They Learn What You Live
Your children are not waiting for a lesson. They are watching you.
They see how you talk about your boss on the drive home. They see what you do when the bill comes and the money is short. They see whether you apologize, and to whom, and how long it takes you.
Deuteronomy does not describe a classroom. It describes a house. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Ordinary hours. The drive to school. The last ten minutes before bed.
Brother, your children will not remember most of what you told them. They will remember what you were like when you were tired.
That is heavier than it sounds, and it is also freeing. You do not have to deliver a perfect speech about faith. You have to let them watch you pray when nothing has been answered yet. You have to let them see you tell the truth when a lie would be easier and cost you less.
They are also watching how you treat their mother. That is the lesson they will carry the longest, and you are teaching it whether you intend to or not.
You cannot hand down what you do not have.
Start there.
What is my child learning about being a man from watching me this week, including the part I would change?
Father, I know my children are learning more from what I do than from what I say. Show me what I am handing down without meaning to. Give me the courage to change what needs changing and the patience to live it in front of them day after day. Let them see a man who belongs to You. Amen.
Name one thing your children have seen you do this month that you would not want them to repeat. Take it to God first. Then, if they are old enough to understand, tell them you were wrong.
Keep walking through the fire
Forged by Fire is a book about the cost of isolation and the power of brotherhood. If this hit something, the book goes further.