I bend over you to inhale your sweet fragrance
and notice
One of your velvety petals is drooping slightly
Out of place with the others
I reach out my hand
Too big for this field of wild flowers
And I bend the petal back in place
It stubbornly refuses to take its place among the neat row of petals
I try again
But now
The springtime in your petals is creased
A dark line across its whiteness
The result of my hand
Too big for this field of wild flowers
I smooth it out
My hands become stained with your sunshine
That weeping springtime
Hanging limply
Waiting for the inevitable brownness
Dryness that will come
A daisy
In a field of wildflowers
You are
My hands
Too big for this field
Stained with your sunshine
Drenched with your springtime
Will my hands ever be small enough for this field of wildflowers?
I will never forget that phone call or this poem. I find myself praying that same prayer for my kids – “God, take some Round Up to the bad seeds I’ve planted with my sons and daughters. May the good seeds I’ve planted through example or instruction bear a bumper crop in the lives of my kids”. Maybe your prayer can be the same today.
