It’s Father’s Day! I love that we set aside a day each year to celebrate all things Mothers and all things Fathers. As many of you know, I lost my father to colon cancer my senior year of college. I was, in many ways, a “daddy’s girl,” even though my mom pretty much ran the house and enforced the rules. I am the youngest of three girls and grew up watching football with my dad. He loved his Dallas Cowboys and I loved my Denver Broncos. Somewhere along the way he convinced me those Cowboys were worth rooting for and I followed suit. My dad was a hard worker and a very proud man. To this day I don’t know how my parents afforded my out-of-state tuition at OU and I am forever grateful. My dad was not around to walk me down the aisle, but he was there, I just know it. Happy Father’s Day dad: hope you, Bapa, and Jimmy are having a nice day up in heaven!
Today the focus is on Smitty someday walking Kristen down the aisle. It’s a far off dream but one we all share. It seems like just yesterday they were holding hands on the beach like in that photo I took of the two of them in Longboat Key, Florida.
I also love the photos I take of their two hands on each of Kristen’s birthdays. Sadly, with her pre-op appointment falling on her 20th birthday this year, I forgot to take one this year. Maybe doing so on Father’s Day is an appropriate substitution.
I was lucky to have a father in my life, as is Kristen. Sadly today that is not the case for way too many. Check out these numbers:
50 percent of the babies born to mothers under the age of 30 are born out-of-wedlock
53 percent of Hispanic babies are born out-of-wedlock
70 percent of babies born to poor white women are born out-of-wedlock
75 percent of African-American babies are born out-of-wedlock
What does all this mean? It means the institution of marriage is meaning less and less to more and more people and it serves as proof that our democracy is evolving into a welfare state. Think what you want and vote how you like, but none of this can be good for any civilized society.
Even Rich Men Need God and Even the Devil Believed in God
On this Sunday; on this Father’s Day, maybe it’s time we think about bringing God back in our lives. He is the Father of all fathers and is there for all of us if we just ask. In a recent Bible Study book my group read about the rosary, a certain passage struck me:
“We face what has aptly but sadly called a generation without fathers. The absence of a fatherly presence in the life of so many makes it all the more needful that God’s fatherly goodness and care, his rich “masculine” qualities, come to play more powerfully in the lives of his children. We can learn to let God the Father fulfill the role in our lives that He fulfilled in the life of the most perfect and perfectly fulfilled human who ever walked this earth and who constantly looked to Him as Father.” (“Praying by Hand” by M. Basil Pennington.)
Enjoy your day fathers everywhere and honor the roll you play in your children’s lives and remember that a truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms even when they are empty. Happy Father’s Day!
Beyond Words 