Imitating the Fatherhood of God: A Single Dad's Guide to Spiritual Parenting

By Vincent Adams

Imitating the Fatherhood of God is a semi-autobiographical journey through a young, single father's quest to learn how to be a great parent without a solid point of reference from his early years. This dilemma became most evident upon his turning his life over to Christ and realizing the depth and breadth of the responsibility. Drawing from scriptural references, he explores a wide variety of life situations that many parents face, but all too often feel lost in how to deal with. This work chronicles how he used biblical principles to overcome hurdles common to single parents and married parents as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469160450

Vincent Adams

Vincent (Vinnie) Adams is a multi-instrumentalist, recording artist, broadway performer, actor and now, author, educated at Baruch College in NYC with a B.A. in Music. He has been a Christian for 17 years and between him and his wife, Betty, they collectively share 38 years of parenting experience. Together, they have served faithfully in the NYC Church of Christ -within the International Church of Christ fellowship of churches - as teachers, as deacons and formerly co-leaders of a single parents support group, launched by members of the church, called P.O.W.E.R (Parents Overcoming With Empowering Resources). He is a father, grandfather and advocate for single parents, having begun his parenting as a single dad and through marriage, grown into his role through spiritual mentorship and prayer.

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Copyright © 2012 by Vincent Adams.

ISBN:              Ebook                       978-1-4691-6045-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was created in the United States of America.

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION:

ACCORDING TO GOD

ACCORDING TO JESUS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

ACCORDING TO THE APOSTLES

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

ACCORDING TO YOU

AFTERWORD

ENDNOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My deepest thanks to Ross—without your inspiration I might not have seen what was in front of me the whole time . . .

To Danielle, whose partnership in this common struggle helped give birth to this work . . .

To Robert Woods, for being a faithful encourager and visionary, embracing this vision and helping to put the icing on the cake . . .

To Nilaja, for helping to make the method-to-the-madness make sense

To my amazing kids, Arielle, Naji, Jared, Malachi—and grandson, Tristen—

this is your story too . . .

To my Dad, John J. Adams Sr. (1931-2001)—all that reading and writing homework you gave finally paid off . . .

To my mom, for always making me feel special . . . so that I could be unafraid to be different . . .

And most of all, my loving wife—for, in addition to brilliant content edits, giving me something to talk about; without you, and the past thirteen years of life we’ve shared, this book would remain unfinished.

PREFACE

OOPS! . . . OH NOOO! . . . I’M SOOO SORRY! . . . NOT ME…

ARE YOU SURE? . . . GET A TEST! . . . GET AN ABORTION…

BUT, I’M NOT READY!?!? . . . YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE…

I SHOULDN’T HAVE… BUT I’M NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU…

GUESS WE SHOULD ‘DO THE RIGHT THING’, HUH? . . .

IT’S A TRAP, A SET UP… WHAT ABOUT ME?

OUTSIDE OF THE bond of marriage, these are just a few words many of us use to express how we feel about ushering in of one of the most significant, most precious, most important events God has granted mankind the privilege of experiencing. Sound familiar? Not only might it sound familiar, but for some it may be a point in your life you’d rather forget. This all-too-common scenario has been the fate of many, like me, who were presented with the lifetime responsibility of fatherhood at a time when we neither planned nor desired it.

Seventeen years ago, I simultaneously became a Christian and a new father. I didn’t know a thing about being a father at the time, and for the next two years, subsequently, the idea had to practically sink in. But immediately prior to that major turning point in my life, Dee, the young woman who mothered my first son, was an old friend who had been away in the military. She decided to come into town during my relationship hiatus at the time—one of my three or four breakups with another woman I was involved with¹ (we had broken up this many times within a three—or four-month period). We met on the road while doing the convention circuit with a large civil rights organization. The nature of our relationship was primarily long distance, held together by occasional phone calls and correspondence. We were never involved romantically during that time; I always knew she liked me, but I avoided her because she was so young—eight years my junior. The guys would tease me about how I would be put under the jail if I went anywhere near her.

Dee was involved with someone in the military who hurt her pretty badly and was seeking to get away from the drama. I was just miserable with few alternatives to escape to. To her advantage, her grandmother called her and offered her a ticket back home to visit her. I just happened to call at the right time. It’s funny how things work out. Together, on that one night, we changed our own history forever. Our decision was nothing more than the kind of innocent, powerless, quest for peace in life that is tainted by a blind commitment to sin. The moment our protection failed, I knew that the life I had grown accustomed to would never be the same. We briefly deluded ourselves by entertaining ideas of abortion, if anything happened. She said I didn’t need to worry. She’d take care of it. Maybe she’d forgotten one of the world’s unwritten rules of womanhood: Every woman reserves the right to change her mind. But I didn’t forget. In fact, that memory stayed with me for the next thirteen days until her phone call across three thousand miles informing me officially that she had changed her mind. So what was I to do? Back home, I kept a strict cloak of secrecy from my family, which lasted a good seven months into her pregnancy. I went back to my girlfriend as if nothing ever happened, and she informed me a short time later that she might be pregnant also—and this relationship was on its last leg. Do I tell her the truth now and guarantee that it would be over right then? Or do I wait for our relationship to build its strength back up enough to sustain the impact of such news and then tell her? I never had to make that decision because my girlfriend turned out not to be pregnant, and she ended the relationship—that I had tried to end three or four times before—this time, successfully. What a mess! Now it was just me; God watching the whole thing playing out and my new life as a parent. It was hard, and I was hurting like never before in my life. During that period of secrecy, an old friend and former coworker reached out to me at a time when, in addition to all this drama, I was emotionally frustrated and spiritually bankrupt, wishing that someone would invite me to something worth going to on Easter Sunday, rather than the usual hypocrite parade that I would be a part of out of habit, year in and year out. This invitation eventually led to me studying the Bible over the next six months and becoming a Christian. Suffice it to say, I entered the kingdom of God with a lot of baggage. I had not yet achieved the balance of perspective that comes with more experienced spiritual thinking, so even though I had given my life to God, just a few months after all this drama began, I still had to relearn how to think.

Becoming a Christian didn’t make it any easier either because now we were on opposite sides of the same team. She didn’t trust me. While I knew deep in my heart that this was my son, I still followed the friends-and-family wisdom to make sure I got a test because you never can tell. That wisdom lasted only up until I actually saw him. I was the one who carried him out of the delivery room to the scale for weighing. Within three days, his skin tone, his hairline, his head shape… all of them formed into an irrefutable case for paternity. At the point of this realization, I was on the cusp of solidifying my decision to give my life to Christ, but I didn’t want to poison my spirit with such a time—worn cliché like getting a test—primarily because I knew in my heart and mind that this was my son. One month after his birth, I was baptized. Struggling through trust issues, being thrust into leadership within three months as a Christian and having been severely challenged soon after with the task of taking temporary custody while she was away in training for seven months, made for an interesting first year in God’s kingdom. If that wasn’t enough, I soon became subjected to three straight years of intense persecution from my family with no escape but the Bible and the fellowship of other Christians.

This was how I began my life as a father. On the outside I was living in constant conflict. No one could begin to fathom the tremendous internal conflict that took a few years to dissipate. In the world, I had always said to people, I never want to bring a child into the world unless I have it on straight spiritually. I didn’t know the truth then, but I knew that I didn’t have the truth and if didn’t have it, the information necessary to develop a godly character, then neither would my kids. I wanted to be the difference in my generation. God knew that my worldly character would have severe issues with being a hypocrite. So He did the reverse and gave me the child first so I would have to live up to my convictions and get things straight spiritually in order to face the new reality of my life.

I never could have imagined that thirteen years after beginning this introduction, I would still be writing it. That new reality of my life was like the army—more than just a job, but an adventure… I realize now that I just didn’t know enough. I say this because after eleven years of marriage, three more children² and a grandson later, I should have it all figured out. Some of the single-parenting stigmas would go away because I now have a wife, right? Wrong, because I went and married another single parent! The single parent issues became blended family issues. Blended families are twice the drama you had before you got married, just a new scene in the play. Accordingly, there are many things on which we differ greatly when it comes to cross-parenting of stepchildren. Our past experiences and insecurities play a tremendous role in skewing that blended experience and makes for many opportunities to hurt feelings, have disagreements, and increase emotional barriers. Much of these things leave you dumbfounded and desperate for a standardized procedure that dwells on neither spouse’s issues.

The primary reason this book came into existence was through a series of daily meditations from my journal, which I created to move myself to a deeper, spiritual conviction about how to be a father based on a reliable standard that rose above personal issues. In terms of what to do about it, I didn’t have a clue; not only did I have no worldly clue but also no spiritual clue as a Christian. This weakness caused a great deal of tension and misunderstanding between my son’s mother and me. So I decided that if I want to do this right and cover all bases, what better way than to start with God himself and find out how He does it? God’s fatherhood is far beyond the biological limitations of the physical, parental obligation that we more readily understand as human beings. His