My dad and I had a tradition. We would go to New London Cafe in the early morning and have breakfast together at the table by the window. He would order black coffee, I would order Harney & Sons cinnamon tea with honey. We would each look at the menu (to be socially acceptable) and then he would smile at me and say, "want to split the french toast?"
When I was younger he would ask me about school and my friends and my latest crush. As I got older it turned into conversations about dating, graduation and starter jobs. Then, in more recent years, we would discuss marriage, politics, faith, careers, kids. I have so much respect for my dad and it seemed like no matter what we talked about he always had incredibly wise advice. Dad knew a little bit about everything and a lot about loving well.
Our basement growing up was sentimentally referred to as "the hobby graveyard" because it was filled with the outcast pieces of my dad's voracious appetite for learning. An activity would peak his interest and he would methodically learn every single aspect of it. He wouldn't just play an instrument, he would learn to MAKE it. He couldn't just do paintball, he started a sponsored team. He didn't just rock climb, he guided trips. He didn't just have dogs, he trained service animals and did competitive hunt tests. He didn't just buy a new house, he designed and built it. And my gosh, he didn't just preach about love, HE LIVED IT.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
When my dad did a hobby he didn't hold out, he went ALL OUT; he understood something that has been so lost in our present culture: authentic love requires radical, hardcore investment.
If you want to leave a mark on the world, if you hunger to make an impact- listen up.
Great life is made in the everyday discipline of loving in all aspects.
We are a generation obsessed with having the most likes, the greatest number of followers, the best careers, the largest incomes, the fittest bodies, the perfect children. We have started to buy into the lie that if you don't have the numbers, the pictures, the grades, the wins, that you don't make a difference. That somehow these things define the life of a winner. But friends, you will never know the difference that the smallest act of generosity can have on a life.
My dad believed in exponential growth. That an act of love towards two people, who in turn do an act of love towards two more people, who love two more people, who love two more people, etc. can change the world. That it is in these daily practices, these regular investments, that we build a life characterized by greatness.
To my dad "want to split the french toast?" wasn't a profound question. But to me... it meant the world. For years he chose to take me out to breakfast, chose to listen to me ramble, chose to give up half of that magnificent, fluffy, golden french toast on his plate. He chose to love me in everyday, ordinary ways. And because of that I am forever changed.
This father's day my heart breaks that I can't go out to breakfast with my dad and ask him all about the things in life that feel too big for me to handle but in the most important ways my dad is still with me in the legacy of everyday, ordinary, extraordinary love that he left me.