God bless you.
Today, Father's Day, is set aside to honor me and all the other fathers of
the world.
I'm proud and thankful to be a father. I'm even prouder and more thankful to
be a husband.
I owe both of these blessing to two sources: God and my wife Joyce. I love
my Lord and I love my wife dearly and shall forever do so.
As I continue to undergo God's healing in my battles with a brain tumor,
prostate cancer and end-stage congestive heart failure, my greatest earthly
sources of strength and support come from being both a good husband and a good
father.
Now, bear in mind that I was a husband to Joyce first before she made a
daddy out of me. And being old school, I still believe that that's the way things
should be. Couples should get married before they have children.
But I can't blame the women for this growing discrepancy. Most women
want to get married before they have children and want to stay married during and
after raising those children.
Unfortunately, we men increasingly have been messing things up.
Especially in my race. No woman on the face of the earth has done more
for her man and her children and gotten less reward, less respect and less
appreciation for it than the black woman. That's because too many of us black men
want to use our women as meal tickets, sex toys and punching bags.
It pains me Sunday after Sunday and church service after church service
to stand behind the lectern in the pulpit and preach to a congregation that is 80
percent women, who are 90 percent single mothers.
Don't get me wrong, now. I'm not saying that we black men have a monopoly
on mistreating women because in every race there are low-down men who
mistreat women. There are still cultures that deny women basic human rights and
treat them as third-class citizens and even slaves, which is an abomination.
But I believe there is more personal mistreatment of women in my race
than anywhere else because we have more single mothers running our
households, we have more women being violently abused and we have deadbeat
dads in obscene abundance.
Happy Father's Day?
Yes, but only because of loving, dedicated, hard-working mothers.
Obviously, there'd be no fathers in a motherless world. But there is an
increasing population of mothers whose babies' daddies don't want to be
husbands. They want to play the field. They want every woman they meet to
be a virgin when they are nothing near the same. It's a shame. It's a shame. It's a
low-down dirty shame. Too many men want to pimp, skimp and limp their way
through life.
A good father is a husband first. A good father loves his wife and children. A
good father works hard to support them. A good father is right there with the mother
raising those kids together in bad times and good times. A good father stands his watch
when baby is sick or needs feeding or needs a diaper change. A good father disciplines
his children and loves and respects their mother in full view of them. A good father prays
with his children and takes them to church. A good father lives his life in a way that makes
his children proud and happy to call him "daddy." A good father will sacrifice even his
life for the safety and welfare of his family. A good father never quits being a good
father.
I thank God that I'm blessed. My wife Joyce and I have been married now 41
years on the 30th of this month. We started out as high school sweethearts at
Sumner High School in Kansas City, Kan. We courted for seven years before we
got married. During our four years of engagement, we had a joint savings
and checking account in preparation for marriage.
Few couples even court anymore. Driven by lust, greed, immaturity and
irresponsibility, too many young people rush into bed with one another and rush
even faster into a marriage doomed from the start because they really didn't love
each other and because they lacked the faith, discipline and hard work to make
a marriage work.
I am so thankful to Joyce for putting up with me for so long. She has been,
I really believe, a much better wife than I have been a husband. She has never
lied to me, has always loved and been true to me, has done whatever she could
to make me happy, has supported me in everything worthwhile I've ever
endeavored to do and has made me the primary focus of her life behind our
savior Jesus Christ.
Can I say the same about me? No, sisters and brothers, I can't. I have not
been a perfect husband. Yes, me, Rev. Lacy J. Banks, a baptist preacher for
56 years, I have not been a perfect husband to her as she has been a perfect
wife to me.
But I have been a perfect father. I love my three daughters Nicole Cherice-
Roxann Chapman, Noelle Victoria-Renee Banks and Natasha Sarah-Lorraine
Banks with all my heart. I am also thankful to Joyce for her effort to bear me twin
sons before she miscarried and they died of premature birth. One was still-born
and the other lived a day and died. We both still cry occasionally, especially Joyce,
over the memory of losing them and the agony of wondering what might have
been.
I have given my daughters a Christian upbringing. I have always been there
for them when they needed help. I have sheltered them from premature adulthood.
I made a good education a top priority for them and my wife and I fulfilled our
dreams of making sure each got a college degree before either marrying or getting
pregnant. My daughters have disappointed me many times. But my wife has
seldom disappointed me. Quite frankly, I believe she deserves somebody better.
So I am immensely grateful that she is doing me a favor to continue being my
pride and joy and letting me be her husband.
To all you mothers of the world, I wish and pray you joy and happiness with
your children, grandchildren and great grand-children. But I also wish and pray
for you to have a loving, faithful, hard-working (or at least willing-to-work or
seeking-to-work) husband be your side to cherish and support you as I cherish
and support my wife.
I am blessed to have a wonderful Christian, hard-working, faithful and loving
son-in-law in Larry Chapman. He and Nicole have been married for 15 years
now (thank you Jesus) and are the proud loving parents of two girls and two
boys, whom they are raising diligently in the Christian doctrine.
I wish Noelle and Natasha will be equally blessed to know the marital
bliss that their mother and I have enjoyed for 41 years. But although the pickings
are slim, the Lord is able. So I will not lose hope. But I also thank God that they
realize it is better to be alone and happy, than married and miserable.
God bless you.
Dear Rev. Banks,
What a wonderful Father's Day tribute! It is so YOU, honest and loving and unashamedly revealing, something we (male and female)don't spend enough time being in our lives. As always I am encouraged by your being an "open book". I know that you are having a wonderful Father's Day.
My Father's Day testimony - Before marrying my husband I was a single mother, the child of a divorced, single mother, also a child of a divorced, single mother. I'm so grateful to God that He placed men in my son's life that filled in the gap - my uncle, my son's god father, various coaches, and my husband who took many, many fatherless male children under their wings and did their best to model appropriate Godly, manly behavior. With them, much prayer and certainly most important, the intervention of the ultimate Father, God Himself, my son is now a husband and a father. There's not enough time to write about the experience of watching my son with his son. I'll just say that God did something I wasn't exactly expecting back then as a single mom - He proved that He indeed can break generational curses and bring families back in line with His guidelines for His people. Although, as you know, my husband is severely disabled and critically ill, he's already received several cards and text messages from our children(step, adopted, blended, and god)wishing him a Happy Father's Day. I expect calls a little later. He may not think he did very much for our children while he was healthy, but their acknowledgements on this day say otherwise. I share that to tell birth fathers, step fathers, adopted fathers, and just encouraging a child fathers that everything you do to demonstrate love and concern matters to a child. And to their mothers.
God bless you, Rev. Banks and your wonderful family. You are all a great inspiration. You remain in our prayers for continued healing and we can't wait for the next installment of the miracles God is working in your lives!
BANKS' RESPONSE: Thank you, Marie, for your magnificent magnificat on
how our heavenly Father used you to break of the generational curse of delinquent
fatherhood in your family. I thank God and celebrate you for your gratitude to your
husband and the other surrogates who chipped in to help shape your son into the
wonderful father he has become. Yes, by the grace of God and through prayer,
faith and due diligence, a good thing can come out of Nazareth. It thrilled me to
read you describe the joy you get from watching your son father his son. What a
touching tableau to a rejoicing mother. And then you bless me with rhetorical roses.
I am greatly encouraged by your kind compliments. I pray that I can inspire other
fathers, too, to be better fathers. It is never an instant perfection. It remains for all
us fathers a work in progress, this fine art of fatherhood. And we can't do it by
ourselves, either. We need help from heaven. We need help from Our Father, which
art in heaven. Thank you again, Marie, for being a marvelous mother, the true
progenitor of fathers beyond Adam.
Dear Lacy -
This is one of your finest entries. Congratulations on your wedding anniversary, and may God bless you and your missus with many more.
When I was five years and five months old, my father passed away. Forty-nine years later, I think of him more than I ever have. My mother took the reins in the family and did everything she could to raise her three boys as well as possible. But, I'll say this to anyone who thinks that a child doesn't need a dad: Even with the wonderful job Mom did, I have always and will always feel that void left by my father's passing. A child needs both parents. When my daughters were born, I was involved totally. Even through a divorce, the girls always had access to both their parents. And, today, my wonderful younger daughter took me to dinner and gave me two perfect presents and a magnificent card. My devotion to my children is doubled because my father couldn't make that same choice.
What a wonderful day to stress the importance of fathers in the lives of children! We are two lucky fellows to have children who love us. Happy Father's Day, Lacy, and many more to come.
BANKS' RESPONSE: And a most happy, happy Father's Day to you, too, the
Powers that be. We are a supreme fraternity: us dedicated, loving fathers. You
always respond on time and in time, John, with a psychic synergy that blows my
mind. Yes, my mind just seems to mesh with yours. We think pretty much alike.
We feel and visualize and sensualize likewise. I feel some great cosmic kinship
with you and a precious few of our other most faithful and consistent blog
respondents. As Sister Sledge used to sing, "We are family." The Lord be praised!
On this Father's Day, I'd also like to give a shout out to our heavenly Father for
making us and for predestining that our paths would one day cross, whilst we
journey, glued by gravity to this spinning ball of mud, revolving around the sun and
zooming through the universe to divine destinations indescribable. On behalf of us
all, I want to wish our great Lord God Jehovah a Happy Father's Day. I know that
we often disappoint Him and bring shame to the kingdom with man's inhumanity
to man and with the way we savage our land, sea and air with greed-driven
pollution and destruction. But our Father remains full of grace and mercy and He
just keeps on blessing you and me.
BANKS' ADDED RESPONSE TO JOHN POWERS: I applaud you and other
fathers for not letting divorce from your wives divorce you from your children. It's
unfortunate when husbands and wives fall out of love with each other and can't live
peacefully and lovingly with each other anymore.
It's even worse when their children get caught in the crossfire of such violent
conflicts and are also forced to pay for something that is not their fault. We
grownups can choose our wives and husbands, but our children can't do that at
birth. By the grace of God, we produce our children and bring them into the world
and it's our responsibility to take care of them. And I agree that a child needs a
mother and a father to raise it properly but only when those parents don't try to
poison the children, use them as weapons of marital war and make their lives worse
instead of better. I was blessed to be raised both by my mother and father for the
first 11 years of my life before my mother died of blood poisoning from poor medical
treatment in his bearing her last baby. She ended up dying with that dead baby
within her decomposing and poisoning her weakened body to death. It was an awful
sight for an 11-year-old to see: his frail, 42-year-old mother lying in a hospital bed
with her womb grotesquely swollen with lethal infection. But in her limited lifetime,
she was as dear to her children as a mother could be. She raised us while our
preaching father spent much of his time on the road pastoring four churches at a
time and running revivals to keep food on our table, clothes on our backs and a roof
over our heads. She'd whip our behinds whenever we got out of line. And when
daddy came back home, we could expect any even longer, harder whipping from
him when he found out we had been bad. I commend you for not letting divorce
stand in the way of you being the best father you could be. And then came your
reward from your daughters on Father's Day. What a day, my friend. God bless you
all.
Good morning, I trust you had a wonderful Father's Day. I just bet if we asked your daughters, they'd say everyday is Father's Day! Mothers are very important in any child's life, but Fathers are really just as much. My father was not the type to tell you "I love you" or kiss you on the forehead, or any of the "mushie" stuff, but he showed his love by his discipline, his support, his sacrifice, his desire for our education, his respect and love for our mother. In fact, the first we ever heard him speak "baby talk" was to his great-grand child. We were shocked! My brother and I often speak of him and always laugh at the time, just before a whipping, he told him "you may disrespect your mother, but you will not disrespect my wife." It was not funny at the time. My son, like many did not have the benefit of a loving father as a result of divorce, but he had the benefit of a loving grandfather(also his pastor) and godfather and is the loving father to four beautiful children. You don't have to tell me how great our GOD is! I've been rambling...this is your blog...you all are still in my prayers.
BANKS' RESPONSE: Gwen!!! How could you ever accuse yourself of
rambling to me when every single word you write to an e-mailed comment to this
blog is a magnificent work of gold. And since you can never write enough for me,
then you certainly can never write too much. I agree that there are so many other
ways, even more genuine ways, of showing love than by words. Actions always
speak louder. Words of love are often used to deceive and to set up someone for
abuse. At the same time, people can do good works for for the same reasons. But
at the end of the day, I'd settle more for acts of love than words of love. Words
can influence visions and elicit hunger. But acts can realize things and satisfy
hunger. Thank God that you had a good father. And I just assume that the
grand child that got the first sweet talk you ever heard from him belonged to
none other than sweet Gwen Murphy. Now, I dare you to tell me I'm lying.
Oh my gosh - that was so very powerful. I was brought to tears and I am willing to bet that you are a much better husband than you are giving yourself credit for. I am lucky to have a wonderful husband who is an incredible father to our four children, and I was reminded of him while reading your statement. I don't tell him enough, but I will tell him this evening, that he is a wonderful man and a terrific father. I am very, very lucky, and I thank you for helping me realize it.
BANKS' RESPONSE: That's right, Christine, go 'head on and bless your
husband with a deserved compliment. We good husbands and fathers don't really
get enough of that. Not that it matters that much because we are not who we are
and we don't do what we do for praise. All that we are and have and do is because
God's blessing us accordingly. And let me applaud you for being the good, caring
and sharing wife and mother that you obviously are. We husbands don't praise our
wives enough, too. And when our marriages get to the points where they are a
lasting thing enriched by the birth and raising of children, we are very, very indeed
most blessed. Praise the Lord!!! And most of all, praise and thank God for love.
Any man or woman who finds true love that is shared on a 50-50 basis should
drop down on his or her knees and thank and praise the Lord.