Mr. Mom Chronicles 5

A day of rest and redemption is what I am hoping for today.

On the "rest" front, in just over a half an hour I hope to have Eric safely on the bus and headed for a morning of Kindergarten while I look to drink coffee, read some Brian McLaren and possibly doze off while doing so.

On the "redemption" front, I went a little overboard last night with Eric. You see, he has been a good phone conversationalist for some time and knows how to chat it up with grandparents or whichever parent happens to be out of town. So it came as a surprise last night when I handed the phone to Eric to talk to mommy and within sixty seconds he handed it back to me not once, but twice which caused me to probably look like some sort of monster in his eyes yelling WHY!!!! The second time his eyes watered up, and I could see his little body tremble and all of a sudden the bigger person in the room was not the six foot three two hundred plus person supposedly called "Dad".

Now I'm sure I could justify things by saying that I was up most of the previous night with a wracking cough and that we had just finished another very successful four hours of LOGOS and that I just didn't want to deal with anything else. But then again, he is my son and he was tired too and missing mommy and there is no way that he did it intentionally. And this morning when I apologized again, he said, "I think my ear was turning the phone off". Again, the bigger person in the room was just over three feet tall.

So this afternoon I hope to work on a little redemption with my son by helping Eric with his homework and then venturing into Lego Star Wars and Mario Kart and trying our hands at some Wii Sports.

Thanks to all of my friends, family and church-family who are concerned and prayerful that my persistent cough subsides and that I regain the patience to be a good dad over the next four days. I so appreciate all of your kind words and offers of help, all of which not only make me want to be a better dad, but a better pastor and person.