The Most Important Job

I have a beautiful family. One especially beautiful part of the family is my lovely sister Hannah. When Hannah graduated high school she focused on one goal. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Hannah's answer had to parts, she wanted to be a wife and a mommy. At 23, she accomplished both.

I share the same goal with Hannah. Yes, I want to be a wife and a mommy...

Okay, just kidding. I want to be a husband and a daddy. I remember talking with my friends in high school about how many kids I would want when the time came. This is a great question. I want a million but at the same time, I don't want any.

Having a family is the most important job in the world. It's important because it is the bedrock of our society. Bad families = bad world. PERIOD. This is an undeniable fact. One of the reasons Africa is in trouble is because parents are dying daily from AIDS. How could anyone walk lightly into these two positions.

The inspiration for all this crazy future talk is the family sitting by me at a coffee shop. They are a beautiful family. When they first arrived, it was just a dad and his two children. The mother came by later. This whole time, I was furiously typing away on this little box. Suddenly, I looked up and noticed the children were gone and the father sat lonely in his seat shuffling a card game he had been playing with his kids. Had the mother come to pick up her kids from their divorced father ending their visitation time. This should be the normal conclusion these days shouldn't it?

The opposite is true, thank God! The children went to get drink refills and now the whole family sits across the room from me playing a game together. I almost cried when I thought the children had left. Why does conservative Christianity invest time and money to make abortion illegal when we should be focusing on fixing the families in our communities? What is wrong with us?

This takes a lot of humility to say, but, James Dobson is right to focus on the family. They're laughing and smiling together and I am with them. This dad is showing his kids that they matter and he loves them. Do you feel that from your dad? from God? Do you men give that love to the children around you? Do you women? Do I?