Glad to Be Dad

As is seasonally appropriate, I’ve been thinking a ton about dads this past week. As part of my mental celebration of all things fatherly, I opened up the book, Glad to Be Dad: A Call to Fatherhood by Tim J. Myers. Tim is writer, songwriter, professional storyteller, and for several years he was a stay-at-home dad. I found out about him through Familius, the publisher for my upcoming Drops of Awesome book.

Glad to Be Dad is a thoughtful look at the joy, pain, and depth of experience that is fatherhood. It’s a call to action for fathers everywhere to recommit to fatherhood as a life’s work and it was beautiful to read.

When I say it was beautiful, I mean that in the most manly, at times laugh-out-loud funny way. The book is full of personal stories, research, and a lifetime of parenting wisdom that doesn’t come off as pompous. Tim Myers has lived life in the trenches and gives a very real perspective on parenting as a daily unending labor of love and somehow manages to capture a glimmer of the truly joyful nature of raising children. It is a book about the importance of “capital F” Fatherhood, fully realized.

Near the beginning of the book, Tim talks about how refreshing it would be to see a nativity scene in which Mary was asleep and Joseph was holding the baby Jesus. I first began reading the book in December and the same day I read that paragraph, I went to see a live nativity and was so pleased when I saw an attentive Joseph bringing Mary water, while tenderly holding the baby.

Reading this book, I often recognized myself or my children in its pages and it motivated me to tune in more as a parent but also to cut myself some slack. There is no perfect way to be a dad [or mom]. It also made me grateful to be married to a non-helpless, non-zombie husband who engages with our kids and who never sees his time with them as “babysitting.”

It’s a book about how to be a more engaged father, but it’s not preachy. It’s a book about women and men better understanding and appreciating each other in family relationships, but it’s not trite. It’s a book about being torn between two worlds, the world dedicated to family and the world of everything else. Mostly, it’s a book about finding joy with the life you have and the people you love most.

Consider Glad to Be Dad as a last-minute gift for the fathers in your life.