Father Yourself First – Glen Henry (1)

I made this offhand comment: “I don’t know one dude who wants to be like his dad. I can’t think of a single person who would say that.” Several of the other guys agreed with me, but a friend named Phil said, “Man, if I could be half the man my dad is, I would be successful.”

We all looked at him and said, “Word?” He said, “Yeah, man, I would be. My dad was honorable to my mom. He was a great father. He stayed at home. He did my sister’s hair. He played with us.” I was blown away by that. My wife and I know Phil’s dad from church.

His name is Mike, and he’s been a mentor for us. So the next time I saw Mike, I walked up to him and said, “Hey, man, just so you know, I was talking to Phil the other day, and I was saying I don’t know anybody who wants to be like their dad. And Phil said if he can be half the dad you are, he’ll be a success.” Mike is one of those dudes whose face you can’t read when you’re talking to him, so I didn’t know what was coming.

All of a sudden, he started crying. Not just little tears, either, but snot-bubble sobs right there in front of me. He was so moved that his son had that opinion of him. It was as if he was seeing the return on his investment over all those years. The sight moved me.

I’ll never forget that reaction. When I talk to Mike now, I ask him about parenting. I want to know what he instilled in his three children and how he lives as a father. What values did he teach? How did he live his life within the home?

I want to learn what he did right because I want that same return on investment in my own children. Earlier I mentioned that fatherhood is good work. Work should lead to reward. That’s the whole point; it’s meant to accomplish something over the long term.

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings: Change of font size and line height Change of background and font colours Change of font Change justification Text to speech Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9781400252558 OceanofPDF.com Copyright Father Yourself First Copyright © 2025 by Glen Henry All rights reserved.

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• Unique ID: 10b14ee7f8928f46
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 3,263,882 bytes (3.113 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781400252558, 9781400253982
• Pages: 158
• Language: English (en)

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