Bill and Debra Mockabee- Parenting

Hi, this is Bernie Dake. Welcome to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. Welcome back to Words of Life. I'm Bernie Dake. And I'm Cheryl Gillum.

We are so glad that you're here. A few weeks ago, you heard an interview on parenting with Steve and Connie Long. In this episode, we're sharing another interview from that series with Bill and Debra Maccabee, newly retired Bill and Debra Maccabee.

That's right. They were leaders here in the state of Georgia for the Salvation Army, and they have now ridden off into the sunset, so to speak. And we wish you well, Bill and Debra. If you are enjoying this look back at previous episodes, we give God the glory and pray that you'll join us next week on Words of Life. God bless you. Hi, I'm Lieutenant Colonel Vern Jewett of the Salvation Army. I would like to invite you to meet us on the Holiness Podcast, which is a podcast each month where we do an in-depth Bible study on the subject of biblical holiness. Please come and join us wherever you get your podcast. That's the Holiness Podcast.

God bless you. Our first one was born, and if you drop the pacifier, you're going to boil it, sterilize it, and if he grunts, you run into the room. Second one comes, you drop the pacifier, you rinse it off.

The third one comes, you drop it, and you just wipe it off on your shirt and shove it back in. Yeah, he's there. Didn't kill him. He's all right. I'm Bill Maccabee. I'm currently the divisional commander for the Salvation Army in the great state of Georgia.

I'm Debra Maccabee, and I'm the divisional director of women's ministries and officer development for the Georgia division. Bill and I have been married. It will be how many years? Forty-three years.

Forty-three years in June. Indeed. I checked that before we sat down. Good boy. And we have three boys. We have William, and we have Matthew, who resides with the King of Kings now, and we have Jeremy, who lives here in Georgia. Those are our boys. And they're all three Salvation Army officers, which is interesting to us because we didn't raise them to be Salvationists. I think we kind of agreed on that pretty early when we started. We wanted them to be men of God.

If that was in the Salvation Army, great. But it's interesting that all three of them ended up – they're not following our footsteps. They're making their own footsteps, and that was pretty important to us.

But it was interesting to watch that. Our youngest son was a pilot for Delta Airlines and left a very nice career. I was a little bit bummed out about that, proud. But, I mean, we got some flight perks with all that kind of stuff, so it was kind of disappointing.

But all three boys have done very, very well. We didn't push becoming soldiers in the Army. We never pushed for that. They knew when it was time, if they wanted to, that was great, and we would help them go towards that goal. But we really never sat and talked to them about the Salvation Army. The important topic was, you have to be a man of God. There was a lot of expectations put on them because of who we were, so there were a lot of people expecting them to do things, and we had to tell them. It was part of our family narrative that you've got to do what you do, and we will love you and support you.

I mean, that goes without saying. Whether it's part of faith, I think, as a child, if they went off the straight and narrow, so to speak, we would love them unconditionally, no matter what, period, into paragraph, into story. And we tried to assure them of that, and I think as a result of that, they made their own decision, and they will say to people when they see them now, I think it's a sense of pride for them.

You're following in your parents' footsteps. And now it's, yeah, really I am, they'll say, but they know in their heart that they've made their own footsteps. And it's been great to see that all three had these such different personalities. I mean, it's just incredible that they came from the same family because they're so different. But it's been wonderful to see how their uniqueness fits into their choice to be a Salvation Army officer. Discipline was different for all three. You know, I could say to one, I'm not proud of you, and that was just devastating.

One would be a lecture, one you could put in the room, and they would just create all kinds of things. Funny story, we would take things away from them. You can't play baseball. We'd take their glove. We would take everything away. And our middle son, Matt, who is in heaven right now, was an unbelievable story about him and who he was and the man he turned out to be. I remember one particular time, we'd taken away everything he had, everything. There was nothing left to take away from him, and he was looking at us like, what are you going to do now? So we decided in the scripture, the year of Jubilee, where everything was forgiven, so we decided and tried to make it scriptural to him. We're going to return everything.

It's the year of Jubilee. It's scriptural. We gave him everything back only so we could start taking it away again. So that didn't have that big of an impact on him. He really was.

He was a strong-willed child. If I could go back and do it over again, I would do things different. I think we did pretty well.

I mean, there's no manual that comes with parenting. You learn a lot in being people of faith. There is a lot that is given to us by the Holy Spirit who guides and helps and directs. And I think when we look back at it, we've done pretty well. To talk to adult children now, all three of them are adults. They have their own children, which is fun to watch. But they're starting to say the things we used to say. They're starting to talk about how important that was. Our conversations with adult children who have their own teenage children has been quite rewarding and affirming that we did some things right. Now, looking back at it, being an old guy and watching them now, I think one of the things that I learned, and I think that I would say to parents of children now, is that they really did listen. I didn't think they were listening to anything.

But now, it's such a warm feeling. And Debra and I, when we visit them, you hear them saying some of the same things that we said to them. You hear some of the principles of family. TV's off during dinner. There's no TV. No phones. I mean, that was our thing.

You don't wear a hat in the house. All of these rules and things that we did as a family unit, you're starting to see those things now. So I think my post-children in my house learning is they did, did listen. And the investment in them kind of comes back in other generations.

You know the scripture that says, Train up a child in the way that they should go when their elderly won't depart from it. Now, I want to tell you, it hasn't been the better roses for us with our children. We have gone through some incredibly deep waters. One child, our son Matt, he wasn't born. He exploded into the world. I mean, this kid, this kid came out looking for squirrel. I mean, he was something else. And he had trouble through school behaving. He had attention ADHD, attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity. He couldn't concentrate. His IQ was off the chart. He just couldn't concentrate. And he practiced stand-up comedy in the classroom.

He got bored and he really did. So he became not a candidate for high school graduation. And that was devastating to us as a family because the education was important. That was quite difficult on us and the other two boys to watch him go through that. And the boys went through it as well because there was some disruption to our family. So everything wasn't rosy.

Everything wasn't wonderful. It all makes sense in hindsight. Faith is absurd unless you're looking in the retrospect. Faith does not make sense right now. And if a parent is listening to this and going through what we went through, I think my encouragement to anybody that might be listening to us right now is that you might be going through a very difficult valley.

You might be going through a terrible problem with children and behavior and expectations. But we're witnesses. We're testimonies. And the boys right now is a testimony to the fact that they do hear and they do listen and they come back. Well, and the important lesson I think in all of that was during all of that valley, Matt in particular knew we don't like what you're doing and how you're acting, but we love you no matter what.

And I think if we're their respite, if we're their safe place, if we are their unconditional love home, then that will come back in the end to be a salvation piece. The great ending to Matt's story is that he was saved. He accepted Christ. And he went as far the other way as he did. I mean, he was an extreme kind of a guy. He was an evangelist. He became an evangelist. He had a heart for people.

He did not have any breaks. When it came to helping people, he would work 24-7. He would give away money out of his pocket. And he went to heaven. He was working in Hurricane Katrina. And he had been there for a couple of weeks and was exhausted and done all that work. He went home for three days and he was redeployed back to Texas where the heat was just, if you remember, was just awful. And he worked 24-7.

Even when he should have been taking time off, he found a group of people. So he worked so hard to help people, he became exhausted and dehydrated and had a brain aneurysm. And he went to heaven with his boots on.

It sounds like a really sad story, but I want to tell you, when I go to heaven, I hope I got my boots on because I'm afraid I'm going to be sitting doing a radio talk show or sitting behind my big shot desk. But Matt is a real hero to me. He led a lot of people to Christ. A lot of people came to Christ as a result of him. So, parent, if you're going through that, I mean, the story of Matt, we can tell you all the negative things and how it embarrassed us and all the problems. But, my Lord, there are many people today that rise up and call Matt.

Mike would be blessed. When I die and if my boys speak at my funeral and if you were to ask them now, they would say there are three things Dad taught us. Now, it wasn't in these words.

These words come later. But we jokingly say now, as always, say yes, ma'am, to Mama. That's everything about respect, about respecting people.

And it's not just Mom. It's people that you come in contact with when they were young, your elders, respect your elders. That was important. Respect people in authority over you. As they become leaders now, to respect people who are around them, respecting other people, respecting different opinions and different views is incredibly important.

So that was the first thing is always say yes, ma'am, to Mama. The second thing is never let a third strike go by. Now, they were all three baseball players. And if anything close, if the ball is close to the plate, you go down swinging is fine. We will celebrate you go down swinging.

But if you just watch it go by and if you blame the umpire, that was bad in our family. So never let a third strike go by. If you go down, go down swinging. And the third one was life's too short to spend it with ugly people, which has nothing to do with facial beauty, but to look for the beauty inside of people. Look for the beauty of integrity inside of people and for their relationships with other people. Just don't spend your time hanging around with negative influences. I think they'll say that at my funeral.

They certainly said it to me while I'm alive. And don't wear your hat at the time. And don't. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support.

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