Angel, I have been married for just about 35 years to the
same woman.  We have 3 grown children, and almost 7 grandchildren.
Come March, it will be seven.  When I started creeping up on 50
years of age, nearly 5 years ago now, I decided to take stock of
my life as a Christian, husband, and father.  When I did this, I
wasn't too happy with what I saw.  Yes, it was true my oldest son
was married and had a great job with two lovely little girls.  It
was also true that he had to get married.  I also kicked him out
of my house when he was 20 years old due to his sinful life style
and his disrespect to his parents.  My daughter has lived a life
of rebellion against God since she was literally a little girl.
She has had at least one abortion, been arrested 3 times, and has
a felony drug record and she just turned 28 years of age.  I have
kicked my daughter out of my home 3 times.  The first time, she
was only 15 years old but was living so ungodly, I had no choice.
I told her before I kicked her out that I would go down to the
police station and register her as a run away.  This I did after
she left.  She told me at that time, she did not want to be any F
ing Christians.  When we found her 3 months later, she was
pregnant.  The second time I kicked her out, she was 16 and her
baby, my oldest grandson who is now 11 years old, was only a year
old.  It was the hardest thing I ever did in my life.  The third
time I kicked her out, she had two children, was married, and they
all lived in my basement because we have a one bedroom apartment
downstairs.  My daughter was already heavily into drugs and was
sexually unfaithful to her husband multiple times.  My daughter
was probably 20 years old at that time.  She is divorced now and
Sandy and I have legal custody of her 11 year old son.  My
daughter has stolen from her parents many times including
jewelry, electronics, car stereos that belonged to her brother,
cash we had, and probably things we will never know.  She has sold
things she took from our house at pawn shops.  She has tried
returning a cell phone that we had gotten her and tried to say it
wasn't working and she wanted her money back.  She used my credit
card several times, signing my name, and lied about it when I
caught her by reading my monthly statement online.  My youngest
son is 24 years of age.  He saw how his sister lived her life,
and also saw what it did to his parents when his older brother had
to get married, and decided he would not live as they did.  He
hasn't either and he lives a Godly life and really loves the Lord
with all of his heart.  As a parent, therefore, regardless of how
I raised my children in a Christian home, with rules, going to
church, and teaching my children how to live by Biblical
principles, I would be judged as a bad parent.

     During the past 17 years, I have had two, what used to be
called, nervous break downs.  They don't call it that much any
more, unless you have an old doctor, but now they want to diagnose
it as bipolar, Obsessive compulsive Disorder, Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder, General Anxiety Disorder, and a whole bunch of
other letters of the alphabet that are almost meaningless.  Why
did I emotionally break down?  One real good reason, I decided,
was due to the fact I think I was a failure at being a Godly
Christian father.  In other words, I was a lousy parent.  The
other reason?  I was a lousy parent, a failure at parenting,
because, it just had to be that I was also a lousy Christian.  I
crashed and burned not once but twice as a result.  Now I know
those two things were lies but I had been deceived into believing
they were true.

     Kathy stated we were kind of rough on her but in her case,
based upon some of her reports, I was concerned about her physical
safety.  Plus, I often sounded harsher than I meant to be simply
because I had experienced much of what she was facing and I hate
watching others go through the same things I have experienced
relating to parenting.  Plus, I'm a little cocky sometimes and
act like I know more than I really do.  Pride is what that is
called.  I'm still learning.  I especially get bent out of shape
when a son picks on his mom, sort of speak, so I have a tendency
to come off more aggressively in such cases.  In my case, that was
never a problem, that is, I was never concerned about my physical
safety.  In short, I have no doubt that some people, that know me,
considered I was a bad, or poor, parent.  I considered myself such
a parent.  I don't any longer but I still worry about them.  It is
tough to know how to work with any given child.  They are all so
different and their different ages, as well as so many other
factors that must be figured in, making being a good parent down
right impossible as far as I am concerned.  We all will look back
and say, I wish I would have done better.

Phil.