I am a member of the Kolbe Prison Ministries and had scheduled to visit our brothers in prison on Saturday, August 14, 2021. I committed to it in July.

As our children prepared to resume school in Fall for the new school year, we also started receiving their calendar of activities. The first parent empowerment forum for John’s school was also scheduled for the same day as my prison visit. I was in a dilemma, but thank God for His grace that gave me the answer. I went plain to John.

Me: “Son, please, I don’t want you to feel that I’m going around doing all the “superhero” things for others but neglecting my job as your father.”

He looked surprised.

Me: “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to attend the parent empowerment meeting at your school this Saturday.”

John: “Why?”

Me: “I scheduled to visit the prison this Saturday. I volunteered for it before we received the notice for the parent meeting. See, because of the COVID situation, only two people from our team are allowed at a time to visit. The guys look forward to our visits and the talks we have with them. To some of them, we are the only people who visit them and are like the only family they have now. So they get crushed if we disappoint them by breaking our promise to visit. I signed up for this visit long before we received the notice of this parent empowerment forum.”

John: “Oh.”

Me: “Yeah, fortunately, Mom is available to attend and give me an update.”

John: “It’s ok, dad, I understand.”

Me: “Thank you for understanding.”

Then a brief moment of silence ensued, and just before we parted, I said:

“Son, commitment is hard but very rewarding.”

He nodded gently.

As Deacon Bill (my teammate) and I drove to the prison unit, I told him my conversation with John. He agreed that it was indeed a powerful example of commitment. As always, our Brothers in White (that’s how we refer to the inmates) were delighted with our visit, during which Deacon Bill shared my conversation with John. One of them said to thank John for sharing me with them and asked me to tell him to do what he is supposed to do to stay away from prison.

Upon our return, I told John how we and our Brothers in White were blessed by our visit. Then, I gave him his message from the brother who sent me. He just kept twinkling.

John: “I’m glad that you went.”

Me: “Thank you for understanding. I am too. You made it easy for me to redeem my words. If we do what we promise to do, then we become trustworthy, and that’s how our characters will be defined.”

I believe that virtues, in this case, commitment, are better learned from mentors when they demonstrate more than talk about it. Applying our virtues in real-time makes it practicable for our mentees (in this case, my son, John) to adopt.

I don’t remember my father sitting me down to say, “today, I am going to teach you about trustworthiness, decency, goodness, dignity, nobility, integrity, etc.” However, I learned several wisdom nuggets through his behavior, exposure to his substance, and the stories that he shared with me.

Another example of impactful teaching was during a program; in which I took French as an elective course. Our professor did not dedicate a lesson to teaching us numbers in French. I think it would have been boring. He was intentional about his teaching style. Our professor taught us our numbers in French as we flipped through the pages of our textbook as we read it. It was practical, fun without stress, and we looked forward to learning. The impact of his teaching style lasts on!

So fellow parents, let us commit to modeling the virtues we want our children to learn more than lecturing them about it.

When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said.

Numbers 30:2.

• 8/14/21