SOMETHING ABOUT COWBOYING UP WITH CATTLE AND HORSE HERDS.

WHICH ARE YOU ?
(Our Fellow Resources, Blogs and such)

Some of our best, certainly wildest, memories with our boys have been on cattle drives.  See the photo and smile.  Romantic, but not easy.  Reminds us of what God must see in His own herd from his Ranch House in the Sky.

First, you have to round ‘em up from crags and canyons all over the range.  A cow with calf here, a steer there, before long most of the herd is gathered in sweet fellowship.

Then the drive, the long, long drive, like the road to Heaven.  Like God, the cowboy never can let up, strays trying to make it out of the drive way heading to nowhere in particular and nowhere good.  Just escaping.  With yippi’s and yahoo’s and some fearsome hollering, like straying believers, they’re back in the herd.  Never, like the lost lambs, do doggies and strays get left behind.  They’re always chased down, brought back.  We are chasing strays the whole drive long. Somehow, they, too, never quite learn.

Now, HORSE HERDING, there’s something different.  Hardly, no work at all by comparison to cattle.  You see, like good fathers and Christ-followers in leadership, all you do is saddle up your own horse and head out.  Herd follows.  They’re hungry and not getting fed ‘til they make it in to the corral. We know where we’re heading, they’re not sure.  But we dads and grand dads, too, follow our leader.  We’ve galloped these trails before.

OK, maybe the analogy is a little weak trying to tie us all together in the herd. We follow our lead, Christ the Lord.  Different breeds, variety of colors and natural strengths.  But one thing is consistent of all herds, we stay together, stay connected.  Sometimes we get bunched up, now and then we stop to graze, then off again for the corral.

THE HERD
(Our Fellow Resources)

We run together following the Leader.  Heading to the Great Corral in The Sky,  Different breeds, colors, paces, and our fillies and colts follow.  Not hard to get the picture, right dad, grand dad?

SITES, BLOGS AND DISCUSSION GROUPS

Parenting, fathering, Walking with God are all huge topics.  Lots of material out there.  Matt and Gary have sampled these blogs and Web sites deeply enough to know they share our convictions. They can be further resources in your ride.

Wild Gray Goose
Gary’s personal blog.  Stories and thoughts from a cowboy grandfather, co-fathering and riding with Matt

Ransomed Heart Ministries
John Eldredge and the Wild at Heart gang.  Best men’s site going.  This opens to Gary’s Generational Fathering group discussion.  Move from there to other groups.  Women and general groups, too.  Recommend joining.

LegacyDad
Two guys with some Christ-following allies, including Gary.  Deals with parenting, families, fathering, life issues with focus more around men and family.  Practical insights.  Strong, provoking, encouraging stuff.

National Center for Fathering
A long-standing original. Weekly articles to subscribers.  Focused advice in many categories for dad with special programs available to encourage healthy fathering, including divorced, step, adoptive dads.

Focus on the Family Everybody’s best friend in Christian family matters.  Wide variety of departments to consult with.  Look through the menu.  Plan an hour for just you first exciting visit  Online subscription can be helpful.

Fatherville
Fascinating Christian fathering site with full menu of options, articles, and bulletin board with discussion groups and dialog; a small cadre of professionals.  Membership.

Men’s Fraternity
This is the fraternity of men reading and practicing the quietly famous book over ten years, Making of a Modern Day Knight.  It started as a manhood journey but includes manhood parenting.

Stillwatrs Life Coaching
Extraordinary insights and guidance in understanding family relationship dynamics through the personality matrix.  Matt, the pro therapist, Gary, the amateur, use the Enneagram as their standard for client and family personality mapping, and we'll incorporate it in to the book.   Marilyn developed a guide for Christians.  She's available for seminars.  We've used her:  Outstanding!

Christian Parenting A closed blog by a team of Christian writers with a long list of short articles or lists helpful in good fathering.    Parent site to Christian Fathers Very full and resourceful site.  Nicely organized comment and issue section.

Grandparents.com
Huge organization, thousands of grandparents, mostly grandmothers in 50 or so groups.  Helpful parenting tips (things to do with grand kids, kids jokes, parenting ideas, useful  to dads, too). Useful grandparent perspectives. Gary is a contributor trying to smack Grandpas in to more involvement in grandparenting.