Since yesterday was my dad’s birthday and Sunday will be Father’s Day, I have dads on the brain. I’ve been spending the last week thinking about appropriate gifts and ways to celebrate the dads around me.

But that also then turns my mind to my heavenly father.

I was blessed that I had/have a good dad. He is still very much involved in my life. Now, I don’t agree with him on everything and he would be the first to admit that he didn’t do everything right regarding his three daughters, but he did try. He tried to be a godly father and do what was best for us. He tells us often that he loves us and appreciates us. He makes sure that we know that God used us to bless him. Then, that knowledge comforts us and makes us feel blessed.

Some dads don’t do that. And that, in turn, makes it difficult for some people to figure out their relationship with God. How can they call their heavenly father Abba, Daddy, as Jesus says we are supposed to if the name itself brings pain or painful memories? How can they learn to talk to God as he desires without the experience of talking to a human father?

For people in this predicament, I would say beg God to teach them how to have that kind of relationship. He has successfully taught many followers over the millennia. In addition to the people with bad fathers, absent fathers, preoccupied fathers, and every other imaginable failure or shortcoming, he has taught those with no fathers.

If you think about it, God taught Adam, the very first man, how to be a father. No one had been a father before him. Maybe the reason Seth and Abel were good sons was because Adam actually tried to do what God said.

Later in Genesis, Joseph became a father to Pharoah. Now, he didn’t literally become the father of the king of Egypt, but he advised him and the king did whatever he said. (Genesis 45:8) If only we were that obedient to God!

There are so many references to God as father and what God expects of fathers that I limited my search to the Pentateuch and the Psalms.

In Exodus, God calls himself the “God of your fathers”. He is saying here that not only is he the God to Abraham and his descendants, then, now and forever, but that he was their example and guiding force as well.

In the same book, we have the first Passover. At Passover, the father was responsible for choosing the lamb. Read that and hear those words in your heart. It should give you chills. Because we know Passover was a foreshadowing of the cross. There, the Father chose the Lamb to shed his blood.

Parenthood is so important, that one of the commands is “Honor your father and your mother.” This command comes with promises of blessings if you obey it and severe punishments if you do not.

God grieves that the people he chose, who he wanted to nurture and grow, ignored him, his commands and his ways, or as it says in Deuteronomy 32:18 Of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful, And have forgotten the God who fathered you.

Many, many verses in Scripture talk about the care of the fatherless. God loves the fatherless and will do whatever he can to bless them. He said no crop was ever supposed to be fully harvested because enough had to be left so that the fatherless, the stranger and the widow would thrive in the land.

God also said later in the same book that anyone who did not take care of the fatherless was cursed.

Here are more verses about care for the fatherless.

Psalm 10: But You have seen, for You observe trouble and grief,
To repay it by Your hand.
The helpless commits himself to You;
You are the helper of the fatherless.
15 Break the arm of the wicked and the evil man;
Seek out his wickedness until You find none.

16 The Lord is King forever and ever;
The nations have perished out of His land.
17 Lord, You have heard the desire of the humble;
You will prepare their heart;
You will cause Your ear to hear,
18 To do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
That the man of the earth may oppress no more.

Psalm 27: Do not leave me nor forsake me,
O God of my salvation.
10 When my father and my mother forsake me,
Then the Lord will take care of me.

Psalm 68: A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows,
Is God in His holy habitation.
6 God sets the solitary in families;
He brings out those who are bound into prosperity;

If this Father’s Day makes you feel awkward either because of the fathers you have known or the lack of them, remember that God loves the fatherless and longs to take them into his arms while providing every need.

For me, this week is all about the edits. I have determined to thoroughly review what my amazing editor, Lisa, sent me and return it to her by Friday. Because that is the focus of my thoughts, I figured it should be the focus of my blog post too.

At this point, I’ve made pretty good headway. My discouragement from a couple of weeks ago has abated and I’m all about the business of refining what I wrote. I credit the people I asked to pray for me (who I’m sure must be) to make me receptive and willing to allow the changes.

But what, in my opinion, is editing? And what makes a good editee? (As opposed to editor.)

As a teacher and writing coach, I have acted as editor. Now, the goal of the editor is to make the writing better overall, make it fit an assignment or niche, and keep it standardized with other products by the publisher or school. It tows a fine line between promoting something as new and creative and making sure it fits into the scheme of things.

The goal of the editee? It should be to make the editor’s job easier.

When editing, I have realized multiple times that I am not perfect. Sometimes I have edited a section because I know intuitively it’s not right, but then my correction doesn’t do it either. Knowing that, I try to find what might have set off the warning bells in my editor’s brain even if I don’t agree with the way it was corrected. That intuition that something is not quite as it should be is one of the editor’s super skills!

When reviewing edits, try to agree. Try to say yes whenever possible. The editor put a lot of work in evaluating what you have written. Rather than get possessive, defensive and emotional about your words (all of which I have done on occasion to my shame and detriment) recognize their side of the craftsmanship of a piece of writing.

Think of the writer as a miner. He or she has to dig deep and pull out the words. It takes a lot of sweat and toil. Sometimes the vein of words is rich and the digging is easy. But other times, the walls have to be dynamited in order to reveal the next scene. But eventually, he or she has a rich handful of gems.

The editor is the jeweler. He or she is taking that handful of gems and putting them in settings that people will recognize and want to buy. The editor takes the words and polishes them up until they shine and glitter, then mounts them in gold or silver to show off the jewels’ facets.

Can an author edit his or her own work? Of course. To varying degrees of success. Some writers are better at distancing themselves from their creations than others. And sometimes it depends on the product. For instance, I can edit my nonfiction much better than my fiction. The why of that should be obvious. Fiction is where my heart is. Editing a story is like carving up my word baby. Those edits often feel like physical blows. Nonfiction is logical and deductive and follows a format. There, I can unleash my inner Spock. Who cares if I have to delete an entire paragraph? Got to meet that word count!

It is, perhaps, because the fiction has so much of me invested that it needs the editing all the more. It’s hard to see how many times you use “just” and “so” when I’m bleeding upon the page.

So (one of my overused words if you all haven’t seen that by now) this is my plea to be kind to your editor today. Be a grace-filled editee. Accept the comments in the spirit they were intended and realize, as a surgeon operates on a baby to save the child’s life, so an editor carves into word children to make them healthy and strong and able to thrive.

Thanks, Lisa!

Sometimes, it’s tough to keep the main thing, the main thing.

Because, after all, there’s life.

Life throws a lot of things at us. Much of it’s good. Some appears neutral. Other stuff is bad and needs to be avoided if possible.

Today, I’m not talking about the bad. I’ve done a fair amount of talking about that lately. I’m talking about the good stuff that may not be the best.

Case in point. I spent a fair amount of time last week playing a game. I probably wouldn’t have normally, but this one dangled a carrot. I’m bad about carrots. They get me more than I would like to admit. “Save this if you get this!” or “Just do this and earn X!” This carrot was the latter. All I had to do was download the game and get to level 350 in a week to earn $34. Cake.

I got to level 328. That means I get ten cents for my effort. Ten cents for all that wasted time.

Now, did I have fun with some of it? Sure. It’s a game after all. But did I play it too much hoping for that $34?

Yep.

The crazy thing is, in the scheme of our budget, $34 shouldn’t be that much of carrot. I save more than that with grocery coupons every week. But it seemed like a fun and easy way to earn a bit of cash.

And I also knew that they dangled the $34 because they wanted people to buy one of the game’s add-ons in hopes of making progress faster. It wasn’t out of the benevolence of their hearts.

 But I have my standards. I’ll watch ads to make progress (helping their bottom line at the same time) but I won’t buy anything for games or apps on my phone.

So they made their money on me. And I used too much time on their behalf.

We all need to relax and have down time. We can’t be productive 24-7. But sometimes I think the things I choose to occupy my days are not what God would want me to choose. Sometimes, I get this nagging still small voice saying, is that the best for you? Does it help feed your soul? Does it lead you closer to me or further away?

And, what’s crazy to this finite human mind of mine, sometimes the very same activity can answer yes to God one day and no to him the next.

Sometimes reading a book, for instance, is exactly what he wants me doing. I know it. I feel the words soothing something deep. And other times, reading, even by the same author or in the same series draws me away from God.

In my more productive moments, too, the same activity can be his best for me one day and an intrusion on another.

Tutoring, which I enjoy, can be bad for me when I accept too much of it on a day when I know God wants me writing or serving. Other days, I feel his heart sing when I help one of the students finally get something they’ve been struggling with.

Life, as this post’s title indicates, is a distraction. Moment by moment, choice by choice, I either lean into God or myself.

I find it terribly frustrating that I can’t just say, this is good about something and be done with it. If I could, though, I wouldn’t have to ask God. Which I think is the whole point.

I want things easy and predictable. I want a list of good behaviors to do and accomplish and a list of bad behaviors to avoid and confess when I don’t. I don’t want a bunch of good things that vary based on how God is molding me. I don’t want to have to lean into him quite that hard.

Because, after all, I can do some things myself. Right?

Wrong.

I know it. I’ve known it for most of my walk in this Christian life. I can do all things through him who gives me strength, but whatever I do without his involvement is filthy rags.

Life is Peter walking on the water. If we, like he, keep our eyes on our God, the distractions don’t pull us under. If we don’t…?

We spend hours hoping for $34.