Father – John Markum

Fathering Daughters

Posted on December 7, 2011 by johnmarkum

When Tiffany and I started growing our family, God blessed us with two girls before we had our boys, Josiah and Elijah. I had always been the kind of man that looked forward to raising my boys:

Throwing the ball in the backyard.
Coaching them in baseball or basketball.
Going fishing.
Watching them begin taking an interest in girls.
Explaining later why girls are so mean (kidding! kinda…).

But then we had Emilee… and then Kali. And suddenly I had to begin thinking in terms of Barbie dolls, tea parties, princess dresses, estrogen, and (some day) boys – as in other boys. Boys who will look at my little princesses the same way that I first looked at their mother years earlier. At least I’ll know how to deal with that side of things. I can communicate very effectively to the male specie (“Touch her anywhere, and your loved ones will never find you again.”). But I digress…

I think I’ve always had a good idea of what it meant to be a good Dad to boys. And if we had started out with Josiah and Elijah, I wonder if I would have been as good of a father to my girls as I’m trying to be now. But being blessed with the family God gave me, made me have to think about this sooner. So here are a few things I feel as if God has taught me about being a father to Emilee and Kali, that every man with a little girl should realize:

Girls like to be noticed. Yes, in general all females do. But they start looking for it very young. And it’s different than with boys. Girls want you to watch them dance, show you their new outfits, sing you a song, and on it goes. Boys do need attention too, but I find that they’re looking more for affirmation, whereas girls are looking for admiration.
Girls need gentleness. I’m working on this one. It can be so hard to show this when they get in trouble. Specifically, I’m learning to walk the tight line between being gentle and being soft. I still have to be their parent, which requires rules, discipline, and consistency. But with my girls, I have to manage to show them tenderness even when disciplining. I told Emilee once that when she disobeys it makes me sad. She didn’t even realize I had feelings past happy and angry before that.
She’ll likely marry a man like you. I “date” my daughters for this very reason. Whatever poor young man tries taking my girls out for a date one day is going to have huge shoes to fill. Not because I spoil them, but because I treat them like the young women I know they can be one day. If your daughter uses you as a model for finding a husband, what kind of standards will she have?
I can be myself. My girls get to see the real me. My kids know that I work at a church, that God is my boss, I tell people about Jesus, I like Mountain Dew, video games, guitars, sports, and books, I get in trouble at home for saying “stupid,” and that I am helplessly in love with their Mommy. My girls don’t need me to be more feminine (something I can’t be), they need me to be a better man (something I should be).

Blessings,

John

To my Dad

Posted on June 19, 2011 by johnmarkum

I began a relationship with my greatest mentor when I was 1 day old. He was the first person in the entire world to ever hold me. And he’s invested in my life nearly every day of the last three decades. He is my Father, Jesse D. Markum (you can thank me later for not mentioning your middle name, Dad).

As it is Father’s Day, I wanted to share with all of you some of my favorite memories of my Dad, and why he matters so much to me:

“Slicky Boy!”: I have no idea where he got the name from, but it was his pet name for me growing up. He would always call me that after I did something good. It really did make me feel pretty “slick” as a kid, and gave me some kind of manly identity even early on. I don’t know how else to describe it. It just had a special meaning to me. I don’t even know if he realizes how significant this was to me as a boy.
Baseball: He and Mom coached my first little league team when I was 9 years old. He spent hundreds of hours with me in a big backyard in Georgia teaching me to pitch, throw a change up, and hit a ball. If kids spell love, “T-I-M-E” than few Dad’s ever loved a son more.
Work: I pushed my first lawnmower at 8 years old beneath my father (who was doing almost all of the actual pushing). At the time, I just did it because I wanted to do what he was doing. But he used it as a chance to teach me good work ethic, taking pride in doing a job, and initiative. Not much older than that, he encouraged me to ask the neighbors if I could mow their lawns too. By the time I was a teenager, I had a lawn mowing monopoly in my neighborhood. But it started with him and the example he set.
“You’re a real man”: I came from a culture and background that kids and teenagers didn’t drink coffee. Although with the onset of Starbucks and the like, that was slowly changing, drinking coffee was still somewhat of a right of passage in my family. Though I had a cup or two as a teenager, there was one instance that stands out in my mind when I first felt like a peer – adult to adult – with my Dad. His grandmother, my great grandmother, had just passed away in Tulsa, OK. I was 19 and in Bible college, in Springfield, MO. Since my family lived in Fayetteville, NC at the time, only Dad made it out for the funeral. I was there also, since it was only a 3 hour drive from my college town. After the funeral we were at the home of my also-now-deceased great grandfather. When our extended family began taking their usual potshots at each other and making snide remarks, he suggested we get out of there. We sat at a Denny’s for over 3 hours drinking coffee like two men and talking about life, Bible college, girls, etc. Finally he told me, “I’m proud of you, slicky boy. You’re a real man.” He always has had a way of speaking life into me.
Ordination: Getting ordained as a pastor is a big deal, especially for a 24 year old. My folks were supposedly unavailable to come to my ordination service and since they lived several hours away, I just accepted it. Yet halfway through the service, he and mom came walking in. My Dad preached at my ordination. That whole thing about how he has a way of speaking life into me… yeah, this was a big deal. He and Mom couldn’t stay long. In fact, they had to leave after the service to head back home that night. But the fact that he had made it, and spoke God’s blessings prophetically over my life, and family, and ministry was nothing short of inspiring to me.

To have the blessing of your father on your life so profoundly has been empowering to me. I know he has an acute sense of his shortcomings, as all fathers undoubtedly do. But I’ve always hoped to be at least half the father to my kids that he was to me. Thanks, Dad, for a great example you’ve set. You were always my model of what a real man should be. Happy Father’s Day!

Love,

Slicky Boy

Hiding from God

Posted on November 2, 2010 by johnmarkum

My oldest child, Emilee, is cut from the same cloth as her father. She is rambunctious, energetic, playful… and dramatic. She got in trouble the other day, and when I called her to come to me she knew it was not to congratulate her on a job well done. Instead of going to her father, she chose to run to her closet and hide behind a row of hung up clothes. Needless to say, I was less than enthused about her decision. I went to her room, pulled her from the closet and dealt with her disobedience. As I stood her in front of me and talked to her, I told her that no matter what she’s done, no matter how bad it’s gotten, or how much she thinks she has disappointed me, she can always come to her daddy. That I love her so much that she can always come to me. Her infraction was minor. But it was compounded when she ran from me and chose to hide.

Obviously, I found my four year old’s behavior childish and a little on the amusing side. But sometimes I do the same exact thing to my Heavenly Father. I know I’ve blown it, or maybe neglected to do what I know He wants me to do. Instead of running to my Father – the One who can forgive me, remove the guilt, and empower me to change – I run to the closet, tuck behind a row of clothes, and hide from God… or so I think. The amusing thing about my daughter, is that I know exactly where she’s at; her hiding is useless. And so are my efforts to pretend God doesn’t see me acting like my four year old. Instead of crying out to Him, I stop praying, and I get into a spiritual funk of going through the motions. Nothing changes when I run from God. In fact, the stress gets compounded. Things always gets worse the longer I run from Him and avoid dealing with the heart issue.

Maybe you’ve been running from God for awhile. Maybe even so long that you don’t even think that He would want you back. But would you believe today that He loves you so much that no matter what you’ve done, no matter how bad it’s gotten, how much you’ve been hurt, how much you think you’ve disappointed God, you can always come running to your Father? Romans 8 says it best…

³¹ What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? ³² Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? ³³ Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. ³⁴ Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. ³⁵ Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?³⁷ No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.³⁸ And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. ³⁹ No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

John