The Sequel: Unsinning with Cigars

Here's a follow up from Unsinning with Cigars:

Last weekend, my family had dinner with our best friends. He grilled us dove, which was delicious (I don't know how Jesus kept from eating the dove that descended upon him). After we ate sweet helpless dark meat wrapped in...wait for it...bacon, my buddy and I retired to the back porch to smoke a pipe. I gave up the occasional cigar since my taste buds felt like I licked a chimney the next day. That and the chest hair growing due to my manliness was scaring little kids.

So now I smoke the occasional pipe. By occasional, I mean not often.

My buddy had never smoked a pipe and I wanted to corrupt him. Recovering legalists love good company. We were far from pros. He isn't the best person to smoke with since he is hilarious. Which would normally be a plus, unless you are smoking something that you don't inhale into your lungs.

My daughters would come back and forth to the window and watch. At times my five year old would almost cry while she watched and then at other times she would joke with me. She didn't quite know what to say.

Somewhere along her five short years, she picked up that smoking and drinking beer are things you do with Satan. We haven't taught her that, maybe it's in her DNA (she has a lot of SBC in her blood). She will see someone drinking a beer at a restaurant and she'll whisper and point, "They are drinking beer." Just the word seems to be a sin. Maybe offspring of a legalist have a greater chance of becoming one themselves.

Once we got home she told me, "Dad, if you're going to smoke, then you have to get a tattoo!" Don't worry, that's not coming. It's not that it's wrong. It's just tattoos don't look good on a pale, scrawny white man who favor a question mark.

I intentionally attempt to live out the gospel as best as I can in front of my children. I'm far from perfect. But one gift I want to give them is the gift of freedom that comes along with being obedient to Christ. So smoking an occasional pipe isn't something that I should hide from them. If I have to hide it, then I shouldn't be doing it. Christian, if there is something that you have to do in secret, then it's probably a sin or a heart issue.

But I did make a huge mistake. My timing was way off.

Two days later started Red Ribbon Week.

For the layman out there "Red Ribbon Week" is a week that schools encourage students not to smoke, drink, or do drugs (throw sex in there and the church would participate as well). For parents, you know it's a crazy week of extra special dress up days.

The week we get our students pumped up about not smoking is when I chose to smoke in front of my kids. I have a preschooler and a kindergartener in the school where I teach. All week I've gotten mini-lectures about my terrible habit:

"Did you know that you can get very sick from smoking?"
"You know you're going to have to sleep in a chair at night because the smoking causes you to cough so bad."
"Daddy, did you know that tobacco has 40 calories?"

When the topic of smoking came up, I'm certain that Chloe Cupcake's and Ellie Grace's hands go up and at a sonic boom breaking the sound barrier they inform everyone that Daddy smokes (and Uncle Les)!Nothing like having four and five year olds judging me. One threw a pickle at me and another told me my lungs were going to rot out.  

It's hard being a recovering legalist, but at least I don't have to hide it.

Do you ever hide things from others that aren't wrong?