You Deserved a Better Father: Good Parenting Takes a Plan

By Robb Brandt

This book is about parenting by intention, and other lessons the author learned through the loss of his firstborn son. It is especially for parents who believe that bits and pieces of leftover time will be enough for their own children.  
 
"This book is a 'must read' for anyone who has children and a demanding

• Language: English
• Publisher: Healthy Life Press, LLC
• Release date: May 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781939267481

Robb Brandt

Robb Brandt, MD, has been a board certified general surgeon for twenty-five years followed by a nationwide practice as a medical quality improvement consultant to hospitals for twenty years. He has authored articles on medical quality management, personal experience, and parenting. His writings have appeared in Physician Executive, Medical Economics, Today's Christian Doctor, Focus on the Family Physician, Decision, Moody Magazine, Home Life, Mature Living, and others. These and Family Fitness Retreats articles are available at www.familyfitnessretreats.com. He serves on the board of directors of a hospital, and has served on a college board, as well as on local, district, and national church boards. He holds membership in the American College of Surgeons and other local and national medical organizations. He served as a surgeon in the US Army. Robb and his wife, Ruth, parented their four living children to adulthood on their Christmas tree farm in Western Pennsylvania. They have ten grandchildren.

Book preview

YOU DESERVED A BETTER FATHER

YOU DESERVED A BETTER FATHER

GOOD PARENTING TAKES A PLAN

by Robb Brandt, MD

YOU DESERVED A BETTER FATHER:

GOOD PARENTING TAKES A PLAN

Copyright © 2010 by Robb Brandt, MD, and

Healthy Life Press, Po Box 642, Roseland, FL 32957-0642

www.healthylifepress.com

Cover design by Judy Johnson

Printed in the united States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – for example, electronic, photocopy, recording – without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brandt, Robb

You Deserved a Better Father: Good Parenting Takes a Plan

ISBN 978-1-4528-7046-5

1. Parenting; 2. Bereavement; 3. Death of a Child

Published by Healthy Life Press. Most Healthy Life Press resources are available worldwide through bookstores and online outlets, depending on their format - whether printed or as an eBook. This book also exists as a downloadable and printable PDF from www.healthylifepress.com. Multiple copy discounts may be arranged by contacting the publisher at the address above, or by e-mailing: [e-mail]. Discounts to nonprofit entities for ministry or fundraising purposes may also be arranged by contacting the publisher. Copying or distributing printed or eBook formatted books or portions thereof is a violation of international copyright law, and strictly forbidden.

DEDICATION

I DEDICATE YOU DESERVED A BETTER FATHER TO A FABULOUS MOTHER, RUTH, BRIDE OF MY YOUTH, THE LOVE OF MY LIFE, PARENTING PARTNER, GENEROUS GRANDMOTHER, AND IN-HOME EDITOR.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First I thank our children for playing leading roles in this book by helping their father find his way, then making Ruth and me proud of them and their choice of spouses. They are:

Roger and Jonna

Rodney and Heidi

Rosalyn and Keith

Randy and Gretchen

And, our ten button-bursting grandchildren:

Taylor T-Bird and Michael; Cody, Zack and Joe; Katie, Andrew and Claire; Caleb and Timothy.

No book should be born without a publisher. And I have the best in the business. My thanks to the people at Healthy Life Press for You Deserved a Better Father’s birth certificate.

My gratitude particularly to my publisher and editor Dave Biebel who made a major improvement in this book by creating the appendices, then gently removing some content the book really didn’t need, and my cherished working title, Struck by Lighting – like taking a child’s favorite toy.

And the cover is the result of our mind-reading designer, Judy Johnson, who translated my word picture into a powerful image.

FOREWORD

Joseph Bayly was General Director of our ministry to doctors – then known as the Christian Medical Society – from 1978 to 1981. Robb Brandt, MD, has been a member of our association of doctors committed to changing hearts in healthcare since 1956.

Not since Joe Bayly’s book, The View From a Hearse, have I encountered such heart-rending, soul-challenging words related to the loss of a child as those penned by Dr. Robb Brandt in You Deserved a Better Father.

The title is taken from a phrase Dr. Brandt whispered into the ear of his dead eight-year-old son, Robbie, who had died after being struck by a car in front of their home as he crossed to the school bus one morning so long ago.

But that morning doesn’t seem so long ago when you read this book. It seems like TODAY, and the point of the book is that it could be TODAY for professional parents who live life in the fast lane, thinking that the bits and pieces of time they can pull from their patients or clients will be enough for their own children.

Compared to Dr. Brandt’s parenting, many professionals come nowhere close to what he tried for in terms of communication and father-child intimacy. But, when all was said and done, he believed that he could have done better.

His reason for writing this book is to help fast-laners like you or me or others we know understand that God’s clock and our children’s needs are not necessarily running in the same time sequence. The time, for all of us, could be now or never.

We’re either there, with them, or we’re not. We don’t control the future, or even the present – despite what we may think about our indispensability to our patients or clients. Our children need and deserve us now.

Like me, you don’t want to find yourself in this situation, from the book:

I’m so sorry, Robbie, I said. My heart’s breaking Robb, buddy. You know how much I love you and how incredibly I’m going to miss you.

I wanted to bend down and wrap my arms around him. I touched his arm. Cold and stiff. I wanted to remember him as warm, lively, and seldom still.

We’ve had a lot of good times, buddy. Great times, I continued. "Building tree houses, playing Wiffle ball, fishing at Pine Lake, and our great camping trips.

But I’m sorry about all those times my jammed and unpredictable schedule stole a ball game or a camping trip from you. You always looked so disappointed and hurt. I should have known I needed to plan our family times better. And, how I regret all those ‘Quickly, I have to go, let’s have fun quickly’ times.

My fallen pal lay silent and still, as pangs of guilt shivered through me.

You deserved better, Robb. A better father, I said. And those were my last words to my first-born son.

–David Stevens, MD, MA (Ethics)

CEO - The Christian Medical and Dental Associations

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION THE GENIUS OF GOD

CHAPTER ONE FRANCE

CHAPTER TWO NAVAJO NATION

CHAPTER THREE CAMPING CAPERS

CHAPTER FOUR JUST ONE MORE STEP

CHAPTER FIVE PARENTING ON PURPOSE

CHAPTER SIX AUCTIONING THE PROMISED LAND

CHAPTER SEVEN DEAR ROS

CHAPTER EIGHT TALE of TWO BROTHERS

CHAPTER NINE FAMILY FITNESS RETREATS

CHAPTER TEN THE REST OF THE ROBBIE STORY

APPENDIX A: MY FAST LANE FATHERING PLAN

APPENDIX B: AN OVERVIEW OF OUR FAMILY FITNESS RETREATS

POSTSCRIPT FATHERING MY MOTHER

HEALTHY LIFE PRESS RESOURCES

INTRODUCTION:

THE GENIUS OF GOD

As a fuzz-faced college freshman searching for my future, I squinted through a laboratory microscope at the minuscule blood vessels in the web of a frog’s foot. Red blood cells laden with oxygen crowded into tiny capillaries while white blood cells swallowed and destroyed bacteria and viral intruders. I learned that the life-giving fluid then flowed back through progressively larger vessels toward the heart, lungs and then to the kidneys to be restored and purified before starting the process again.

I stared awestruck at the silent symphony orchestrating before me.Professor McMillion asked me to gently scratch the web skin with a straight pin – while continuing to observe through the microscope.

I did.

Chaos!

Blood blew out of ragged tears in the capillary walls, flooding everything. But soon sticky clots began forming, gradually sealing the tears, and the circulation slowly resumed.

I breathed, Amazing! It has to be creation.

Looking up from my microscope, I gazed out the window into the clouds, as if searching for my Creator.

That experience strengthened my faith in God and started me on my journey to become a surgeon. Even as an experienced surgeon, I’m still amazed at how many life-threatening conditions are cured by built-in systems.

No doctor, no hospital, nor medications – just the genius of God’s handiwork.

In the abdomen, for example, God has placed a safety guard on twenty-four hour duty.

The omentum.

When chemically signaled, the omentum migrates toward trouble spots – such as appendicitis, wrapping itself about the problem area – often avoiding a disastrous rupture. I’m confident millions have escaped catastrophic illness and death by this means – never realizing they were in immediate danger.

The complexity of our bodies is mind boggling. University of California, Irvine, vascular surgeons estimate that all the vessels in a human body – when extended end to end – may reach 60,000 miles. That’s more than two times around our planet!

As of this writing, my heart is approaching three billion beats! That’s billion with a B, or one million beats, one thousand times.

All without one minute’s rest.

Fearfully and wonderfully made?

Absolutely!

Although God could have designed us to always self-heal and have no responsibility for our own health, He chose to give us a role, and so we diet and exercise – or we should.

He’s given us a role in our spiritual journey, too.

When our spirits are deeply wounded and the hemorrhaging begins, God reminds us of His prescribed remedies – the scriptural promises for each obstacle we encounter.

When I catch myself worrying or fretting, I’m nudged by God’s promise to give me peace that transcends all human understanding.

If I’m struggling with enticing temptation, God has promised me that I will not be tempted beyond what I can bear.

While wrestling with a difficult decision, I’m assured that, He’ll make my path straight, if – I trust Him with all my heart.

After simply scratching the gossamer-thin skin of a frog’s foot, I observed the genius of God’s handiwork as the healing process began.

Every time we experience even a minor scratch, we benefit from God’s magnificent gift of life. But we also know that someday our inborn healing will finally fail. When that time comes, God will wrap us securely in the treatment He prescribed for us on the cross – to be with Him forever.

A triumphant cure.

The anecdotes in the following pages trace how God guided, protected, healed our everyday scratches, and mended our broken hearts during our darkest hours – when blood blew out through ragged tears we thought might never heal.

CHAPTER ONE:

FRANCE

Something terrible must have happened. I groped through murky fog, as if floating in space. Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing here?

I couldn’t budge, or utter a squeak.

My legs seemed locked under the dash.

My right leg felt warm and wet.

My teeth felt