The weight of fatherhood is heavy, but it’s a weight we were blessed to carry. It is no longer I… Me… Mine… It has become ours. Our children have turned us into more; and now one set of worries becomes many more sets of worries, and even after that… there’s even more. But we also accumulate more love… more strength, more hope… more laughter… more purpose, and even more… life.
Fatherhood is a gift that keeps gaining value as time marches on; for a newborn swaddled in a blanket; to a toddler running with the wind; to a child filled with a curiosity for learning with excitement; to the hormonal teen cycling through moods like seasons, willing to fight you to the end; to the graduating students and the dropout lost amidst their way; to the ones who find success and to the ones who seem to throw it all away… a child’s a blessing all the same; and don’t forget about the child who has their own blessing on the way.
If we want to invest in our future, we have to invest in the children God blessed us with, because life is like a flickering flame, and once the flame goes dim and the shadows it once cast dance their last dance, only the memory remains of that light, and that memory carries on in the minds and hearts of those who were touched by the hope of more. Let’s be givers, not takers; let’s saturate the lives of our children with the eternal joy found only in God’s love; let’s be like our Father…
— Vinnie Incarcerated in Texas
Beautiful! God bless Vinnie and his children as He fathers them from behind the walls.