Maybe I have amnesia but I cannot recall Father's Day in recent years being so filled with negativity toward men. It is a day to celebrate the fathers who are truly daddies and appreciate them. It is not a day to devote to magnifying the fathers who are not real daddies. I will be the first to say that my status update on my personal page on facebook yesterday addressed both issues and I even surprised myself. It read as follows: Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there who play the role of daddy and make it happen for their families on a daily basis. We don't have enough of that endangered specie nowadays. For those who need to make amends, it is not too late to start. Get going!
I can't recall that ever being my focus on father's day. My focus had shifted and I didn't even realize it. And that was before I got a chance to log on for any appreciable length of time after church and actually view other folks' status updates. There were so many updates that were saying happy father's day to the single mothers and such that it made me sad and it made me think. There is a shift in our thinking because of just how bad the absence of fathers has become, especially in the African American society. I have said it before and will say it again, 70% of African American homes are single parent homes. And we know that mostly refers to homes headed by women and not the few that are the exception. That is a topic for another day but I had to throw it in there.
So, let us never forget to acknowledge and celebrate the fathers who are real daddies to their kids, whether theirs biologically or not. We appreciate the fathers who feed their kids, bathe their kids, read them bedtime stories, teach them how to ride a bike and take them to the grocery store. We say thank you to the fathers who pay the bills, who work hard every day to put a roof over their families and clothes on their bodies. We say kudos to these rare men, an endangered species and I pray that somehow in my lifetime, we will be able to turn it around so that once again, we will have a preponderance of two parent families raising balanced kids to the best of their ability; that once again, we will have the respect for men that God intended even as it says in the Bible that the man is the head of the home. May these men truly be worthy of this title. May it be easy for their women to view them as such because they have earned it.
That is my wish
That is my prayer
That in my lifetime
Things will turn around.
Hmmmmm....................
