The greatest lesson I learned from my alcoholic father

As I was celebrating Father's Day with my family this past weekend, I was thinking about the power of fatherhood, especially in a nation struggling with power and needing healing. No disrespect to motherhood of course: My 99-year-old mom could still take me down! Nevertheless, fighting to be the best father you can be at any age is a certain constituent to our recipe for success on many levels. It doesn't matter the age of your children, because as long as you and they are alive, you'll always be dad and have this power.

It is often said that the most powerful position in the world is the U.S. president. But I believe it hits much closer to home than the White House, and is a role, quite frankly, that I'm much more eager to fill. It's the power of being dad. And it's something that can help us on every stratum of society, including the present protests for equality.

Calvin Coolidge, America's 30th president, once confessed: "I suppose I am the most powerful man in the world, but great power doesn't mean much except great limitations."

Similarly, Thomas Jefferson declared, "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be."

Their point is that power wasn't granted by God to be wielded like a sword, but to be used to empower and better others through wise decisions and actions.

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We equate power with dominance, rule and self-glorification. That is unfortunate. I believe when God created us in his image, he gave us the authority and autonomy to rule the earth not one another. Power was given to serve not enslave. As I've taught a myriad of martial arts students, the greatest form of power is still restraint and harnessing that potential to help others.

When we don't properly recognize and utilize the power God has granted us, we naturally abuse it. An example of this can be found in my now deceased but once alcoholic father.

Dad was generally a good man when he was sober, but sobriety was not his area of expertise or even practice. When he was drunk, the littlest things sent him into a rage. Even if he heard the water running while suffering from a hangover, he would explode in an abusive tirade, roaring threats and expletives against everyone in the house. The devil might be in the details, but he's also in the bottle – I've seen his spirit at work.

Growing up, my most difficult and confusing relationship was with my father. My father abandoned his role as a servant-leader, model and mentor, dodging his duties and authority by drinking himself into a constant stupor. As a result, he failed to reflect a shadow of the Almighty's image to his children, something I believe is the highest calling of every father.

He failed to see that what gives fathers a unique power is that they bear the same title and reflection of our loving and compassionate Heavenly Father. Fathers were designed to show their children what God is like. In that sense fathers are children's first Sunday school. That is likely why George Herbert said, "One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters."

Like many of you, I learned more from what my father did not do than what he did do. I learned how to manage power from how he abused it. He wasn't far from a society of fathers who go AWOL. I don't have to remind most of you of the statistics, but let me share for those who might not know.

It's interesting to note the comparative stats in which children are being raised in single parent families in various races: 15% Asian and Pacific Islander, 24% White, 41% Hispanic or Latino, 53% American Indian, and 65% African American.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's "America's families and living arrangements":

The percentage of White children under 18 who live with both parents almost doubles that of Black children, according to the data. While 74.3 percent of all White children below the age of 18 live with both parents, only 38.7 percent of African-American minors can say the same.

Instead, more than one-third of all Black children in the United States under the age of 18 live with unmarried mothers – compared to 6.5 percent of White children. The figures reflect a general trend: During the 1960-2016 period, the percentage of children living with only their mother nearly tripled from 8 to 23 percent and the percentage of children living with only their father increased from 1 to 4 percent.

Social scientists have long espoused the benefits for children who live in two-parent homes, including economic, educational, health and other advantages.

Now, I'm certainly not getting down on single parents who are fighting to pick up the slack of an absent parent. You have a big burden to bear, and I pray God helps you. When my father abandoned our family, my mother was a single parent who raised us three boys.

I'm not preaching from a soapbox here. I've lived out my own fatherhood failures, too. I carried on certain family curses that would later haunt me and for which I needed to ask forgiveness from God and my family. But aren't you glad failures aren't fatal, even those in our families?

If you are reading this, there's always hope for a better day. Relationships can be mended. Marriages can be saved. Kids hearts can change, and the keys can be both parents, but I'm emphasizing fathers' power in particular here. We can be agents of change and improvement. If I can, so can you.

Fathers, it's time to move beyond the guilt and mistakes of the past and press on to being the men God has created us to be. Though I too have been far from a perfect father, I refuse to allow my mistakes to hinder me from being a better one in the future, and I encourage you to do the same. It's time for us to reenlist rather than retire from fatherhood.

We all need the passion of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who declared, "By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder – infinitely prouder – to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battlefield but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, 'Our Father who art in Heaven.'"

Thomas Jefferson clearly revealed that when he wrote to his daughter Mary the year before his presidency, "My attachments to the world, and whatever it can offer, are daily wearing off; but you are one of the links which hold to my existence, and can only break off with that."

Eight years later, at the end of his presidency, his familial passion had not diminished a drop when he shared with renowned explorer William Clark: "By a law of our nature, we cannot be happy without the endearing connections of a family."

Great leaders have always understood this servant-leader relationship and power principle, including Jesus, who demonstrated the original intent for our autonomy. He said, "Whoever wants to be first must be your servant – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." And so we should do the same.

Speaking of the Messiah, our pastor shared Sunday during his sermon something I never knew: The very last verse in the Old Testament predicted another blessing that the future Messiah would do for the world. Four hundred years before Christ, it was the last thing written in the Hebrew Bible as if to anticipate a future conclusion to the story and remedy that would help us more today than even people of that time.

It's not a coincidence that Malachi 4:6 speaks to one of the greatest needs of our time and greatest ways that God wants to help each of us: "He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers."