The Darker Side of Father's Day
Well it turned out I was all worried about singing "Meant To Live" on Sunday for nothing. My buddy Toby who organizes our Sundays at Cecil Facer, and who plays lead guitar, slept in until we called him 10 minutes before the first service started. =) So we did a quick scramble and changed our song list since some songs like Meant To Live don't work too well with just one acoustic guitar.
The topic of the morning was of course Father's Day. A tough topic to talk about with a group of young offenders because chances are they either don't know who their father is or they hate their father's guts. I'm pretty sure I was one of the few people in that room that had a good father. A father worthy of a father's day card. The speaker was a man who's father did not deserve a card yesterday, but he's a man who's trying to break the cycle that started three or four generations ago. He got all teary eyed when he started talking about the little rewards of trying to be a good father to his two little girls. How precious those cards can be. His feelings at being told by his daughter that he is her best friend. You could tell the guys especially were riveted. Not too many of them were fathers themselves, but on some of those faces you could tell they wanted to be good fathers.... well I mean I'd like to think no one goes out of their way to be a bad parent. It's hard for me not to get emotional during talks like that because I want to be the best dad in the world.... once I get a wife and kids that is.
So all in all the morning went really well. Over half of the residents came out to the services which is surprising since it's voluntary for them. They even started clapping during our last song which is unusual. I'm sure some of them were just goofing off but that's fine by us. We want them to have fun.
Matthew.
The topic of the morning was of course Father's Day. A tough topic to talk about with a group of young offenders because chances are they either don't know who their father is or they hate their father's guts. I'm pretty sure I was one of the few people in that room that had a good father. A father worthy of a father's day card. The speaker was a man who's father did not deserve a card yesterday, but he's a man who's trying to break the cycle that started three or four generations ago. He got all teary eyed when he started talking about the little rewards of trying to be a good father to his two little girls. How precious those cards can be. His feelings at being told by his daughter that he is her best friend. You could tell the guys especially were riveted. Not too many of them were fathers themselves, but on some of those faces you could tell they wanted to be good fathers.... well I mean I'd like to think no one goes out of their way to be a bad parent. It's hard for me not to get emotional during talks like that because I want to be the best dad in the world.... once I get a wife and kids that is.
So all in all the morning went really well. Over half of the residents came out to the services which is surprising since it's voluntary for them. They even started clapping during our last song which is unusual. I'm sure some of them were just goofing off but that's fine by us. We want them to have fun.
Matthew.
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