What if Today Were Your Last Day to Invest in Your Daughter?

I’m at the age where attending funerals is becoming more commonplace. And truly, there’s nothing like an end of life celebration to bring everything into perspective. 

I still recall attending a funeral for a dear friend’s husband where there was hardly a dry eye in the place as one of their sons shared stories about what his dad had meant to him. 

While choking back tears, he said, “I think everyone here could say, I want more of my dad.”

His words hung in the air. He ended by saying that he was one of the lucky ones to have had an invested dad. 

As I reflect back on the years of interacting with girls and young women, a consistent theme I hear from them can be summed up in those same six words, “I want more of my dad.” 

Stated otherwise, I’ve never heard one of them say she had “too much” of her dad---too much time, too much attention, too much love, too much affirmation, too much laughter, too much interacting, too much talking, too much connecting, too much validating...you get the point.

This brings to mind the harrowing survival story I heard awhile back of Holocaust survivor, Eva Schloss, who was Anne Frank’s stepsister. She, her brother, and her parents had been taken as prisoners by the Nazis to the Polish death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau during World War II. 

I was deeply moved by one particular story she shared when miraculously reconnected with her father after he had been granted permission to find her in an adjacent camp. Since they were in two different concentration camps, he had no idea that she had just resigned herself to death, was severely depressed, and had been crying much of the time. Yet upon seeing him she said that she felt revived. 

In her own words, Eva describes their reunion:

“His eyes were full of an immense love for me. I threw myself into his arms and felt his warmth and strength flow into me and pull me back to life. I sobbed uncontrollably while he held me close to him as if he would never let me go. He must have felt as happy as I did, to have his little daughter in his arms once more.

He told me to be brave and not to give up…We exchanged looks of such yearning and love that I still see his face like this in my dreams.”

Eva and her mother barely made it out of the war alive. Her brother and father did not.

Yet here she was, at 90 years old, and her dad’s love was still with her---a love that carried her through severe suffering, starvation, torture, assault, resettlement, and later, re-engagement with life. 

I talked with Eva after her presentation and told her about my work with dads of daughters. If I ever meet her again, I will definitely ask her more about her “Pappy” because from everything I could tell, she was still her daddy’s girl.

Dad, I share these stories with you today in the hope that your heart will be stirred. And not just stirred to experience emotion, but stirred to action. After all, it was God who said that it is the hearts of fathers that must turn toward their children, not their heads (Malachi 4:6). 

I want your heart to be stirred to engage your daughter’s heart today as you realize that any day could be your last. And any day could be her last. 

Your intentional investment today will leave a powerful, beautiful legacy for her. And your intentional investment today will leave a lasting, loving legacy in her.

Make this day a day where your daughter enthusiastically and confidently shouts, “I did have enough of my Dad today!”

After a Daughter Loses Her Dad

“I feel closer to my dad now that he’s gone. He used to joke with me and I’d burst into tears. Then he’d say I was too fragile and sensitive. But now he listens really well."

These are words shared with me from a woman who lost her dad just one year ago.

To honor his life, she went skiing on the anniversary of his death to remember and feel closer to him on the mountain where they used to ski together. She continued:

“I wish I would’ve had a chance to know him before he had all of his deep hurts and coping mechanisms. I got the parts of him when his threshold was maxed and then he’d blow. But I always knew there were tender parts of him that were his spirit.”

Such insightful and gracious words, to say the least. 

I wonder what her dad would say now if he could hear her sentiments. I believe he’d respond differently by kindly affirming her and seeking to understand her. 

We’re all aware that our time is limited.

We know there’s a beginning and an end to life here on earth. 

And the older we all get, the more we start looking in our rear view mirror to see there’s more behind us than ahead. 

Yet as hard as we try and imagine how we will be remembered after we’re gone, the reality is that it’s challenging to live every day as if it were our last.

But what a positive difference that awareness makes. 

That said, I want to share with you an email I received from a woman who also recently lost her dad.

Hi Michelle…I've never heard of you before yesterday. However, my dad died very suddenly 10 weeks ago at age 66 (the day before I turned 31). My mom passed me your book--Let's Talk. I didn't know he read your book, but the last 5 years of our relationship have been the best 5. He's shown his love in countless ways...sometimes for no reason. He was a very brilliant and quiet man. I did question his love at times growing up. We have had a sweet last 5 years. He helped me have the courage to buy my first home. He helped me fix it up and build furniture. We went on many dates. I am unsure what role your book played in his life, but I wanted to thank you for writing it. When he died--I had no doubts that he loved me. Glad he is home with his Heavenly Father. 

Although this is a bit of a somber post, my hope is that you’ll take away some powerful themes from the stories of these amazing women. Together they’re saying that the years of relational deposits from their dads have increased in value now that they’re gone. 

Every day that you’re still here is a day where you can positively and proactively invest in your daughter’s life, which makes it a better day than the last. 

I invite you to make a renewed commitment to activate these five things with your daughter, starting today:

1. Listen with more patience and grace 

2. Validate her unique wiring and personality

3. Set aside distractions in order to be fully present

4. Enjoy the distinctive things that make her unique…and tell her what they are!

5. Communicate with her today, telling her that you treasure her and love being her dad 

This is how your presence will remain active and alive in her when you’re no longer here to do and say these things. 

And this is what will empower her to stand alongside these other two women while joining them in saying she had no doubt that you--her dad--always loved her. 

The Day I Went to Prison

I went to prison last month. For real.

But just for one day.

And what I experienced on that Saturday in a maximum-security prison is something that will stay with me forever.

My hope is that you’ll be inspired and consequently be motivated to take action as a #girldad as you contrast and compare your story to the one I will share here.

Let me first give context.

I was invited to this prison experience alongside a group of people who have a passion for seeing recidivism decrease among inmates. They’ve discovered that a powerful path to accomplishing this goal is to bring dads and their kids together for one day in the hope that by uniting them there will be subsequent motivation for these men to take positive steps forward.

There was one particular dad-daughter pair that touched my heart so deeply that I have to tell you about them.

And for those of you who are a dad to a daughter, I trust that this powerful story will remind you to pursue her heart and tell her you love her every day while remembering that your freedom to do so is something that can easily be taken for granted.

To begin, imagine that you’re walking with me along a path in the middle of nowhere Mississippi on a dreary, rainy day. It’s mid-morning and as we move past the armed prison guards, we look up to see barbed-wire fences and buildings that look as worn and weary as the people who inhabit them. Together we walk through bullet-proof doors with multiple security cameras examining our every move, and we’re a bit apprehensive because we’re not fully sure what we’ll experience on the other side of the doors ahead. But we keep taking steps and walk into a gym that is the site for today’s event.

About 25 or 30 men are there, all dressed in prison garb with the word CONVICT in big, black, bold letters on the back of their shirts. Some of the inmates are seated in chairs in the middle of the room, nervously awaiting the arrival of their children while others are already reunited with their kids, laughing and playing games with them.

We walk around, smiling to cover up our discomfort as we say hello to the guys. Then we strike up a conversation with two men who eagerly share stories with us about their daughters. One has a 9-year old and the other tells us that today is the first time he will be meeting his 17-year old daughter. While speaking, that dad never takes his eyes off the main door as he anticipates her arrival.

We stand there taking it all in and when we turn our heads for a split second, we realize that he’s bolted out of his seat. We scan the room to find him at the front door, embracing his teenage daughter for the first time in her life…and his.

From across the room it’s clear that this dad is taking the initiative to connect with his daughter in an embrace that he’s no doubt anticipated for years. Everyone witnessing this moment has tears filling their eyes as we realize this sacred exchange is unfolding in real time before us.

At first glance, this looks like a Hallmark movie as this dad and his estranged daughter unite. But that’s not the whole story.

The reality (as we will later learn) is that when this young woman was being driven to the facility with her mom, she was shaking in fear, crying, and saying she didn’t want to do this after all. It was just too scary. Yet there she was, walking into her fear, courageously stepping into the unknown.

Without knowing any of that, her dad stepped up and stepped in to communicate through his hug that he was glad to meet her and thankful she came. He took the initiative to take the first steps to let her know she had value and worth to him.

Throughout the day, you and I discreetly watch them and notice they never move around the room to play any of the games. Instead, they sit side by side, both looking straight ahead most of the time. Often they aren’t talking at all, but somehow despite visible awkwardness, they stay at it.

Though we as volunteers have been instructed not to ask questions, we wonder about their backstory. We wonder what crime this dad committed that led him here and wonder how much longer he’ll be in this prison.

Yet despite all that we don’t know, there is one thing we do know: Both of them faced their fears and demonstrated courage with the end goal of connecting.

If you’re still okay walking alongside me as you picture this scenario in your mind’s eye, I want you now to hear and see what happens next. This is when the best moment of all begins to unfold.

We walk up to them at the end of the day when this dad happens to be telling his daughter the story of all of us talking earlier when she initially came through the door. Right then another leader asks us to join in praying for them.

Because I’ve read the research and believe in the power of safe touch between a dad and his daughter, as well as having noticed they hadn’t had any physical contact all day, I lead the way by saying, “let’s hold hands as we pray.” We all join hands and the prayers begin.

Then I knew it was time to call this dad into leading by example.

I look at him and say, “Now it’s your turn to pray for your daughter.” I wasn’t sure how he’d respond since I didn’t have any details about his faith background, but was overjoyed when he immediately began to pray out loud. Though I couldn’t hear all of what he said, I did hear the part where he prayed that she wouldn’t make the same mistakes he has made.

That’s when she began to cry.

I could tell that he didn’t know what to do so I coached him to put his arm around her. And he did. Right then she leans her head into her dad’s chest and her tears flow even more freely. I say to her, “Let out your tears, baby, because this is how your heart will heal.”

I’ll always remember that moment when a dad’s prayer over his teenage daughter opened the floodgates of her emotions as she heard her dad’s love expressed through an unrehearsed genuine prayer.

I was reminded anew that a dad doesn’t have to know how to pray in order to actually pray for his daughter. All he has to do is open his mouth and ask God to move in ways that align with what is on his heart for her.

Yes, bad choices and prison walls kept this dad from reaching his daughter’s heart and life for 17 years. But on this day he faced her and embraced her.

Dad, you don’t need to spend a day in prison to be reminded that you have the freedom to lead and love your daughter boldly.

So the question I ask you is: What’s your reason for letting one more day go by without facing, embracing, talking, praying, and telling your daughter how much you love her and why you do.

I know there’s one incarcerated dad who would trade places with you in a heartbeat just to have the ability to do all of that freely today.

How NOT to Make it Worse When Your Daughter is Grieving a Loss

Dad, you may have been raised in a family where showing emotions like sadness or fear weren’t tolerated, especially for boys. Perhaps you heard messages like, “real men don’t cry” because “only sissies show weakness.”

Sadly, as a result of this type of conditioning, there are too many men who don’t know how to truly connect to their emotions and have never learned how to release any feeling other than anger. (If this is you, I highly recommend a fantastic book by my good friend Marc Alan Schelske titled The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.)

Yet because daughters have a unique way of reaching their dads’ hearts, I’ve observed that men are easily inspired to go to greater depths within themselves in order to connect with their girls, often to places they didn’t even know they were capable of going. And since girls and women tend to respond best to softer emotions, a daughter unwittingly leads the way for her dad to expand his emotional bandwidth just for her.

And because the strongest bond any of us can ever have with another person is called a trauma bond, as you enter into your daughter’s grief process with her, a deeper, lasting bond is forming.

When it comes to walking alongside your daughter through such painful life experiences as loss and death, the best gift you can give her is to stay with her through her emotional process. This kind of response communicates that you’re in it with her for as long as it takes to express all her tears, fears, and questions.

For most people, grief doesn’t have an expiration date, so this is all about pacing with her through the entirety of the process according to her time frame.

If you find yourself wanting your daughter to get over her sadness quickly because it increases your distress to see her in pain, remember that your goal is to provide a safe space for her to emote and talk about her grief.

This will set her on the pathway to healing while simultaneously deepening her attachment to you.

And don’t ever tell her not to feel what she’s feeling and never give her the message that she’s weak for crying.

Even if you don’t understand all that she’s feeling (in power and duration), if you remain cognizant of the fact that you don’t need to fix her or take away her pain, you’ll discover that your presence with her in her sadness is a forever gift.

I’m attaching a list of questions here that will help you lead the way in giving your daughter permission to open up to you about her feelings of loss and grief---whether it’s the death of a loved one (a person or pet), not getting a job promotion, not making the team, or ending a relationship, whether romantic or otherwise, to name a few.

And whether you know it or not, your shoulders were made for this kind of heavy lifting.

So with a bit of practice, you’ll get stronger and more adept at entering into the tough stuff with your daughter. I’ll even go as far as saying that by carrying her load with her through asking questions that allow her to express what’s inside and actively listening, you’ll help decrease the negative intensity of her experience by 50%.

Now that’s a worthy use of your time and energy, wouldn’t you say? Go Dad!

7 Questions Dads Should Ask Their Daughters to Help Them Process the Texas Shooting

If you’re a dad who has felt overwhelmed this week about how to address the massacre in Uvalde, Texas with your kids, you’re not alone.

Tom is a dad to four young daughters and today he wrote and asked, “If you could give us dads any suggestions on how we should talk to our daughters about the shooting in Texas, we’ll take any advice we can get.”

I celebrate dads like Tom who are proactive in seeking to be a safe place for your daughters to process this tragedy that is out of their control and has most likely increased their anxiety.

Yet in the midst of crises, here’s a truth that prompts us to action.

Did you know that when we talk out and release the heaviness we hold inside, we actually “trauma bond” with those who enter into the trenches with us? And a trauma bond is the strongest bond two people can have.

This means that you have an opportunity right now to connect and attach even more with your daughter as you invite her to talk, grieve, feel, and heal…with you.

I want to highlight that there’s no right way or easy way to have a sobering conversation about why a deranged 18-year old shooter would commit a random act of violence that senselessly ended the lives of 19 kids and two teachers. Yet I also want to say that some conversation is better than no conversation. Your home should be the place where you as a family can wrestle through the hard topics that don’t necessarily have a precise answer.

Let me say it another way: The way you process the hard stuff matters more than explaining why the hard stuff happens. You don’t need to have all the answers, but by initiating and entering into this heavy topic with her, you give your daughter permission to process openly.

And the best gift you can give her is to stay with her through the entirety of her emotional process. This kind of response communicates that you’re in it with her for as long as it takes to express all her tears, fears, and questions. Expect her to be extra sensitive right now, often in other areas of her life, since it’s common for kids to vent their emotions through another portal rather than where the emotion or pain is actually rooted.

Dad, if you want to open up a conversation with your daughter about how she’s processing the Texas shooting, I suggest spending one-on-one time with your girls individually. This will let each one know that you really care about what she is experiencing.

Here’s a way you could say it: “Hi honey…I know how hard this week has been for you since hearing about the senseless shooting of innocent kids and teachers in Texas. As your dad, I’ve felt the heaviness too. And I’ve learned that when we put words to our feelings, it helps us move forward and heal because we’re connecting with those who walk with us through the hard stuff while helping us feel less alone and overwhelmed. Would you be willing to talk with me as I ask questions that invite you to share more about what you’re carrying in your heart?”

1. What has been the scariest part of hearing about the mass shooting of 19 kids and two teachers this week?
[Your daughter needs to know that it’s normal for her to feel heightened fear right now. And without making light of the deaths of 21 people, let her know that these are rare occurrences and it’s highly unlikely to happen to her. She needs you to validate her fear while assuring her of your presence and availability, reminding her that she’s safe now. You could also give her one of your shirts to hold onto so she feels you near her.]

2. What makes you sad as you think about the lives that were lost?
[Your daughter needs to be given permission to grieve and cry---even if her tears are only on the inside---so that her pain has a release. Let her know that our tears have salt in them and salt is a healing agent. So when we cry, our hurting hearts heal. Tell her about how your heart is sad too.]

3. What about this horrific tragedy makes you angry?
[Be aware that internalized unexpressed anger often leads to depression. So by encouraging your daughter to give voice to her anger over wrongdoings, evil and injustice, you help to support and strengthen her mental and emotional health.]

4. If you could say anything to the shooter right now, what would you say?
[Let your daughter freely express to you the gambit of words and feelings inside her---in whatever way she needs to express them---because this helps to counter any potential for numbness, disconnection or apathy.]

5. If you could compassionately say anything to the families or friends of those who died, what would you say?
[By asking your daughter this question, you are teaching her how to hold more than one reality simultaneously----she can tap into her anger at this injustice while also holding empathy. If your daughter is young, she could draw a picture as a gift to express love to the survivors.]

6. If you could ask or tell God anything about this situation, what would it be?
[Your daughter may blame God for this tragedy because He didn’t stop the shooter. She may struggle to understand how a loving God could allow bad things to happen to good people. Let her know that you don’t have these answers, but have faith to believe that God will walk through this valley of the shadow of death with them. Pray together for the families and friends who lost loved ones and ask for supernatural comfort for their grieving hearts. For younger girls, they could draw a picture of their prayer or wish.]

7. What do you need from me right now to feel comforted, supported, and loved?
[Your daughter may need extra hugs or she might need extra space. She may enjoy being closer to you as you share a meal or just get coffee. Others might want to work out the intensity through physical activity, such as a long walk, bike ride or hike with you while others might value a hand-written note to let her know you treasure her.]

Dad, as your daughter reflects on the lives that were lost, she will always remember that you were here in real time…with her. I assure you that she will cherish your warmth and kindness as you listen to her, care about her hurting hurt, and hold this sacred space…with her.

So let the talking…and empathizing…begin.

What a Dad's Tears Tell His Daughter (Guest Blog By Randell Turner, Ph.D.)

[Today I have invited a fellow counselor and father mentor to share his thoughts on the power of a dad’s “allergies”—a.k.a. tears—in his daughter’s life. Being a dad of two daughters, I trust that his insights will positively impact the way you view tears.]

Like most men in America, I get uncomfortable when someone begins to cry. Be it one of my daughters, a close friend, or even watching someone cry in a movie or on television?

Why is it like that for most men?

For me, it had a lot to do with how I was raised—who my heroes and mentors were growing up. I learned early that the men I admired didn’t cry. After all, James Bond, Dirty Harry, or the Duke didn’t cry, and neither did any “real men,” like my father.

Nor did my sports role models, like Alan Page, Jack Lambert, Mean Joe Greene, and Mike Singletary. These legendary gridiron heroes of my generation were tough as nails. Every Sunday, I cheered each punishing tackle these men inflicted upon their opponents. All the while, it shaped my view of how a real man is supposed to act and feel: tough, powerful, in control, never showing weakness to anyone, no matter how much it hurts.

But life does hurt, sometimes profoundly.

Yet as little boys, we are taught not to shed tears early on. We heard frequent phrases like, “Get up! You’re not hurt; brush it off,” or “Big boys don’t cry,” or one of the most influential childhood quotes: “Stop crying or I will give you something to cry about.”

As a result, we grow up embracing the mantra, “NEVER let them see you cry!” And so we don’t.

As a matter of fact, as young men, especially during our teen years, we often take pride in not crying.

We’ve adopted the view that tears are feminine, a sign of weakness; therefore, they become very uncomfortable. Furthermore, the mentoring men in our lives tended to only express tears at funerals or on rare special occasions like at a daughter’s wedding. Therefore, tears were relegated to infrequent and often confusing emotional expressions.

Year after year, we have stuffed our true feelings into the deep self-made dungeons until only a national crisis will breach its guarded gate.

Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that “unshed tears become a stagnant pool that pollutes our soul.” As a result, now we know that stuffing our emotions has detrimental effects on relationships, especially with our wives and children.

Moreover, it keeps us from being honest with ourselves and others. We often mask our hurt and potential tears with anger because anger helps us keep a lid on our emotions, maintain “manly” control, and allow us to stifle any tear.

But it doesn’t have to and shouldn’t be that way.

Not that we need to become a bunch of blubbering basket cases, but we do need to be courageous enough to express our true feelings to our family and those closest to us.

Tears represent the heart and the essence of what makes us human. To put a lock and key on our emotions is to bury a crucial part of who we are.

When we don’t allow ourselves to dig deep into our emotions, it robs our relationships of true intimacy and growth born out of shared feelings.

The tears shed by our wives and children, and especially those of our daughters, represent and express:

• A crucial part of who they are

• A truly transparent heart

• Happiness, frustration, hurt, connection, learning, attachment, broken hearts, joy, and emotional overload

The language of tears is often saying: “I need you to stop and spend some time with me,” “Share this moment with me,” or “Don’t feel like you have to fix anything, just hold me while my heart heals.”

That is the truth that our tears tell; they represent the heart’s most profound thoughts and feelings.

That’s the truth I challenge all men, young and old, to embrace.

Even if your daughters don’t know how to tell you this directly, they want you to share your heart’s thoughts and feelings. Not just on special occasions and not necessarily every day, but consistently, honestly, and openly in our homes. Allow this honest expression of emotion to draw you closer to your daughters; stop burying an essential part of who you are.

Learning a new language is challenging, but well worth the work. Learning the language of tears can bring you closer to your daughter, as well as your family, spouse, and all of your children.

And it can help you be more honest with yourself. Every challenge has its risks, but with great risk also comes great reward. Are you courageous enough to embrace this challenge? I hope so, and so do your daughters.

Randell Turner, Ph.D. is an author, counselor, and a pioneer in the men’s and fatherhood movement. He has dedicated over 20 years in working with men who feel broken, rejected, isolated, and lonely because of their struggles with “intimacy ignorance.” Randell lives in Wisconsin and has two daughters and seven grandchildren. For more information, check out his website: TransformingFamilies.org.

Why I'm Thankful for Jay's Life and Legacy

After my last blog on leaving a legacy, I received so many emails from you dads that I decided to continue with that theme.

Here’s an observation I’ve made over time: You can tell a lot about the soul of a man by the way he speaks of his children.

And you can tell even more about the soul of a man by the way his children speak of him.

Maybe it’s because of my profession where I have the privilege of getting up close to heart stories or maybe it's because I'm a daughter myself, but the unarguable truth is that when a daughter knows she is loved by her dad, it shows.

I guess you could say that her face tells the story.

When I meet a father who intensely loves his daughter, my spirit dances. I smile and celebrate when hearing their stories. I even find myself flashing forward as I envision her as a confident, clear-headed woman who believes she can change the world, in large part due to the forever investment her dad has made.

I guess you could say that my face tells the story.

Today I want to highlight the profound life and legacy of my friend, Jay McKenney, a dad whose life told the story of sacrificial, fierce, committed love.

Jay battled an aggressive form of cancer for over a decade, and in January of 2021 his suffering ended when he transitioned from earth to heaven, leaving behind his wife Allison and two daughters, Macy and Ava.

At first glance he may have seemed like any ordinary father. But if you look closer, Jay will inspire you to never again take for granted even one day that you have with your daughters. For all throughout his excruciating battle, Jay remained committed to making sure they knew how much he treasured them.

Even as his body was failing, Jay showed love and support for his daughters, leaving them with forever memories. While his presence cannot be replaced in their lives, he took advantage of every opportunity to ensure that he left a love deposit.

I guess you could say that his legacy tells the story.

I’ll always remember the day he was my in-studio guest as we recorded an interview on my radio program, The Dad Whisperer. Jay wrote me early that morning because he found out that Ava was getting an award at school and said he needed to be there. He was willing to change his plans to surprise his daughter on her momentous day.

Another way that Jay’s fathering example touched my life was to see how he made sure to be present at Macy’s track meets, cheering her on from the sidelines. He knew he wouldn’t always be there in person, which is why he invested his time when he could so she would always remember he was there.

I guess you could say that his presence told the story.

I once asked Jay how he fathered differently after his diagnosis. Here’s what he said:

“Sometimes I think in some areas I’m less patient. If the conflict is about something trivial, I find myself having an internal dialogue about what’s really important in life, the big stuff, and how this isn’t it. So the challenge for me is to get to the heart of the matter in the trivial conflicts, and to find a way to love more in the way I handle them. Because even if the conflict is trivial, me loving them well through it is not.”

His response prompted me to then ask: As a father who is facing his own mortality in ways beyond what many have faced, is there anything you would say to other dads that you’ve discovered these past couple of years?

“From the moment you wake up, you are getting messages sent to you from the outside. The majority of them that say that you need to do something more, buy something more, have something more, and if you don’t you just aren’t quite succeeding. Your daughters are getting those same messages. From social media, from advertisements, even from friends and teachers. We, as their fathers, have the best chance to consistently send a better message, louder and more consistent than the others: That they are completely loved, now. That they are fully enough in your eyes simply because they exist and they are your daughter. They need to hear it, they need to know it, they need to feel it.”

Jay had a tribe of thousands on Facebook who watched his life closely because he allowed us to have a front row seat to his process. We all said we wanted to live like Jay, adopting his word #contend as our own because in his death he taught us how to live.

I wonder sometimes why we have to be pressed to the end of ourselves or the end of our lives to have clarity. I watched Jay’s life and can honestly say that he purposely lived each day to it's fullest, seeing every day as a gift. He knew that each day was one more day he had to invest in his lives of his precious girls, and he never wasted an opportunity to show them he loved them.

On this Thanksgiving week, I’m grateful for the way Jay reminds us all to be thankful, not only that we are alive, but that we have today to make a difference in the lives of those we love.

Leaving a Legacy

One of the hardest things in life is facing death.

Though it’s inevitable, death never seems right, does it? It never gets easier to handle the loss and it never seems like we’ve had enough time with the ones we love. Even more, the world doesn’t ever feel the same without that person in it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately.

My husband just lost two friends to Covid-19. One was 67 with nine kids and the other, 31 and single. Then we just heard of our daughter’s boss losing his life at the age of 41 with four small children left behind. The horrific nature of their untimely deaths have shaken their families and friends to the core.

We’re all seeing that this dreaded virus is no respecter of persons. And each of us is being impacted by these tragedies in one way or another.

These stories have brought back sad memories of losing my favorite aunt to cancer a few years ago.

She’d been struggling with cancer a year and a half before she took her last breath. And although she had fought hard in the last year, she said she knew it was her time to go. I saw her in the hospital a couple of weeks prior and I held her head to my chest as we both cried. The unspoken spoken. We both knew she was nearing the end of her journey here on earth.

This happened before coronavirus invaded our world, back when we could be near those we loved as they were facing death. And hard as it was to be there in the intensity, at least my aunt and I could say goodbye to each other while saying that we’d see each other again in heaven. That brought comfort to my soul.

Now my heart aches for the different realities that are being experienced this year as a result of the pandemic. And in this season of loss, the only thing we have left here on earth are the deposits our loved ones have left on the inside of us.  

All of this has led me to ponder anew the importance of legacy. 

Of course this isn’t a new concept to any of us, but for the sake of clarity, I love the way Marelisa Fabrega defines the term legacy: "It means putting a stamp on the future, and making a contribution to future generations. People want to leave a legacy because they want to feel that their life mattered."

This leads me to honestly answer this question, and I invite you to as well:

What kind of legacy am I leaving?

The reality is that though none of us will be around forever physically, we all leave a trail behind that leads the way for the next generation. As a dad to a daughter, you will be around forever in the deposit you leave in your daughter’s life.

I would encourage you to clarify anew today what exactly you want your daughter to hold inside herself as a gift from you for the rest of her life.

• Finish this sentence below and then write it on a card that sits on your desk.

• Take a picture of what you write and look at it daily on your phone.

• Tell her what it is you want her to never forget about why you love her.

You never know when a day may be your last. Let today be the day you renew your focus to invest in your daughter’s life daily by choosing to intentionally deposit that which you want her to forever remember about you.

Be specific about how your love deposit will be expressed. And may the way you complete this sentence guide what you say and do from this day forward.

At the end of my life, if my daughter had only one thing to say about me,
I’d want it to be...