Happy Father’s Day, Fathers!
Dads are great!
But…
NO! I’m not going there today!
Plenty of other people are going there.
I’m going to celebrate my Dad without adding the caveat, “he wasn’t perfect”.
Without my Dad, I wouldn’t be here.
Obviously.
And I wouldn’t be the person I am without my Dad.
He valued intelligence and work ethic.
Dad didn’t let me get away with stupid answers.
My unclear statements were met with questions for clarification.
Dad taught me, actually forced me, to express myself well.
My Dad was his own man.
He never worried about being ridiculed.
He wore a bright orange hat to the junior high school where he taught.
You cannot wear a hat like that if you’re worried about people making fun of you.
Dad built our first home computer from a kit.
The computer arrived, as pieces, inside a box.
Even the circuit boards weren’t assembled.
He spent weeks sifting through packages of diodes and doo-dads, soldering stuff together.
You don’t dive into a project like that without a lot of self-confidence.
I acquired self-confidence by osmosis from watching my Dad.
He taught me these things unintentionally.
He taught me things accidentally.
But these accidents wouldn’t happen unless Dad is involved.
My Dad was involved.
Thanks, Dad.
Happy Father’s Day!
3 Responses
I definitely see the family resemblance. Oh, good news, John, email works on the blog again. My dad died from ahlsheimers, but there is so much he passed on to me through his life that have made me who I am today.
Happy Father’s Day, John Branyan! I sure enjoy your daughter and her voice..
I like King David, our hero, a man after God’s own heart, also had some major issues and most of his kids are a total trainwreck. Wealth,power, polygamy, a bit of murder, all the usual things, tends to make a real mess.
Sometimes when I am fretting over my own kids, I like to think of Mary and Joseph misplacing the Christ child. It’s the original Home Alone story. They’re half a days journey away when they finally ask, so where’s Jesus? Like, you had one job people! Keeping track of the Savior of the WHOLE world. No matter what mistakes we make as parents at least I can always say, I never misplaced the Christ child. 🙂
I can honestly say I wouldn’t change a thing about WHO our family has consisted of… There certainly are some individual choices I don’t support. But I think God knew exactly what he was doing when he put all your crazy relatives together. 🙂