Me & the Boy

Just this past week, my wife's uncle passed away and she decided to travel with her mother up to Maryland for the services. She took Peyton along, leaving me and Tyler to be bachelors for a little bit. It's been a really good time.

I don't know. There's something about times like this, with him at the age of four, that I really start to feel the pressure of the clock and calendar pressing in on me. I can still see him in my mind's eye the day he was born and we were so happy, scared, and unsure of the future. I remember him learning to crawl and to walk and to talk. And now, well, now there's no stopping him.

Just the other night as I finished tucking him in he asked if I would lay there with him for a few minutes before going out of the room. Finding it hard to say no, I lay there with my son in my arms. My heart simply melted and I told him, "Hey buddy, I just want you to know that I love you so much" and I hugged him to me tight. Tears pressed against my eyelids and I just held him.

There is an immense sense of pressure that comes with being a father. Yet, there is also a tremendous reward. I so desperately want to be the kind of father that my son and daughter can look to with pride, smiling and with faces beaming, saying to friends, "That's my Dad!" I want my kids to know that they are loved above all else by God and their parents, and especially by me. I want them to know that there is nothing they can do to make me not love them with all of my heart.

I kind of feel like I needed to just unload that right now. Thanks for letting me.