He Won Every Battle and Lost His Daughter

I did not fully grasp that I was a father until I saw my daughter face to face. She had been born during the night, and I was getting ready to go back to the hospital the next morning. That is when it finally hit me that I was a father. I was going to be “the dad.” On the one hand, I thought that was fun. Fathers and mothers have a significant impact on someone’s life, and now it was my responsibility to play that role for my child. On the other hand, I knew that the parents make all the rules and the kids have to follow those rules. So, finally, I had someone else I could boss around, and they would just do whatever I told them to do.

Later that same day, it dawned on me that I was not the boss. My daughter would tell me when it was time to change her diaper, feed her, burp her. For the sake of honesty, and for my wife’s sanity, I need to say that I needed to learn a lot before I would do all of those things. I was not super-dad. Much of the actual work fell to my wife at that early stage of our family’s life.

As my children grew, I did get to work with my wife to set boundaries and rules for our household. It is a funny thing, really. All of that is not done so that the parents can live a blissful life. On the contrary, the regulations are there to help the children develop in a healthy way. So, once again, the parents are not the boss of their kids. Instead, they are the service and support crew. When things are working the way they should, parents are there to help and support and, ultimately, love their children.

One of the saddest things I have had to watch in my life was a coworker get this wrong. So wrong. He came to work for years sharing story after story about how he put his foot down and forced his adolescent child to comply with his every demand. If what he reported was true, he won every battle in his home. That kid had no say in the music, no say in when they could come and go from the house, no say in the clothes they could wear. No choices.

I realize that talking about parenting can feel like playing on the freeway while blindfolded. I do not want to give the impression that parents should not correct their children’s wayward behavior. I am not making any “this is how you do parenting” statements. I am talking about the idea underneath the parenting. Good parents are servant leaders, and they make their decisions based on love. It is not loving, for example, to be downright promiscuous. Children need guardrails.

So, back to my undefeated coworker. Eventually his child grew up and moved out and away. Very far away, in fact. To another continent. Later, sadly, his wife died of cancer. His daughter showed up for her mother’s funeral and told her father she would never see him again. My coworker won every battle but lost the war.

In Mark chapter 10, in the story of James and John asking for the seats at Jesus’ right and left, Jesus is answering a power play. They want to be at the top of the organization, just under him. They say, “Grant that we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.” In context, they want to be number two and number three in command, still permitting Jesus to be number one.

Jesus answers with a teaching about what authority actually looks like. First he points out the nature of the leadership people already know: rulers lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority felt. People living under that kind of ruler serve the king, and not the other way around.

Then he tells his disciples that they will not do this. It is a hard word for James and John. Jesus says that greatness comes when you are the servant. The greatest is the servant of all. He points out that he, as a servant, will give everything, his whole life, as a ransom.

Around the year 2000 I was promoted to a managerial role in a large corporation. The company provided training, and I learned about this strange, new, cutting-edge method for management called servant leadership. The first time someone coined the term “servant leader” was in 1970. Robert Greenleaf wrote an essay titled “The Servant as a Leader.” It took a long time before the idea gained enough steam to be commonly discussed in corporate America. By the year 2000, some companies had experimented with it and shared their findings. Researchers concluded that there might actually be something to this idea. The irony is hard to miss. By the time I started that managerial training, studies showed that companies with more servant leaders had better overall results: better productivity, less toxicity, lower turnover, and much happier employees. Jesus had already said it.

There are people who want nothing to do with servant leadership. It could be the parent who wants to control a child’s every move. It could be the employee who longs for the day when they are the boss and what they say goes. It could be the manager who does not listen, and instead demands obedience. If that is you, you are fighting a way of leading that Jesus endorses in this Gospel. It is not loving to treat other people that way. And it is not going to end well.

I feel very fortunate that I received the help I needed to change my attitude about parenting. If I had held my course, my life would be in the tank right now, no question. My coworker gave me a close-up view of that destination, and it is not pretty. It can feel like a terrible loss to be a servant to others. When it is done properly, it can be an amazing win. It is strange that it works like that. Jesus came to show us the way. Our lives are better when we follow his example. The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

If you are still trying to win the house — music, clothes, curfew, tone — keep the guardrail the child actually needs. Let go of the need to be undefeated. Total victory is how a child learns that leaving is the only way to have a life.

This is a pastoral reflection, not clinical care and not a substitute for it. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 988 or local emergency services.

Drawn from a homily first preached in 2021.