It’s such a tremendous gift a man can give — to be a fatherly presence in the life of a young man or woman. To be a trustworthy, challenging, loving, consistent teacher and model.
Thanks be to God for you guys who still rise to the occasion. Heaven knows you do not get a ton of cultural support.
You are all in my prayers today – the biological fathers, the adoptive fathers, the men who saw an opening and filled it, the men who are fatherly to offices and teams. I’m perpetually grateful to the father I miss who still manages to teach me every day.
I’m blessed to have read a young woman’s reflection on her dying father this week in a new magazine called Verily. Sophie Caldecott writes:
Life seems so fragile back in that hospital waiting room, but I have come to realise that in fact it is resilient even in the face of death. When life is built around love, it can outlast death, because death is not the end. The cancer is a sick imitation of the real thing, multiplying desperately because it has no real substance or meaning of its own beyond that which it destroys; that is the nature of evil.
It’s worth a vow today among us to be supportive of men who are open to doing the right thing.