I was relishing in the cooler temperatures of the day, 90’s instead of 100+. I have learned this summer that “cooler temperatures are all relative when you have days of extreme heat. Nonetheless, the car air conditioner was not on “full blast” and I was feeling blessed. I had an errand to run in a small, rural Texas town. I didn’t mind the journey as I drove past cattle and horse ranches with the wide open horizons.

In the middle of no where was a billboard with a thirty something man holding a baby. The sign read, “real men love babies.” Because I was driving I was unable to read the fine print and wondered why such a billboard would be there if the driver couldn’t read the sign in its entirety. But then! It dawned on me! They wanted the drivers to ponder and reflect, just as I was now doing.

What is a real man versus any other man? What is a real woman for that matter? Don’t most men and women love babies? Being out there in cowboy country was it some kind of message to the cowboys? I just didn’t know, but what I did know was that only yesterday I had traveled this very same pathway when a group of us Moms in Prayer joined our hearts, love and prayers for one of our members that is terminally ill. 

And then while traveling on this same roadway, I had been discussing with my travel buddy about women that choose not only to not love their children, but to discard them, either physically and/or emotionally.  We hadn’t seen that billboard for I know that too would have been part of our discussion.

I’ve spoken previously of “trigger points” and this billboard was certainly one of those moments. I recalled my first baby. I couldn’t have been more elated. I had dreamed of being a mother since I was a young girl. I was delighted with this beautiful new life and desired other family to be as joyful as I.  My father-in-law was happier as a grandfather than I believe I had ever seen him.

Yet, as I pondered the billboard, I reflected on my own father. Was he a real man? He didn’t want to hold my newborn daughter or even see her. At age 48, he said he was too young to be a grandparent. He and I were both the same age when we became parents, so he wasn’t too young. He had nothing to do with me, so this transference of no love was passed onto my children.

Now, I was deeply engrossed in the message of the billboard. According to the dictionary, real means, “actually existing; not imagined or supposed.” Okay, my father and other “indifferent” men toward their children or perhaps their wives were “real.” Yet, they just didn’t care. We know the world equates “real” with genuine; authentic.

Whatever the message of the billboard, I want to be a person that is “real” for the Lord. I want the bold type and fine print of my life to be understood. I Peter 1:7 NIV “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith-of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”