Dear Madeline,
It was only a year ago that Mom and Josie and I anxiously awaited your arrival. Mom was very pregnant with you as we all celebrated Fathers Day together. It was a special day, and I so wished that you had already made your arrival, but that was not to be for another 3 weeks.
I foolishly thought I was starting to get the hang of fatherhood; after all, Josie had already put us through the mill with some early health scares, with not sleeping through the night, with all the drama that can come with 12 hour car rides. Ha! All that was kids stuff compared to the last 13 months.
Perhaps I'd become adept at the mechanics of fatherhood - ceding control of the television, reading the same book over and over until it could be recited by memory, getting home from work in time to have dinner as a family, changing diapers, taking over bath-time duties from time to time, and handling the ever-protracted bedtime rituals - but I still had (and have) a long way to go in mastering the virtues of fatherhood. Immersion learning began the day you were born.
That's not to say that fatherhood has been a challenge because you have been challenging. Far from it. Rather, I've found it challenging because life has been challenging for us, and I was woefully unprepared for all that would come. Every day has brought an abject lesson in temperance, love, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Some of the lessons have been easy, some not. Some have been hard learned, if at all.
In all of this, you have been my best and my most formidable teacher. For all you've suffered in your young life, you have incredibly risen above all to show indescribable strength and resilience. Few have witnessed such unparalleled grace.
So now that we've marked Fathers Day this year, I turn to you and to God in thanks. Life truly is good, and with you in it even better. What will you teach me today?
Love,
Daddy
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