Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter is Dad

By David Roberts

The story of a young, first-time father. The often hilarious tales of his becoming a dad illustrate Biblical truths in the autobiographical work by David Steven Roberts. He was a minister who learned the hard way that often times God allows Christians, especially church leaders, to behave in shameful, evil ways.

Each story is true and reveals just how much David wanted to be a father, and just how unprepared he was to do so. Some stories are funny, others are sad, but each comes with a lesson based on Scripture, a devotion and questions to answer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Roberts
• Release date: Jul 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301171736

David Roberts

David Roberts is an award-winning illustrator. After graduating, he worked as a milliner and a fashion illustrator, but always felt his true calling was in children’s books. He has collaborated with some of Britain’s finest children’s authors, including Julia Donaldson, Sally Gardner, Philip Ardagh and Jacqueline Wilson. He is also the creator of the popular Dirty Bertie books. He lives in London with his husband. He has been twice-shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal, and in 2006 he won the Nestlé Children’s Book Prize Gold Award.

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Introduction

Fatherhood, there is no silver bullet, no one piece of advice that can tell you how to act or be as a father. We have all had fathers good, bad or somewhere in between. And good or bad, everyone’s relationship with their father affects them in their life. Your view of fatherhood affects your relationship with God and with your children. You get your view of fatherhood, at least most of it from your earthly father. How you view your relationship with your father can leave an indelible mark on the way you behave as a child to your Heavenly Father and as a father to your children.

The Bible has a lot to say to fathers and to children. There are good examples to imitate and bad examples to avoid. The lessons in this book have all sprung from what I have learned in my relationship with my father on Earth and my Father in Heaven and in my relationship as a father to my children.

Some of the lessons are personal and encouraging, others are humorous, some are a little sad but all are deeply personal. All are balanced with what I have taken away from each experience as the silver lining. Whether it’s witnessing the birth of your children, teaching them to love God or using appropriate discipline fathers need a little help.

I am not writing this book as if I were an all-knowing Dr. Spock type, right now I am completely aware that I know just a little bit more than I did before when I was a young, clueless father. (I am now an older, clueless father.) You can use these lessons as a personal study, or a collective study for fathers in your church, either way, I hope that what I learned can serve to teach you and encourage you to reflect the fatherhood of God in your relationship with your children.

Chapter One –

My Father and I

My Father as a Boy

Me as a Boy

I will confess something to you here and now, it’s not something I am proud of, not something I strived for, it just happened. Are you ready? Here it is: I throw like a girl. I run like a girl. I play sports (any sport) like a girl. And not an Olympic trained, or seasoned girl athlete, or even a tom-boy girl. I play sports more like the cute pig-tailed girl in a pink dress and tassels down the street, the cute pig-tailed girl who just so happens to have facial hair. My father was the sports guy. He played football, golf, tennis, you name it; he played it. I however, didn’t.

That was a source of conflict between my father and I. He just couldn’t understand that his son didn’t like sports. As it probably is with every boy born, my father had certain expectations and hopes for me that just didn’t materialize. Looking back on it, I know that he loved me, but I believe that he must have spent many long hours considering the possibility that I had been switched at birth with his biological son who is wandering around somewhere today, probably playing rugby. I would get that ‘look’, you know the one, the what the heck look when your dad doesn’t understand what you are doing. He took me to sporting events in the hopes that I would enjoy watching them. I didn’t.

I would be reading a book instead of watching the baseball game or trying to do anything other than sit still to watch a sport being played. What my father was expecting in a son, I think, was a little ‘him’, a little athlete, who loved watching and playing football, soccer, tennis, karate, or at the very least, golf. I know he was disappointed that I was not interested in the things he was. I hated sports, I hated recess, I loathed P.E. and only slightly tolerated watching sports on television. I was far more content to hide in my room with a book imagining myself being a part of the adventures of Frank and Joe Hardy, Tom Swift, or the Three Investigators.

Don’t get me wrong, I know he loved me and I loved him, but I led a life that was diametrically opposed to the one he did. I was like the nerd that he used to beat up when he was in school. I was that guy in the classroom with the whiny tone saying, Teacher, teacher, you forgot to assign us homework over the weekend. Yep, that was me. I was the kid who busted the curve on the tests. I walked to school alone or with my sister because to me the school buses were the place I ended up being beat up on, and on a bus, there is nowhere to run.

At times, my dad could be stubborn, loud and obnoxious, traits that amazingly enough he says I inherited from my mother’s side. I still haven’t quite figured that one out. But those seem to be the only traits we have in common. He kept enrolling me in this sports program or that sports program, basketball when I was in Kindergarten, soccer when I was in third grade, tennis lessons in sixth grade, golf in the seventh and he wanted me to try out for the football team, but he knew that I wasn’t going to do that. To him, I didn’t like the sport because I didn’t practice it enough, if I would just work harder at it, I would love it. That, to me is like saying, ‘oh, the reason you don’t like lima beans is because you just haven’t eaten enough of them.’

I don’t have the natural hand-eye coordination that is required in sports. (I’m not really even that good at Pac-Man.) I am a book person, books, movies, writing; all of it was what I really enjoyed. I remember in junior high hiding in the restroom during Physical Education classes, at that time there were no A’s, B’s, or F’s in P.E. you either got a Satisfactory or an Unsatisfactory in PE, and since my grade was always a U anyway, I didn’t bother trying. (To this day I have a serious problem with grading a child on their ability to play sports.)

When I couldn’t sneak away to hide, I would forget my gym outfit and in the ultimate wisdom of my PE coaches, (if he doesn’t want to be here, we will penalize him by not letting him be here.) they would sit me down on the track outside by myself out of sight of all the other kids. The book I smuggled into the gym in my pocket kept me busy until the bell rang. This was their punishment. The result was the same either way, I got a ‘U’.

If I could avoid the other kids, I wouldn’t get picked on or beat up, which was a regular occurrence in all my schools. I was always the one they wanted to fight. I was like the Glass Jaw Joe in the first Knockout video game, easy to beat, so even amateur bullies picked on me. The alpha male bullies would always zero in on me until I fought them, which I never did or if I did, I would lose. It was at this time that I learned the value of blood and keeping it on the right side of my skin. I refused to do anything that MIGHT result in my getting injured. I was a chicken.

My father wanted me to learn to fight. Every father wants their child to be able to take care of themselves. He wanted me to fight another kid named David that for a full year was picking on and hitting me and I would always lose.

In fact, one day my dad invited David’s mother, (who would always dismiss my Mother’s complaints of David being a bully and just chalk it up to him being an overactive boy) and David over and kept her busy so I could fight him. I took him into my bedroom, closed the door, took a breath and hauled off and hit him as hard as I could, once. I braced for him to come back at me and fight, but he didn’t, he hit the floor holding his now bleeding nose and he did something he had made me do several times, he bawled out for his mother.

You would think that this would give me a little satisfaction. Here was this little brat of a spoiled child who had tortured me for almost a year, bleeding and crying on my floor. His mother came running and gave my parents a look of utter horror as if to say, How dare you let your son do this to my son?

Oddly enough, the irony of her inaction to her own son’s bullying didn’t prompt a ‘well my son did deserve this so thank you for teaching him this valuable lesson.’ A small victory for my father’s son! I felt that he was proud of me that day. But I didn’t like hurting someone else, it wasn’t really part of me to do that. When David was crying I felt scared, even if he did deserve it, all I wanted was to be left alone.

My father was and is not perfect, no one can claim that for their fathers either. I always kind of wished that he were a little more book-ish and a little less athletic-y. (is that a word?)

THE LESSON: (or SO WHAT?)

In reading the Scriptures where Jesus is telling us that we have a Father in Heaven, many men transpose the image of their earthly fathers onto God. Their fathers’ wants, habits and attitude become what they expect from God. When I first became a Christian, I believed that God was like my father, disappointed in me and wishing that I was different. The fact that God could just accept me as I was, flaws and all, and love me enough to give His Son to save me, that was something that I couldn’t really comprehend.

God, my Father, doesn’t care that I hate P.E. and sports. (He probably doesn’t like it either.) He doesn’t care that I prefer to read alone than be with a crowd of people at a sporting event. He just loves me. It was sin that separated me from Him, my choices, my life and still He loved me anyway.

Romans 5:8 says, But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

He doesn’t