Trena Eiden

A friend helped our grandsons, 7 and 9, make heavy wooden swords. As I walked by the boys’ bedroom, I heard Ryder say, “Stop Weston, we can’t hit so hard. You’re gonna chip my sword.”

Last summer we went to the STOL (Short Take OFF & Landing) competition. Ryan Melendez, in his late 20’s, won his section flying Goldie, his 1954 Super Cub. Ryan is a remarkable young man, who at 17-years-old was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. During the 3 years of chemotherapy, Ryan learned to fly, won 3 national championship titles showing Arabian horses, graduated from the University of Southern California, and raised $500,000 for pediatric cancer research under the organization he started, “Warrior Horses for Warrior Kids.” Now he’s started, “Warriors With Wings” to help children and adults realize that their dreams don’t have to end with a diagnosis. This precious young man earns a living flying for United/Southwest, and as intrigued as I am with him, I’m equally smitten with Ryan’s plane, Goldie. She’s 71-years-old and with her sparkly yellow and white paint, she looks like she just came off the showroom floor. As we examined her, I turned to Gar, “I should have been a plane, they don’t show their age, she doesn’t even have crow’s feet.” 

Sitting on the bleachers beside us was an adorable, 3-year-old, little, blonde girl. During an intermission, we heard her dad say, “Let’s go chat with the pilot.” Obviously, it was unclear to her what “pilot” meant because as she gazed to where her dad was pointing, all she saw was a plane. She looked up at her dad, scrunched her eyebrows and sounding puzzled, inquired, “Can it talk?”   

I realized while watching the Olympics that even though we’re told not to lie, sometimes we must. We know that those who love us the most will tell us the truth, but sometimes they shouldn’t. During the U.S. vs Canada hockey game, 24-year-old, Jack Hughes, got hit in the mouth by a Canadian player’s stick, causing significant dental trauma. The first person to Jack’s side was his 26-year-old brother, and teammate, Quinn, who knelt down to look inside Jack’s mouth. Quinn said his first thought was, “Uh-oh, that doesn’t look good.” But what he said was what kept Jack focused and back in the game to make the goal in overtime, to seal the gold for the United States. When looking at Jack’s facial injury, Quinn said, “It’s all good, man. It’s only chipped. You’re gonna be ok.” Dad’s, there will be multiple times you’ll witness your offspring’s discouragement, and you’ll wonder how it could ever turn out positive, but you’ll be the encourager, no matter how grim reality appears. That’s why good dads are great dads.

Charles Schultz was shy as a young person, and didn’t feel he could sit in an art school classroom with others for fear they’d all be better at drawing than him. Instead, Charles did correspondence courses. As a cartoonist, he never tried to solve problems, he simply pointed them out. The lesson and solution portrayed in Charlie Brown was to keep on trying and never give up. Charles Schultz said, “Charlie Brown never gives up, and if anybody should give up, he should.” To keep on trying is good advice for all of us, and dads, it’s really words of wisdom for you because those kids will only think you’re enchanting until about middle school, then they’ll wonder how they got the dumbest parents on the block. When they’re older they’ll say they were loved and knew you were proud of them and believed in them, but they’ll always have a niggling in the back of their mind that God could have done better. 

But dads, you have a few aces up your sleeve. Before church, I was chatting with our friend Tom, and we were talking about how kids ignore pleas from mother to do household chores, but will snap to attention when their dad says for them to do it. Tom said he thinks mothers nag at kids too much without cracking the whip. I wasn’t sure where that was headed until he said, “Marla went to the kids’ rooms this morning and begged them to get out of bed, with, ‘Come on now, I’ve asked and asked that you get ready for church.’” When they didn’t come down to breakfast, Tom yelled from the bottom of the stairs, “Get up! You wanna worship Jesus or meet him?” I laughed, “Did they get up?” Marla chuckled, “Heck ya, it was dad talking.”