On growing up… this is what you need to know.

My father left this life in 2011. Our relationship was up and down… but only for me. From my father’s perspective, it was up. From my father’s perspective, we were best friends. My perspective dealt with my emotions, my processing of events, my feelings. My perspective created the up and down aspects of our relationship (of which he was unaware). I was often uneasy in his presence. I was often unsettled.

My father was imperfect (very imperfect, as am I). He loved me, of that I’m sure. He provided for our family. He was not the nurturing part of our family that was my mother’s role. He worked long hours. He got home late. On the weekends he worked outside… long hours and came in sweaty and exhausted. Of the hours he worked, perhaps they were too many and too long.

But through this imperfect father, I learned a great deal… especially as I look back now. I am who I am today because of a great mixture… of how I was raised, what I experienced with parents, mentors, and friends… a mixture of good and bad, of learning, reflecting, growing, changing, relearning, rearranging, changing more, steps forward, steps backward, steps sideways, on the trail, off the trail (I could go on but you get the idea).

I invite you, those who have nothing better to do, into the ramblings of a child looking back at his father. Here is my list: everything I needed to succeed in life, I learned from an imperfect, workaholic father.

• Seek God first. When you realize He is not first, correct that immediately.
• Work hard, every day.
• Finish what you start.
• Don’t leave someone else to do what you should do.
• There is no job beneath you.
• Someone is always watching and learning from you… genuinely make every decision (even when you think you are alone) with that in mind.
• Take up for the underdog, don’t pick on them, fight for them.
• Don’t air it out … quietly work it out.
• Do what you said you would do when you said you would do it.
• Show up early and prepared.
• Ask, don’t tell.
• You can learn something from every person you meet.
• Eliminate this from your response vocabulary, “I know.”
• Never, never, never stop growing and changing.
• You are not the exception.
• If you know everything or have done everything “better”, no one will want to know you.
• Find something you are good at and do that a lot.

There are other things I learned through my relationship with him… things I had to work out and work through. There are things I’m still working out and working through. But those things are for me to ponder in my heart (and maybe with my wife and with my counselor… haha). I’m still understanding. I’m still changing. I’m still growing. And I too am still an imperfect (recovering workaholic) father. But everything I needed to know in order to succeed… I learned from an imperfect workaholic father.

Thank you for sharing in this reflection with me. Blessings to you, my imperfect friend.