A Home Without Fear

I wanted to post something for Father's Day, but alas, did not manage it.  However, we don't have to relegate posts about good fathers to one day in the year do we?  So.  Here goes.

As an adult I see blessings differently than I did as a child.  Or maybe I should say I see different blessings.  As a child there are the basics: hugs, food, warm bed.  As an adult, those blessings become expanded and more complex.  Food involves money and job and budgeting and you begin to realize all that goes into providing for a family.  This goes for the warm bed as well.  When you are the one responsible for the job and bill paying you become much more aware of what your parents gave and sacrificed to provide a good home in which to grow up.  But one of the blessings I have been thinking of lately concerns the character of my parents, particularly my dad.  I hear horror stories about children growing up in homes where they are abused in all kinds of ways, sometimes even killed, and again and again I am reminded of the blessing of having a True Christian father.  I say "True" Christian, because there are men who profess to be "Christian" and still carry out the most unspeakable abuse against their children.  Hence the necessity of the distinction.  I never, ever had to live in fear about my dad coming home from work (unless I had been bad! And then it wasn't really fear, just not wanting punishment! lol).  I didn't have to worry if he would beat me or my sisters or my mother, whether he would be drunk, whether he would bring home others who would do who-knows-what to me.  The older I get and the more horrific stories I hear, the more I realize just how blessed I was.  I can't imagine what some children go through on a daily basis, or the kind of fear they live with every moment.  I am grateful I never had to experience that.  So this Father's Day (and every day, really) I say "Thanks Dad! (and Mom too!)" for the blessing of a home without fear.