Father's Day

As we celebrate Father's Day, I, of course think about the relationship with my father and my future relationship with my son.

Some of you may know that my father divorced my mother and left us when I was 13 years old. This has left a lasting impact on my life, of course. Self-esteem issues, problems with relationships, etc. My father has missed some big moments in my life. It has taken a lot of time, thought, meditation and prayer to open myself back up to him, but I have.

We have discussed the past and he has apologized. I have listened and I understand his situation he was in and the fact that God has worked on his heart and has done some mighty things in his life. I am no longer mad at him.  Our relationship is much better but we still have work to do. It also helps that he stepped up at the time I needed him the most.

In December of 2015, my mother passed. It was fairly sudden and no one in my family was really ready for it. However, while my family support system came together and we all held each other up, the most important person there was my dad. He absorbed all the hurt between he and my mother, whatever everyone thought of him and the splintered past and he showed up. I'll never forget him embracing me outside of the church and telling me he understood (my paternal grandmother passed 10 years earlier). That meant more to me than he will ever know.

I have a 2 year old son and my dad has been as good of a grandfather he can be from where he is (he lives 8 hours away).  I try to be a good father. I've thought about my relationship with my son and my father's relationship with me.  If him leaving had a silver lining, I guess I would say it is that I now have a rock solid resolve for my son to have his father at every turn. I know the joy of having my father at football practice cheering me on. At home cracking jokes and doing what it takes to make me laugh. I also know the pain of my father not being at my high school graduation. Not being there when I've had my heartbroken.

So, this Father's Day, I encourage fathers everywhere to do their best. Your child is watching you. Oh, and keep pushing...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Change Your Atmosphere

Do you ever think about your environment?  Your "atmosphere"? I recently began thinking about my environment. My work environment. My home environment. What I surround myself with. The only way that you can be successful at anything is to immerse yourself in it. Get in it's atmosphere. LeBron James did not pick up a basketball the first time and dunk. (For the LeBron haters, Stephen Curry probably didn't hit the first three he shot. Happy?) Jay-Z's first rhyme probably sucked. Warren Buffet has lost plenty of money on investments. So on an so forth. They knew they wanted to be masters of their craft so they immersed themselves in their fields. Atmosphere is not only surrounding yourself with the craft but also with people within the craft. I believe one of the ways to alter your atmosphere and enhance your environment is the mentor - mentee relationship.  We have all been both at some time in our life. You can learn a lot being taught by someone ahead of you
Read more

First Post

I created this blog about 3 months ago. It has taken me that long to post my first entry because of fear. Fear of how it will be received.  Fear of how I will be perceived. Fear of sounding pretentious or like I have it all together because Lord knows I don't. Writing is therapeutic to me. I discovered the healing power of writing after a hard break-up. Actually, calling it a "break-up" is not really accurate.  It was really a stagnant loser watching his girlfriend grow and flourish and resenting it. I really don't know how she did not leave me earlier. It was 2006 and . I have a steady (I was 26 years old. No real job, no money, no prospects and no real motivation to change. She was 22, in college and focusing on her music, trying to make something of herself and have rich, fulfilling life experiences. Shortly after we ended our relationship, I was given a temporary job. My mother knew the manager and I got the hook up. It was a paper pushing job basically and I
Read more

Movement or Revolution?

"Hence the name: movement. It moves a certain distance, then it stops, you see? A revolution gets its name by always coming back around in your face." -William Stranix played by Tommy Lee Jones in "Under Siege" The Black Lives Matter movement is just that. A movement. We march, we cry, we go on TV, we make t-shirts or posters, we make social media posts. What comes of it? Nothing. We seemingly remain silent until another injustice happens and then we are back to hash tag a victim's name. Hash tags indicate trends. Trends only last until another trend replaces it. It's a vicious cycle... So, where is the problem? Is it the system? Is it that every time we start to get rolling people either take a small percentage of agitators who wrongly attack police and fly them in front of the media screaming, "SEE! THE BLACK LIVES MATTER IS A HATE GROUP! THEY HATE WHITE PEOPLE AND POLICE!" or they point at black on black crime statistics and say, "
Read more