Tuesday Tome - Letters to My Children

Last week, I finished a sweet and winsome little book by Daniel Taylor, Letters to My Children: A Father Passes on His Values.  While the words "sweet" and "winsome" are accurate, I would hasten to add that the book is also filled with humility, grace, wisdom, and insight.  I'd recommend the book to Christian parents and grandparents of kids between the ages of 10 and 15. It would also be good for teachers and church leaders who work with children that age.

The stories and insights Taylor shares serve as a good model and inspiration for the rest of us to write some letters of our own. Writing letters like this might be just the thing to help us parents and grandparents think through our values and beliefs, and prod us to remember the people, events, and experiences that formed those values and beliefs into who we are. Letters to My Children stirred my heart toward my own kids and grandkids and prompted me to be more intentional about sharing more of my of life stories and thoughts with them.

From the Preface:

I have a terminal disease. It is called mortality. It causes me, at times, to worry about my children growing up without me. I am not afraid they will miss meals or education or have to wear generic jeans (my oldest son's worst nightmare). I am concerned they will little remember who their father was, what made him tick, what was important to him, what he had to say to them. What will they know of me, of the man who co-created them, the one who loves them more than he will ever let himself say?

These letters are a partial response to this muted but persistent concern. They are, in theory, for my children, but in writing them I discovered they were for me, and perhaps for others, as well. It is not just the vanity of wanting to be remembered that motivates them. For better or worse, I am the only father my children will ever have. And as their father, part of my value is to pass on the eternal truths. Never mind that many of us are less sure of the exact nature of eternal truth than before we had children. Never mind that when the words come out of our mouths they sound suspiciously like clichés or, worse yet, like things we didn't like hearing from our own parents.

Despite our inadequacies, we fathers serve a crucial purpose by being there to say the unexpected, unexceptional, but necessary thing. What exactly we have to say will often be forgotten; that we are there to say it will never be.

Other books I've enjoyed from Daniel Taylor:

The Myth of Certainty
Read my previous post about The Myth of Certainty.

The Skeptical Believer
Read my previous post about The Skeptical Believer.