When the Pastor Gives His Daughter Away

So, I am with a friend the other day and he says, “You start a lot of your posts with the word, ’so.’”  Hmm, didn’t notice that.

So, we as a family are at a wedding Friday night, Seth Latture and Rachel Stockdale.  They have just recently started coming to our church.  He plays keyboard for one of our worship bands.  The wedding was at New Life Church in Conway, great church BTW, where they had been going for years and where her dad is one of the pastors.

There I am with my wife and two daughters and I am watching this pastor/dad walk his daughter down the aisle.  (Jim Stockdale is a great man and pastor and has the privilege of being the dad to four girls.)  Before he gives her away, the officiating pastor gives him a mic and he gives a blessing to his daughter and future son-in-law.  He talks about what a blessing his daughter has been and how he has been praying for this day, that God would bring the right man.  He then looks at Seth and commends him for the man he is and how proud he is to give his daughter away to him. 

Then he did it.  He gave her away.  He sat down and watched his daughter marry this guy.  Then right before the pronouncement, he got up and prayed for them.  Wow.  I teared up then.  Tearing up now.  As a dad of daughters and a pastor myself, I found myself walking in Jim’s shoes.  I will walk in those shoes someday.

The question is what am I doing to prepare myself and my girls so that when that day comes,  I will be as encouraged and want to give a blessing the way he did? 

What do my girls see in the way that I love them and encourage them and value them that makes them have high expectations for a man?

What do they see in the way that I treat their mom that sets the expectations for what a husband should be?

How am I pointing them towards God so that they will learn to trust him and follow him and expect that their husband will do the same?

Do I pray?

Do I go and have lunch at their school on a regular basis and intimidate boys so that they will be scared of me, and consequently my girls, and we can delay this process for as long as we can?

Well, maybe we don’t need the last one.  Regardless, that day is coming.  I will walk my girls down the aisle.  I will give them away to somebody.  Who that somebody is depends on me.