You should not be like cowering, fearful slaves. You should behave instead like God’s very own children, adopted into his family — calling him “Father, dear Father.” For his Holy Spirit speaks to us deep in our hearts and tells us that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we will share his treasures — for everything God gives to his Son, Christ, is ours, too. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. ... And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. (Romans 8:15-17, 26-27)

    I drove my fifteen-year-old son, Bob, to his Reading, Ohio, high school, and dropped him off at 7:30 A.M., as I had done every day for months. I knew the bell would ring at 7:37, signaling the beginning of another school day; I did not know that he would not be there when it did.

    There was no one else to take him to school, no one else to fix him breakfast, or help with his homework, or earn a living to keep him in Converse shoes and bell bottoms. Bob’s two older brothers had each left home for college, and his mother — my wife of twenty-seven years — had died of cancer the previous September, at age forty-nine. Within a few months of her funeral, I had lost my job, and Bob and I moved to a new neighborhood, where he enrolled in a new school and I commenced a new job as a traveling representative for a nonprofit organization.

    So that morning, like every morning, I watched my son trudge alone through the crowd of teenagers that milled about in front of the school, and waited until he disappeared through the entrance before driving off. He was miserable; I knew that he had few friends at school, he was failing every class, and he had been caught skipping school more than once — but I didn’t know how to help him.

    As I often did, I stopped at a local Perkins Restaurant for coffee and pancakes and checked my appointments for the day. As I did this, I realized I had left important paper work at home. I drained the last swallow of coffee, left a tip, and paid my bill. Then I got into my 1974 Plymouth Duster and headed home.

    When I arrived, I was surprised to find the front door unlocked. I was sure I had locked it when Bob and I left that morning. When I stepped into the living room, however, I received another surprise: Bob was sitting there. He was skipping school. He had gotten out of my car that morning and walked the two miles home as soon as I was out of sight. He had been willfully disobedient. Anger immediately rose in me, and I began to ponder what punishment I would dispense.

Bob was sitting there. He was skipping school.

    But Bob had not seen me enter. His eyes were closed. He wore a set of stereo headphones. He sat in an upholstered chair that had belonged to his mother. I saw by the record sleeve on the floor at his feet that he was listening to one of his mother’s records, a selection of classical piano pieces (she herself had been an accomplished pianist). And a steady stream of tears coursed down his cheeks.

    In an instant my anger evaporated. The son who sat before me was a truant, but he was also a boy who had lost his mother — as I had lost a wife. I knew that, of course, but his tears reminded me.

    He still had not seen me. He didn’t even know I was in the room. I sat down on the couch opposite him. And when he finally opened his eyes, tears were streaming down my cheeks too.

    I don’t recall what else I did that day in response to my son’s truancy. But I will always remember the moment when God touched my heart and united my grief and my son’s in a union of compassion and comfort.

Excerpted with permission from The Heart of a Father, a compilation of great stories about fathers, edited by Wayne Holmes.

Title: "Truant Tears"
Author: C. Vernon Hostetler
Publication Date: July 16, 2001

Share with Others	Related Heartlight Resources
Print this Article Send it to a Friend Discuss	God's Love Imitating the Father