Our fathers are our first role models of what it is to be a man.
If we are blessed to have a good one driving our household mini van.
He shows us how a romantic partner should behave;
He demonstrates just how our children should be raised.
He shows us this without a word, by what he does each day,
So we’ll reflect his teaching as we go on about our way.
If we weren’t blessed to have our father there to show us what to do,
Let us be thankful there are men, who’ll gather us in, too.
In thanks for each man, standing by his family,
Who cares, provides, corrects and loves, from those of us who see.
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© Shawn L. Bird 2012 Free use within Rotary, though please indicate when and where you have used the invocation by leaving a comment below. Thanks!
Shawn L. Bird 
Reading this I wonder my daughter became the woman she is today and still retained some sanity. There were our battles during the teenage tantrum years, until I grew up that is. And my examples of romance in rushing down to buy an oven cleaning kit for my wife at midnight Christmas Eve from the local garage. ( joke honestly or I’d be writing this posthumously) to vetting all her boyfriends by trying to engage them in conversation about anything but football or cars and preferably in words of more than one syllable.
She’s due to get married in September and I’m waiting to see if I’m invited..
Hugs
I think we all do the best we can. It’s not always enough, and sometimes it goes quite badly, but we can only do what we can do with what we have at the time. Parenting is about intention more than success. Our children can also go through a selfish phase (it may last a few decades!) where they are inappreciative, but if they have any sense at all, they’ll come around and realise that while they might imagine that they deserved ‘perfect parents’ and blaming us for not living up to the standard set by their best friend or something, they too will become imperfect parents. Such is the circle of life…
Shawn, I agree that we do the best we can do at the time we do it – things may look different through the 20 / 20 vision of hindsight, but that can’t change the fact that we did the best that we could at the time.
For my children, it was my Dad, their Grandad who gave them the security, safety, role model. He cared, provided, corrected and loved, and was loved in return.
Shawn, I am responsible for the invocation tomorrow. I don’t know whether I’ll use your invocation verbatim or not, but may draw on the theme you wrote. Much appreciated. Jim Gibson
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