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Bond of Brothers
connecting with other men beyond work, weather, and sports
By Wes Yoder ZONDERVAN
Copyright © 2010Wes Yoder
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-31999-3
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
LET'S TALK ABOUT MANHOOD
Where are your zeal and your might? The stirring of your inner parts and your compassion are held back from me. Isaiah 63:15
My dad never was a bitter man. For years, he was a legalist, stern about work and faith, but always with a song on his lips and a twinkle in his eye, a smile working the corners of his face. Unlike other legalists we knew, he fought his fears. Ultimately, he was a lousy legalist. His heart just wasn't into it.
In his early years, Dad viewed good behavior and performance equivalent with godliness, external proof of a credible inward and personal experience of faith. The better the externals, the better the proof you really meant it with God. But as the years wore on, the song of his heart gradually melted external performance in exchange for a deep understanding that God loved him and the rest of us, whether we could perform for God or not. You could hear his clear tenor voice while he milked the cows, while driving up the road, in the shop, and for years, day after day, singing around the dinner table with family and friends. Many times, he took the heat with his own relatives for not being strict enough with his boys. His kindness to me saved my life.
The details are no longer important because it is his story to tell, but it took Dad close to seventy years of his life to learn to walk in complete truth with his family. How long has it taken me? You? All I know is that now my dad is a free man, and his freedom has much to do with mine, as you will see. Your children are connected to you, for better or for worse, in the same way.
Over the years, I've had more than a fleeting thought that I should run from writing this book, but I have resisted the vacuum of silence. I like hiding in my quiet little world as much as you do, and going public with honest thoughts and ideas that are still under construction might destroy any remaining illusion that I have my act together. Instead, I have decided to help create a conversation about what I see as the architecture of a man's heart and soul and to help men find a language that expresses who they are as men in order to restore their families and their dreams, even if, as James Taylor sang, their dreams lie like "flying machines in pieces on the ground."
I know with all my heart that men who have been broken but have not allowed their hearts to become bitter are more useful in the kingdom of God than those who have not yet been broken. They are also invariably more pleasant, and perhaps I can help a bitter man become a better man with a renewed sense of purpose and hope. Perhaps together we can overcome our fears.
Much of what I know I learned the hard way, in "the university of hard knocks, the school that completes our education," as Ralph Parlette put it. My brothers on the journey and I are like men wrestling in a desert night with angels, as Jacob did. Just before dawn, his final rasping cry was "I will not let you go unless you bless me." He emerged from that unlikely match with a limp, but also with a blessing pronounced on him by God. If you look into my life and yours, you will find that both of us limp as well. Perhaps you have already discovered that God has blessed you and kept you and healed you and has poured his grace into your heart, and that he continues to do so day by day. Perhaps that seems like an impossible dream, good for me or for someone else but too distant to experience yourself.
You, valuable brother, are the reason I have decided to write our hearts and souls into this book about men, about the stuff we don't talk about, in order to capture that which has been stolen from us — our families, our children, our grandchildren, and our friends. This book about the struggle to become a man, to understand ourselves, to be alive in our manhood, is for you, and for all of us.
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON
The man every guy should know best — his father — is likely the man he knows least. Too often, our fathers walk through our lives as silent heroes or mysterious, distant figures. Male, but undefined; man, but opaque in silence. How often have you heard or said, "My dad doesn't say very much" or, "I didn't know my father all that well"? This is a cry that grows from a wince in the heart of a young boy to something much worse in the chest of a grown man, finding himself falling into the pattern of "like father, like son," wishing he could call that man "friend."
When my dad was eighty-nine, he told me that his father, a stern but devout man, complimented him only once. He remembers the moment like it happened yesterday, and the words to him are like fresh-spun honey.
"What did you do to earn such high praise from my grandpa?" I asked.
His face lit up. "I stacked the sheaves of wheat on the wagon better than any of my eight brothers," he said.
While I realize that's a pretty nice compliment for a farm boy from a big family, I said to him, "Dad, try to imagine what it would have meant had Grandpa commended you, say, just ten times during your childhood rather than once. What would that have been like?"
"I don't know."
Such expressive love was beyond his comprehension. Even though he was eighty-nine years old, I could still hear in his voice the longing of the son for life-giving words of grace and truth from his father.
Some time later, I asked him another question. "Dad," I said, "you've told me several times you knew your father loved you. How did you know? Did he ever tell you he loved you?"
"No," he said, "I never heard those words." His voice trailed away.
"Not even when you were grown and had a family of your own?"
"No. Not even once." Dad paused. "But I always knew he did. When I was drafted in 1941, he told me he wished he could go in my place."
That my dad eventually discovered an entirely new way to live is remarkable.
Nearly every man I know can recite word for word a beautiful compliment or a harsh criticism received from his father. He can quote it precisely, half a lifetime later. Words, especially those spoken by a father, have the power to break or to heal the human spirit. With words, spiritual strongholds are formed, and by them spiritual legacies are created, good and bad. Words have the power to shape the entire course of a child's life, and fathers hold the keys of life for their children. To withhold from them the simple elegance of a compliment, a hug, or an "I love you," whether they "deserve" it or not, is a sentence of death. It is an emotional and spiritual death, but a death nonetheless.
If what we say, who we are, and what we do are the three things by which we will be remembered, see if this describes you or your father (or most of the men you know):
• We don't show our hurts.
• We never cry.
• We have a hard time expressing compassion or how we really feel.
• We seldom, if ever, give an unqualified compliment.
• We do not feel respected.
• Our language does not include words as simple as "I love you, son. I'm very proud of you."
• We talk about our golf games or the weather as if they are the most important topics, but the truly significant events of our lives as men lie hidden somewhere beneath the surface, invisible to our sons and daughters, invisible even to ourselves.
We are silent.
THE SILENCE OF MAN
The things men don't talk about are some of the most important things in life. They are clues both to our sorrows and to traits we esteem but cannot achieve, to things we love and things we fear. B
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Bond of Brothers by Wes Yoder. Copyright © 2010 by Wes Yoder. Excerpted by permission of ZONDERVAN.
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