A Boy and his Two Fathers by VONOVICH

The story below was written by VONOVICH.  It's his first one and we're testing it out on you guys...let us know what you think. Be brutally honest and inexplicably clear, but mostly ENJOY.  

Love & Water ~Sondria!

A boy and his father had a special relationship. The father would teach the boy how he should conduct himself. The lessons the boy learned from his father were how to respect women, authorities and elders, how to be obedient, loyal and honest, and how to be tough. The boy paid close attention and appreciated the instruction.  Aside from these life lessons the boy and his father would also spend time playing games together. During this time together, the boy was at his happiest.

            Time passed and the boy started growing up, and like when everyone grows up, he started to notice things he wouldn’t normally have noticed. It became evident that things were different with his father. They would still play games but in the midst of playing his father would get hostile and walk out. Eventually his father wasn’t around to play with him as much and his videogames kept disappearing. The father’s mood would weigh very heavily on the boy and when he would come in the room; the boy would cringe from his very presence.  Their once-special relationship began to fade.

            Fast-forward a few years. The boy is in his teens now, and his father’s mood swings have worsened. The father has been pawning the boy’s games and is now frequently asking to borrow the boy’s lunch money. He would never see the money again. Things began getting worse in the boy’s household; tension was in the air constantly.  The distance that developed between the boy and his father was making the father suspicious. He accused the boy of not telling the truth, of stealing and of doing drugs.

The boy, not knowing where to place his anger, would turn it on himself. Since he was taught to respect, honor, and obey his parents he couldn’t get angry with his father, so he would keep quiet and bottle up his emotions. When no one was watching the boy would fade into the background to be himself and have his fun. The minute he felt his father around he would stop playing. The boy thought maybe he was doing something wrong, something that was annoying his father but he just didn’t know what. Then something happened that would change the boy and his father forever.

The boy and his family go to church one Sunday morning as they did from time to time, but the boy never could have predicted what happened after church. That day the boy’s mother got in the car to drive the family home. This was unusual because his father would normally do all the driving. The boy’s mother pulls up to her sister-in-law’s house, and the boy immediately thought that they were in for a special dinner. The boy’s mom pulls over and shuts off the car. She then turned to his father and told him to get out.

The boy’s father turns to the boy’s mother.

“Get out? What are you talking about?” he said.

Then the boy’s mother looks the father in his eyes.

 “Get out, you’re not coming home with us.”

His father says, “I’m not getting out; I’m going home with you.”

His mother then turns to the boy and his sister and tells them to go into the house to call the police.  After the boy and his sister called the police, they returned to the front yard of their Aunt’s house where they could see and hear what would happen next.

The screams of the boy’s father and the calm voice of his mother resonated with him. He heard his mother say, “I know you’ve been cheating,” the boy’s father is silenced.

Just then the boy’s Aunt came out of the house; to the boy’s surprise, she takes the side of her sister-in-law. 

“Get out the car; you should be ashamed of yourself for what you did to this woman and those kids.”  

They argued for a while. The boy’s father still refused to get out of the car, and as usual, the police were taking forever to get there.  The boy’s aunt went back into the house to call them again.

The boy, while all this commotion was going on had a moment of stillness, where everything slowed down and got quiet. He looked at the situation and thought of how to handle it. On the side of the boy was his sister who to him was always strong and tough, but when he looked into her eyes and saw her tears he thought to himself enough was enough.  He immediately began to look around for whatever he could use to kill his father. Yes, kill his father. Could you imagine at the age of fifteen, after all the time spent playing games and hanging out, that it would come down to this? Imagine the pain, anger and confusion going through the boy’s mind and heart. To think you would have to kill one of the people involved in your creation. In this ongoing stillness, the boy heard a voice.

This voice that the boy heard next was not like that of the boy’s father, but it was a Fathering voice. It said, “Pray.”  Pray, the boy thought, at a time like this? Since the voice was so deep it permeated the boy’s entire being, he listened.  At that moment he began to say “Jesus”.

Still filled with anger and confusion this was the only word he could muster up to say. The boy said it again, Jesus, and again, Jesus. Then the boy’s sister joined in, Jesus. The two, together getting louder every second, finally feel strong enough to the leave the front lawn and walk over to the car all the while saying, Jesus. They reach the car and put their hands on the outside as if they were to push it, and now their shout of Jesus became words of prayer. Praying for a resolution to their current predicament, praying for the strength of their mother, praying for their father to calm down and exit the car.

In church they teach how to P. U. S. H.: to Pray Until Something Happens or to pray without ceasing, so that is what they did. They closed their eyes and prayed and when they open them, there was just a shadow in the distance shaped like their father walking away. The arguing and fighting had ended and the trouble was over. An hour and a half had passed and the police had never showed up, so the boy and his now family of three began their long trip home. The boy’s thoughts jumbled up over what just happened and of what was to come.  One clear thought echoed: James 5:16 “The effectual fervent prayer of the righteous avails much.”

The boy discussed how things were going to be now, and how things were going to change with his family, and he began to get comfortable with the idea that his father wouldn’t be around anymore. He predicted that happier times would shortly be on the way. One family event later, when everyone is enjoying each other’s company and everything was falling into place, the boy gets an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach. From the stare his sister gave him, he could tell she felt it too. For the first time they realized why there was tension in the house all those years. It was a certain spirit upon their father, and at that moment they felt it again. They get a knock at the door.

When the door opened, on the other side was a skinnier version of their father trying to come in. “No you can’t come in,” one of his sisters told him. After a brief conversation with his sister the boy’s father quickly left. The boy was very puzzled on how his father was so skinny, and then the boy’s mother had explained that he had been on drugs. Drugs, after giving the boy a hard time, and accusing him of doing drugs, and being respectful of women it turns out he was nothing but a hypocrite.

        Some people wonder why the suicide rate is up so high for teenagers. They think just because they don’t have bills to pay that they don’t have any “real problems” to think about it. All of teenagers’ problems are related to their emotions. The definition of a problem is any question or matter involving doubt, uncertainty, or difficulty. What does that sound like? A problem is mental and emotional more than anything else. Adults should know how hard it is for a child, to control their emotions since they’re still in the “growing up” phase of their lives. Imagine being overwhelmed with doubt or uncertainty about everything, imagine everything you knew to be true as a child turned out to be nothing but lies that adults justify by saying they were trying to protect your feelings. Not to mention all the adults you try to talk to either ignoring you, or telling you that you don’t have any real problems. Well if it wasn’t for this Fathering voice, thisreal Father that the boy always had but had never known, he might have been one to add to the numbers of suicide.

        Out of the boy that once was, became a young man. Eighteen, his responsibilities arrived right on time and everything seemed as it should have been. The young man sees his father at church; he looks horrible. His father wasn’t the two hundred sixty-pound-man that he was used to seeing; he stood before a frail, one hundred thirty-five pound sack of skin and bones. The young man tries to be cordial, “Hey . . . dad.” It was hard to say, for the man standing in front of him was almost unrecognizable. The young man, in spite of the time he spent with his other Father, was still very pissed off at his father. 

The young man's father would keep trying to reconnect with his son every chance he got, but the young man could no longer think of the good times. Now all the young man saw was a stranger trying to act like nothing ever happened. To pretend that there wasn't almost a ten-year period of time when the two were actually happy together. Grinding his teeth, the young man still manages to get through the talks with this stranger. All the while trying not to let him know how much he hated him. Even though the young man felt this stranger deserved every bit of hate he had, for some reason he still could not disrespect him—the beginning of his other Father trying to soften his heart. 

The young man would begin spending more time with his other Father, who would comfort him and show him how he should conduct himself. The journey the young man’s other Father would take him on, and the things he would learn were very similar to the lessons “the boy’s father” would give. The young man’s other Father would often speak in a divinatory way that would have to be deciphered, and the young man would first have to reach a certain point in his life before more would be revealed.

The young man realized that more then just learning “how to respect women, authorities and elders, how to be obedient, loyal and honest, and how to be tough,” he should learn how to love. The young man’s other Father would tell him, that if he didn’t love, then he did not know his other Father because his other Father is love. Some time after the young man’s other Father said that, the young man would look up what love really meant. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails.” The young man thought Okay, who do you want me to love? The young man’s other Father said everyone. The young man’s other Father said love your sister, your mother, your aunts, your uncles, your grandparents, your cousins, and your father? The young man said I can love my sister my mother my aunts and uncles, my grandparents and my cousins no problem. The young man’s other Father said what about your father? The young man said I don’t know, if you really want me to love him then you are going to have to do some serious convincing.

The young man’s other Father began teaching him about honoring his mother and father. He would teach him that honoring your father and mother, doesn’t mean to do the wrong things that your parents might have you do, but the right ones. Honor means to revere, prize, and value. To do that meant to remember everything the young man’s father had taught him, and not follow his example. The young man grasped that though his father wasn’t a good example of what he should be, what he taught was. The young man’s other Father taught him that he should forgive, and how he should love everyone.

The young man felt like he had an obligation to try to forgive and to love this stranger again. This was going to take some time because first he would have to regain some respect for this stranger, then he would have to be able to look at him and not see the past mistakes. The young man hadn't forgiven him and may never love him the same way, but he no longer wanted to kill him.

The stranger eventually went through rehab for his problems and the young man would often give words of encouragement. After a while the young man saw improvement in the stranger. He saw that the stranger began to resemble his father again. He had put some of his weight back on and had been clean for a year. The young man’s father started to attend church more often, giving him and the young man time to talk. Though it had been some time since that Sunday morning, the young man could still not shake the thoughts of it every time they would speak. The young man would listen to every word; watch every movement to see if his father really had changed.

As the young man watched his father, he began to notice that some of the characteristics that his father had were a lot like his. Though the young man would never make the same mistakes his father made, he started to understand them a little better. He realized that it came down to the choices they made that decided the different outcomes, and he tried to figure out why they would make opposed choices even though they were so comparable. It hit him, the teachings; the discipline, life experiences and the guidance from his other Father. The morals that were instilled in the little boy and reinforced in the young man were pivotal to why he couldn’t make the same choices as his father. 

Now the young man took the fathering role and would check on him and ask how he was doing, just to make sure he didn't slip back into old habits. From what the young man could tell his father had been doing pretty well and the young man was even proud of his improvement. No longer a teenager the young man in his twenties has let go of some of the anger and brought back some love in its place.

Though things could never be the same and the young man wouldn't want it to be, he felt that the teachings from his other Father had helped him drastically. Without the young man's other Father he doesn't think he would’ve even gotten to this point and for that he thanks his other Father. The young man is thinking about his future, his future son, and how he is going to raise him; he must strive to be a better example then what he had. One thing is for sure the young man won’t soon forget the life lessons he learned from HIS TWO FATHERS.