Module 7 · Strength and Tenderness · Lesson 1 of 2
What you were taught strong means
Strong meant not flinching. That definition is costing your child something you cannot see.
Module 7 of 12
By the end of this lesson
- Name the definition of strong you were handed and the man who handed it to you
- Name one thing that definition is costing your child right now
- Say one true thing out loud you would normally keep in
Do not cry. Do not need. Do not explain yourself. Handle it. Be the one who does not react.
It was taught by demonstration, mostly, and often by men who were themselves surviving something. It was not malicious. It was inherited, same as everything else in this course.
And it works in a specific environment: one where showing anything gets you exploited. Plenty of men learned it exactly where it was true.
But you brought it home, and at home it means your child has never seen you feel anything, and they are drawing conclusions from that every day.
A child cannot read your interior. They only have the outside, and from the outside a man who shows nothing looks like a man who feels nothing.
So they conclude, without ever being told, that whatever is happening in them is not something that happens to men. That they are the weak one. That the way they feel things is a defect.
A son learns to bury it. A daughter learns that men are unreachable and stops trying, or looks for it elsewhere from somebody who offers it cheaply.
You were trying to protect them from your struggle. You taught them they were alone in theirs.
It takes more, not less. Anybody can go hard. Going soft on purpose, in front of people, while remaining in command of yourself, is the harder skill by a distance.
Look at how Jesus handled it. He wept in public at a grave He was about to open, so the crying was not despair, it was presence. He made a whip and cleared a temple. He was tender with a woman everybody else had a stone ready for.
That is one man with a full range, choosing which the moment required. That is the model, and it is nothing like the one you were handed.
A man who can only be hard is not strong. He is limited, and everybody around him has to work around the limitation.
Start with the words, because they are the smallest thing and they change the room fastest.
I love you. I am proud of you. I was wrong. I am sorry. That scared me. I missed you.
They will feel foreign in your mouth, and you will hear how strange your own voice sounds saying them, and you will want to add a joke on the end. Do not add the joke.
Say it plainly and let it land. Your child has been waiting for those words in a way you probably cannot imagine, and every year they wait, they get better at pretending they do not need them.
Tenderness is not the opposite of strength.
The workEight questions
Three are answered in your head and never collected. They are marked, so you know before you start which is which.
Write the definition of strong you were handed. Where did it come from, and who demonstrated it?
When did you last let your child see you feel something?
What does your child probably believe about your inner life?
- AThat nothing gets to me
- BThat I am angry underneath
- CThat I am somewhere else, thinking about something
- DI have no idea, and that is the answer
Which words are hardest for you to say out loud? Write them, then write who you are saying them to this week.
Who said them to you?
When you feel something big, what happens?
- AI go quiet and handle it alone
- BIt comes out as anger, always
- CI get busy so I do not have to sit in it
- DI tell somebody, and it took me years to learn
Jesus wept in public and made a whip in the same life. Write what a full range would look like in you specifically.
Write the exact sentence you are saying to your child this week, and when. No joke on the end.
DeeperThree reflections
Longer than the questions and harder. Nobody reads these but you. Write them anyway, because the ones you would not say out loud are the ones doing the damage.
- 1
Write about the last time you cried, and what you did to make sure nobody saw.
- 2
Write what your child would say if asked whether their dad is happy. Then sit with the answer.
- 3
Write the thing you want to say to your child that you have never said, in full, here first.
Hold this
He got up from the table, took off his outer clothing, wrapped a towel around himself and washed the feet of men who were about to betray him. He did it knowing exactly who he was. Being secure is what made the towel possible.
John 13:3-5
Before you close this
You were given a definition of strong by men who were surviving something
It was not stupid. It fit the conditions they were in. Not flinching is a real skill when flinching gets you hurt.
The problem is that nobody updated it when the conditions changed, so you are running a definition built for a street on a four year old in a living room. He stood in front of Pilate and said nothing, and wept at a grave in front of everybody, in the same life, and never once had to choose between them.
Say one true thing out loud to your child that you would normally hold in. That you were tired, that you were wrong, that you missed them. One sentence. Do not explain it afterward.
Written for fathers who are still fighting.
Legacy · Module 7.1