Kate came to bed the other night after snuggling our “littles": Leo, Jordan and Ella to sleep and said "You will never believe what your son just told me tonight." "Oh yea...Try me” I said. "Your five year old son announced, 'Mom, did you know we are Stankavages and we can do anything we put our mind to?'"
"Yes, Leo, we are" Kate replied.
Leo continued, "Well you know we can do some things that other people can’t. Did you know that mom?"
Kate replied "That’s true, we are Stankavages and we can do hard things.”
Kate said to me, I wonder where those thoughts came from? I just kind of chuckled into my pillow.
Over the past 27 years, since my first daughter Sarah was born, I have been preaching to each and every one of my children "You can do anything you put your mind to." And then I add "You are a Stankavage." I have never publicly admitted that kind of brainwashing that I administered to my children, but since I am older now, I figure what the heck. I think it worked to a degree. Sarah, Shelby and Shawn are mature and successful adults who have in fact accomplished a lot in their young lives.
I wasn’t trying to make them elitist, or thinking that they were better than anybody else per se, but I wanted them to have a rock solid, self- assured confidence in themselves; that they had what it takes, whatever it might take, to meet challenge and adversity head on and to pursue dreams of their heart, no matter what other people thought or told them or advised them.
People would say I was always very confident as a young man and as an athlete. In fact, some of you reading this are probably laughing right now, thinking “confident” would have been a significant understatement to describe my personality growing up. Looking back, I think the general perception was true. But I also realize that my persona in my younger years was a self-construct of confidence created for my own protection, validation and affirmation.
You see, I was never the biggest or strongest or fastest, at least never past 3rd grade when Wendy Henning and Lisa Carr beat me in the 20 yard dash in our elementary school field day. I was devastated. But instead of shrinking back, I created a pose of self -confidence that bordered on being offensive. And the reason I did that was because everybody always told me what I couldn’t do. I hated that. I was the only one who told me what I COULD DO. And so I had to tell them too. Make sense? It did to me.
So, when I became a parent, I swore that I never wanted my children to have to develop that kind of self -construct on their own. I wanted them to know that as an authority figure in their life, their father, I believe in them. I wanted them to believe deeply that they have what it takes, whatever they needed, just because I said they did and because they were a Stankavage. Whether it was true or not didn’t matter. If they thought they could, then that was more than half the battle.
I am so proud of the women my daughters have become, accomplished high school athletes, one an all American swimmer and the other captain of the high school basketball team. I had the privilege of coaching them all through junior high school and I could see their “Stankavage” qualities shine. But they weren’t arrogant. Their confidence was genuine and from deep inside, not outside-in, the kind I felt I had to develop to thrive.
And as I look back on my fathering and coaching and being coached, it all makes sense to me now philosophically and even spiritually. Jesus told us the same thing. Of course He didn’t say "you are a Stankavage" but He said something way more important and powerful and true. He said “you are mine. I have been given all authority on earth and in heaven, and I give it to you. ‘
Wow. What if we believed that in life. that would certainly give us confidence to face anything in life, from challenge, to disappointment and even tragedy. Truth is it’s a major part of how I deal with this leukemia. As a man or woman, to know who you are, and whose you are and who said you are. That’s what I was introducing my children to at the earliest of age. And then, as they understood the smaller concept, they could apply and understand the eternal concept from the Lord himself.
My heart wasn’t developed that way growing up. I wish it had been. But I am happy to have loved my children into an eternal confidence and recognition of who they are to me, to the Lord and in this world.
Amen and AMEN.