What are you looking for?

When I was a junior in high school, a good friend of mine asked me to prom. I was elated. Yet as per our family’s policy, my dad asked to meet him for coffee and bagels. It was his “interview” of sorts before all my dates.

“How will I know which one he is?” Dad asked me.

I threw Dad a Look proprietary to teenaged girls, empresses, and some species of cats. “He’ll be the one looking like he may wet his pants at any moment.”

Secretly–and perhaps not commonly?–I liked that my dad had my back. (At least one sister used Dad to screen dates with whom they didn’t have the heart to say no.)

But this is what I like about my dad, in a time when his peers joked about polishing their shotguns before the homecoming dance. (One displayed a bat with the words “The Respect-Her” laser-cut into its side.)

My dad openly told me, “One of these dates someday will be my future son-in-law. I want a good relationship with him when that happens. And I want to disciple him either way.”

You Get One Chance

Rather than building a relationship after the fact, my dad would occasionally initiate coffee with them apart from me. It’s consistent with his signature full-throttle, bone-crushing bear-hug approach to life.

He knew he only got one chance to kick things off with mutual respect and a relationship where he could invest deeply.

My sisters’ and my dates were welcome around the table or for family game night or movie night, or to sink into the sofa for some conversation after bringing us home. (It has been said that Dad is one of those conversationalists who could sell ice to an Eskimo.)

I remember being a little shocked when I departed for a summer internship and my then-boyfriend (who would become my husband) decided to hang out with the fam for a couple of days after I left. (Highly suspicious.)

To this day, my dad has four commendable relationships with all his sons-in-law. On the day my now-husband asked Dad for my hand, he and my dad sat in a Books-a-Million and cried together.

You’re the one I’ve been praying for all this time, my dad said.

And even one of the guys who never married any of my sisters and I still keeps in touch with my dad.

My Turn

I tell you this because now it’s my own sons asking a girl to prom. Or just bringing them to church or scheduling dates on Saturday.

I’m the one telling myself, Someday my future daughter-in-law will walk through that door–and at first, I probably won’t know that’s who she is. 

Of course, my natural tendency is toward Hover-Mother, and I have teenaged sons highly gifted at casting brain-curdling Looks of their own. So I have to work at being a little cooler, a little more chill and nonchalant than I am. (Just like high school, I’m still the girl guilty of occasionally usually trying too hard.)

But I confess to serving up a couple of pancakes when a girlfriend stopped by to pick up my son for school. She’d occasionally bring a friend. I’d quietly ask if I could pray for their math exams or friend drama or anxiety before they left (#thatmom).

Your Kids’ Dates, and Friends, and the One Who Just Drank the Last of the Milk

But Dad: Thanks for the heads-up on how to invest in your kids’ dates.

Because God has a plan for and unique workmanship in every kid who wipes their feet on my battered welcome mat (…and those who don’t). Even if I’m just the mom in the middle, “The deepest meaning of Hospitality is this: to offer each other rest on the road to our eternal home,” as German priest Romano Guardini once said. To be Jesus handing out an egg sandwich or squeaking open the box of Settlers of Catan.

And there’s purpose in asking God how to participate in His work with every person or task with which we brush shoulders throughout any average Thursday.

Both for the people who will be of average importance in our lives, and those who will become much more.

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