While I was away..

By the time I made it home, you were already in bed

Chubby cheek pressed to your a pillow by a bedtime book you read

And I noticed you looked older than you did yesterday

You’ve been growing up while I was away

You made a pile of leaves in the front yard, I guess it’s already fall

By the look of those pictures your mama took, the two of you had a ball

And It made me glad but a little sad to see those games you played

I missed a lot of smiles while I was away

And I found your note in the kitchen, it’s a real work of art

A stick man holding your stick hand with “Daddy” written in a heart

And it got me good cause I’ve understood what you meant to say

You’ve been missing me too while I was away

  

This dude is putting my worst fear into words! By nature, dads are more on the run than moms are with work every day and errands to run. Mom is around the house more and spends 2-3 times more time with kids. This song is really about working long and far away, but there can be many reasons why a dad does not see his kids grow up. His choice to work long hours is probably a big one, getting home after the kids are in bed and leaving before they wake. Dads are on the go so much with work and then they want to spend their weekends with hobbies and friends if not more work. We don't have to do that! Working 60-70 hours a week is not acceptable when we have children or wives. We need to learn to say no. Or change careers. I've read stories about Christian men who have changed careers to spend more time at home. Careers that did not require them to travel or stay away more than 8-9 hours a day. They took the pay cut or less hours and God blessed them over and over for making that right decision.

There is a panicky feeling that comes over me from time to time when I think that my little girl is now medium sized and will soon be my big girl. Or that my little dude will soon be too big to pick up and hold. Some may say he's too big to pick up now, but we don't! That's for sure. Some dads probably wish the day would not come when their daughters won't kiss them on the lips anymore, I fear the day my son won't. Innocence and love keeps the kisses coming. When I think about the hours there are in one week that my children are actually awake when im home.. about 5 hours each weekday how can anything else fit into that time? By the time dinner is done and any chore that needs my attention there is an hour or two left. I could selfishly take that time for myself or invest it in my children. Sometime we don't realize what a parent/child relationship really is. From day 1, we are obligated to invest in and perform maintenance on that relationship, and it never really ends. Every relationship requires maintenance to survive. Without it the relationship will eventually wither and die. Whether is a parent and child, husband and wife or plain old friends it has to be important enough to one party to keep the relationship going. We as parents may think that because we are their parent we will always be good. But if we fail to maintain that relationship, one day they will be at a critical point in their life and when we try to interject our thoughts their response is "Who do you think you are?" Whether we have 1 child or 10 we have the same obligation. I believe as parents we have the obligation to make each one of our children feel like a prized possession, a special child, loved beyond any doubt and to spend quality physical  One that knows your top priority is spending time with them and that you look forward to your daily time with them each day without exception. Working til 9pm or all day Saturday cannot allow us with enough time to spend with them.  There are many things that dads can do that can be called good and harmless but the deciding factor of those good and harmless things should be the impact on the kids and family as a whole. Not using the excuse that I am including one child so it's good. Any sacrifice ever made for the benefit of our children cannot be a bad one. If we as dads are doing something on a regular basis that's takes us from our family or causes dissention with our wife or kids, it's time to stop, evaluate our selfishness, and take the necessary actions. Nothing! no hobby, no career, no interest or way of life is worth missing a night or weekend with our children. Being home at a reasonable time on weekdays, spending time each night with each of our children and making sure we are home on weekends and not out with some selfish hobby is first priority for a Man of Integrity. Can I really go hunting, fishing, golfing, working or any selfish desire and still feel like a Man of integrity? The answer is a simple No. We may say that we voluntarily work every Saturday to provide for our families but that's total crap. You would be hard pressed to find one wife or child who would choose money over Dad on a Saturday or an evening. There is no excuse for not spending time with our family on a daily basis. Think of the many things in our daily life that we perform maintenance on, we fuel our car and do oil changes, fill our swimming pool, we wash the windows, cut the grass, drink water, charge our cell phones, sweep the floor and rake the leaves. The list is endless of things that we maintain on a regular basis because if we didn't all those things would just stop being useful to us and we'd neglect them and eventually just ignore them. Who wants to spend time in an overgrown yard with a swimming pool that has12" of green water in it? No one! So we maintain it daily so it's good to use. If we fail to perform daily maintenance on the relationship with our children or spouse, it will soon turn green and stagnant and will be avoided for the benefit of everyone. You can't ignore your swimming pool all summer and expect it to be crystal clear for your Labor Day pool party, in the same way you can't neglect spending quality time with your children daily and when you want to be the knight in shining armor at the time of crisis, wonder why things seem smelly and stagnant in your relationship! You lost that 10 years ago! Children don't change and walk out overnight. You've been forming and molding that rebel for the last 15 years so why is it a surprise?! There are no guarantees that children won't be influenced by the wrong person and led on a bad path. But there one thing is for sure. Equipping our children with Knowledge, Truth and Love is our best defense. Knowledge and truth are based on the Bible. Every family needs something to base what they call truth on otherwise you can end up with a 'because I said so' scenario which can easily cause rebellion in children as young as 2 or 3. Instilling in your children that the Bible is the infallible word of God at a young age is crucial to use it as the base of everything in life. Reading the Bible and praying with your children daily is how it all starts. As a parent you have to present the things you value and believe in as normal and true. Having the Bible as our rock and truth is our most valuable tool as a parent. Making our children fully aware of the Bible and it's truth is of the top priority, because everything else in their life is a reflection of how well their parents focused on that obligation. We can train and form our children into anything we want. Proverbs 22:6 "Train a child in the way he should go: And when he is old, he will not depart from it". That does not mean take them to church once a week and hope for the best. But it means to actively participate in the child's life with Bible based training and to actively think about and pray for your children throughout the day. When you make the choice to bring children into this world you are quietly stating to the world that you are willing going to sacrifice hobbies and other self serving extracurricular activities until your kids have grown. Forcing one of your kids to take up the same hobby as you as a means of justification does not work either. You will then find yourself spending most of your time with one and forget the 99. Focus on your Family and forget yourself; you will be on the right track. Working hard to make a dollar only makes us spend more frivolously anyway. We might use the excuse that I have mouths to feed and kids to dress so I need to work to pay for it. Do they really need new $100 jeans and the latest name in designer clothes? 

One sure fire way to drive a wedge between parent and child is to have one way conversations. To tell a child what to do or not do without an in depth explanation is wrong on several levels. First of all it creates a wall where their should be communication. Second When you explain your decisions it conveys love. Someone once told me that their dad would just say things like "you can't do this or don't do that" and would never give an explanation even when they were asked for it by their kids. Taking the time to explain decisions to your children is very important, life slows down at that point, they look at you intently as you prove you are Dad instead of just barking orders and telling them you are their dad. Need to talk to your children, stop, hold their hands or their body, look at their eyes, make sure they are focused on you, then speak. They should continue to focus while you talk. Make sure you allow them to ask any questions they have and respond to every one. When it comes to our peers as adults I always say You can't learn anything while you are talking and the same goes for us and our children. Want to learn about your children? Shut up and listen. Sit by their bed for 15 minutes at night and listen to what they have to day. Whether it's about their hobby, a book they read, friends at school, a boyfriend or girlfriend............... You thought I meant only little kids?! Not at all, got a 15 year old? Sit in. But start that relationship once she starts talking, don't wait, time will pass by so fast it will make your head spin. As that little boy or girl gets older the conversation will change. From toys and stories to truth and life the conversations are endless. We only get one shot and it's something we cannot afford to mess up. Our child's life depends on it!
The older I get and the older my children get I'm more convinced that the control a parent has over the life their children live as they reach the adult age is great! It is hugely controlled by the choices a parent makes in those early years; Choices for dads such as where they choose to be or what they choose to do when they are home, Choices by parents about what they talk about in front of their kids, how critical they are about other people and the gossip their kids hear from them. A parent's daily life, no matter how extreme, is setting the standard as 'normal' for their kids to follow. What do we want our kids to see as normal? Seeing them only on the weekends because we book too much work and can't get it all done? A dad that has a hobby that takes him from his family every Saturday? Do we want normal to be for them to see me leave all the work at home to their mom and to see her struggle to hold it together because of that? I don't think so. The normal I want my kids to see is that their dad would sacrifice anything for them and their mom. I want them to know normal is that there is no distinction in work at home as to who's job it is, dad and mom share it all. Normal is kids have to see by example that I love their mom by the way I treat her, love her and respect her. My boys need to see by example that their dad loves their mom and they need to see how to do it right! Demonstrating love to their mom is teaching them what's normal. We can only demonstrate what we want our kids to see as normal, if we are there. Working late being gone on Saturday is a sure fire way to show we don't prioritize our children. Kids don't wait to be influenced. If we don't make them a priority, someone else will. TV, internet, bad influences the list goes on. It's not even a case of their peers having bad intentions, it's simply a matter of their dad being there to filter the junk they come home with each day! How could a dad not make that a priority! Are we that selfish and self centered that we'd leave our own children to the wolves to be raised? No matter what excuse we will make or what justification we come up with, if we are gone evenings and weekends, we voluntarily choose to neglect our kids leaving someone else to raise our kids and set the standard for them and we probably won't thank them.
I'm not saying that mom's can't raise children. Most moms do an exceptional job. But ask which ones would choose to do it without a legitimate dad in the picture.... none. Dad is a name that all dads must live up to. It's a tall order and big shoes to fill. It's not enough to just support them financially. Committing to a quantity of quality time is another story. 

If a dad looks at his 16 year old girl who is living life all wrong, who is a mirror image of the world and wonders where it went so wrong...  The answer is simple,"the moment you walked out the door instead of staying with her". Because it's a fact that she yearned for your attention when she was little. She waited for just a moment of your attention. If you had been paying attention you would have seen the sparkle in her eye! Look forward to seeing her everyday after work! Make your children feel like a million bucks, everyday! Do our kids fear our arrival or wait on the doorstep? Treat your daughters like the princess they are. Take them on dates whether they are 4 or 40 years old. As long as they live under your roof visit their bedroom after she's in and talk or more importantly, listen. Every night! Once a month take her on a date. Demonstrate how a boy should treat her, talk about it. Set an example for your boys of how they should treat a woman. By treating their mother and sisters with respect, we can show by example what a real man does. Talk about what's acceptable and what's not, explain the lifelong consequences of bad decisions. There are countless ideas, precepts and principles that we can teach our children on one condition, we cannot do it while we are away.
  Compassionate, loving and caring people weren't born that way, something affected them and made an impression. If you know a person who is not loving or kind or has some other social awkwardness it is most likely a direct result of how their parents raised them and who was around. 

There is so much responsibility that a parent has and there are so many things to do and teach our kids every day that if done correctly and responsibly there would be no time left for anything else in our lives. It's time to take inventory of our time, how we have allotted the minutes we are given each day. Do our kids take last priority? It would probably shock most dads to write down the hours in a day and list how they spent each minute of the day. What percentage would kids get? 2%? 5%  Dads who spend an hour a day focused on their kids spend less than 5% of their life with their kids. That's a horrible thought. And even though we may think we are beyond that, think about the amount of direct one-on-one time, uninterrupted, cell phone free time we have with our kids. Maybe it's even less than 5%! We can reverse the cycle if we only be there. 

One of my biggest fears is one day there will be a ..... 'While I was away' moment. 

And for every dollar I earn there’s a lesson you learn without me there

And every day I’m on the go, I’m praying that you know your daddy cared

Cause the hardest part about working hard ain’t about the bills I gotta pay

It’s you growing up while I was away