Lesson # 10 - I'm doing this for LOVE.

The top 10 most important things I have learned in the past 12 months...(Part 1).

Almost one year ago I began writing on this blog and sharing my life experiences with you.  Over 3,600 visits have logged on to these pages either by chance or on purpose, motivating me to stay true to some simple rules I wrote on my first post of August 10, 2009.  These digital pages have served me well as a place to unload, reflect, and most of all force myself to see my life in ways I never originally intended to.  Now I feel not just obligated, but intensely compelled to at the least give you what in my mind have been the most important lessons that I have learned in the past twelve months.

Lesson # 10 - I'm only doing this for LOVE.

If you search through the stories contained in all of my 142 posts a common theme surges without forcing itself on you, the reader...I'm doing this for love.  I have no hidden agenda, no ulterior motive, and much less any prize to gain by typing the contents of these pages.  In fact, I have always feared that the honest words that I seal in the context of my posts might some day come to bite me in the proverbial ass.  An angry reader, a self proclaimed seeker of justice, and even my own ex-wife could take offense to my sincere approach to putting it all on the table, as I do here today.  However, I have found one single emotion that is in itself more powerful than any fear I might have while typing away, and that emotion is love.  This is not an emotion that you can summarize in a two hour movie where the characters fall into and out of love like autumn leaves on a picnic table in the park.  Nope, this is the love that only a parent is able to express towards his children without doubt or hesitation.  If you are a parent, the kind that would do just about anything for the sake of your children to live normal and happy lives, you understand better than anyone else what I mean.

I have experienced what is surely more than half of my life, probably even two thirds of it by now.  It would serve no purpose to have learned every lesson in life's book, if in the end I would of not learned the lesson of loving a child.  Out of all of the things that you can put into your parenting toolbox, love is by far the most powerful one of all.  Because of love I am the father that I am.  This emotion that my parents threw at me freely as a child and still as an adult is the key to surviving the most difficult moments of any one's life.  I am lucky, God did me a great deed by giving me the ability to love so consistently unconditionally.  Love is in fact not only my sword but also my shield that protects me from the realities of life, which I am not exempt of experiencing, and which are more commonly than not incredibly painful and unavoidable.

What does love do for a parent?  It  recharges you from the difficult moments that come your way every day.  Rarely have I had more than one day at a time without having to deal with something hurtful, frustrating, or worst scary.  Yet at all times I feel blessed because the more I struggle, the more I love my children.  I've had great teachers in my life.  My parents are themselves the greatest symbols of love in my life, just as their parents were to them too.  My brother and two sisters are a fountain that never dries out of this nectar so sweet and special that I've needed to survive in life, without them I would of withered a long time ago.

So here I am fully aware that even though sharing with you so many beautiful and other scary moments of my life has served me well with your words of encouragement and caring ways, in the end I can safely say that what I do for my kids, I do because I love them.  Maybe someday when I am gone, a hard copy of these last 12 months will fall into their hands as a reminder of how far I had to go in order to learn to be a good father.  This is not just about what works or does not work in parenting, this is much more about how love heals and always finds a way to make things right in the end.

Dad