How to be a good father

How to be a good father for your only daughter

1. Play baseball with her and take her fishing. Let her put the worm on the hook herself.
2. Read to her every single night. Introduce her to Narnia, Middle Earth, India, and Israel. Don't skip passages, even if you are sleepy. She'll learn to read sooner than you expect and call you out.
3. Give her freedom. Let her roam the neighborhood and the woods.
4. Be friends with her friends.
5. Plant a garden and let her tend the carrots.
6. Take her out to lunch every year on Valentine's Day, even through high school.
7. Sing songs together in the car. "Oh We Ain't Got a Barrel of Money" is a good choice.
8. Build her things. If you see her pining over the beautiful doll chest in the catalog, make one for her. Teach her to make what she needs from what she has.
9. Help her learn to be brave and strong. Don't reward her for every little thing she does, but if once every decade you have to bribe her with a kitten to drink her milk or practice driving, that's fine.
10. Call her often, even once she is a grown-up and capable of doing Things on her own. Even if you only call to say, "How's your car?" she will understand that you mean, "I love you."
11. Let her grow up in poverty; she'll learn to watch for God's provision.  Don't make her the center of your universe; she'll learn that the work of God's kingdom is much larger than her desires. Do the work you love well and wildly; she'll never settle for a life that is not full of meaning.
12. Love her in every way you can imagine, so that she will learn to love her Father in Heaven even more than she loves you.

His fourth day as a father: November 24, 1983