My Dad and Me

It struck me the other day that my Dad never really had a Dad. His Dad died when he was around 5 years old and he basically grew up with his Mom and two older sisters. That means that when he took me to Yankee stadium as a little boy and we walked out and I saw my first big league ballpark he was breaking new ground. All the times we played catch in the yard, the father/son talks in the car on the way to school, all the advice and laughter and hugs, he was learning as he went. I guess I just find that remarkable. For me, I tried to do all the things for my kids and with my kids my Dad did with me. My Dad will say his whole life changed when he found Jesus and God became the Father he never had. I think it has been much easier for me to be a Dad. A lot of people go through life thinking that they just didn't get the breaks. They never had a real mentor or good parents. They live an "if only" kind of life. One of the really wonderful things about a relationship with God is the amazing ground God can make up. He took a little boy without a Dad, who grew up dirt poor at the end of the depression, and made him into a man that I try my hardest to emulate. I have had all the breaks, my parents made it so and yet it seems like God has done the heavy lifting in their lives to make up for so much they could have or maybe even should have had. The man who has God and everything has no more than the man who has only God. So it was for my Dad, and so it has been for me.