Father's Day 365/128

Compilation Sunday: (that special time of week when picture and prose become as one)

The beaming eyes. The wide, toothy grins. These were the faces of my children that met me when I came home from painting on Tuesday afternoon. They’d been busy beavers at work, prepping for Father’s Day, and they were quite eager to show me some of the fruits of their labor. I walked into the garage and was met with the sight of my beloved wife’s handwriting in bright yellow letters on the back windshield of the White Shadow (our family van): “Daddy is Special” (the reflection of which you can see in today’s Compilation Sunday photo.) It touched me, if not so much for the sight of it, but for the joy and excitement that the girls had in me seeing it. Plus, with it being only Tuesday, I had the added benefit of driving around all week with my fellow motorists seeing the paternal proclamation in bright sunshiny letters. Carla later informed me that she ran a little inference for me in the creative scheming of the girls for Father’s Day. She didn’t think that I’d quite enjoy a handprint covered t-shirt in a whole rainbow of colors. She was right about that one.

With all this happening early in the week leading up to Father’s Day, it’s allowed me ample time to contemplate fatherhood in all its joys and sorrows, especially while mindlessly slopping paint around during the day. My thoughts are not all that revolutionary or profound, but I’ll share them nonetheless.

To be a father is to live life in the extreme. This does not mean that life as a father is a never-ending roller coaster, but it does mean that the extreme ends of the spectrum are the times that impact a father’s heart the most profoundly. As a father, there’s nothing quite that compares to the joy and delight of my kids when they are doing well. The other day my daughter Avery came up to me unsolicited and said, “Daddy, you are so amazing” and then she just kept on saying it. Talk about plucking the heartstrings like a fine harpist. I was touched. Joy kept spilling into my heart even though it seemed like the blood pumper should have been overflowing. It was the type of moment that made me smile, but more than that, made me simply feel the palpable sense of delight in my kids.

On the other hand, when kids make poor choices and hit or say mean things or are selfish, as a father, it hurts. There’s a stomach-sinking raw feeling of numbness and sorrow that I feel when my kids indulge the sinful nature. To be a father is to know that my job is to train these little kids in righteousness, and when they don’t act all that righteously, simply it hurts, every single time they act out, whether it’s a name they call their sisters or a me-first attitude they own at the breakfast table.

To be a father is to know these extremes, to live in them daily and to keep walking the road of training these children in the way they should grow up. It makes me fully appreciate anew my own father for I know that I spent time on both sides of the see-saw as a child, and through it all, through all the ups and downs, no matter the disappointment that he must have felt when the choices I made were not the wisest, I never ever felt that he didn’t love me with the whole of his 6’3” frame.

Thanks, Dad, for showing me the way, for living life on the edge, and for the foundation of faithfulness that I’m now trying to pass on to my children.