Today I felt the need to write. I’m hurting today. I have chronic back pain from an injury several years ago and today it’s bad. It was bad yesterday. It’s the kind of pain that is just sort of always there in the front of your brain and you can’t think your way around it, but this post isn’t about my pain. It’s about my joy.
You see, the reason I’m hurting today is that I had a great day on Saturday. After watching my two oldest children play their first soccer games ever my family packed up the ol’ minivan and headed off to spend the day with a long-time friend and her husband. My middle daughter, Amelia, and I somehow started a game that I think all fathers have played with their children at some point- the pick-me-up-and-turn-me-over-and-pretend-to-drop-me-and-then-do-it-a-thousand-more-times game. I’m pretty sure that’s the name of it. So, today I hurt, because on Saturday my beautiful girl wanted to play a game with her father….and how could I say no?
Like most parents, I think, I often get caught up in the day-to-day minutia of being a parent. It seems like I’m always moving from one thing to the next. If I’m not coercing one behavior I’m discouraging another. I spend considerable effort in the mornings getting them up and dressed and ready to start their day only to spend twice as much time at night getting them undressed and in bed and bringing a close to it. I yell, I spank, I hug, I kiss, I encourage, I scold….but most of all I love my children.
Thank you God for my aching back! Thank you for frustrating mornings when my words seem to bounce off sleepy skulls. Thank you for the amazing, excruciating, wonderfully terrifying calling you’ve placed on my life- to be a Godly father to three breathtaking children and somehow find a way to bring them to their knees at your feet as Godly women.
I read daily of families who struggle with cancer, poverty, disaster, loss….pain that I don’t even want to try to imagine, and I still find a way to grumble about tripping over toys in the floor. Thank you God for the toys in my floor. For the children who left them there. For the love they show me every day. Thank you.