A Slow Dad

How I want them to remember

My summer just started. Not according to the calendar, but according to our feeling of relaxation. Everything in these first weeks of summer has been so fast. And we’ve been eagerly waiting for things to feel slow. But slow hasn’t just been missing in our calendar, it has been missing in my life as a father and a husband.

My family and I just got back from two separate weeks of travel and vacation with each side of our extended family. One week for my wife’s family and one week for mine. We’ve spent a lot of time together in moving vehicles and while waiting for each other’s turn during fun activities. Despite the fact that all of us have been waiting for these weeks to come, it really doesn’t feel like we can settle and relax until the day we get back home for real. When the slow and unscheduled days can finally happen. When we can sleep in because nothing is on the calendar (no one really will, but the option is still there). Here’s what I told my wife tonight as we got home: I want my family to know that I enjoy their company and I’m happier when we spend time together.

I had plans for these two weeks of vacation. Plans to play in the sun with my kids and plans to read in the quiet to catch up and make great progress on my book list. One of those things happened and it wasn’t the reading. I took a longer book on the first trip with plans to finish it in the week and I only made it halfway through. The book was not the problem. It’s actually quite a good book that I’m excited to finish. I think I blame the circumstances, but I know deep down that it wasn’t the circumstances that prevented me from making progress. It’s hard to get up earlier than your toddler when they are sleeping in your room. But it’s even harder to do something like isolate yourself and read (even if everyone is still sleeping) when you know that these moments can’t repeat. There’s no summer vacation 2026 on repeat. If my 80 year old self were to trade places with me, would he be prioritizing a book list over smiles and sunshine? I know the answer, but the stack of work that I’ve got ahead of me is making me second guess myself.

I don’t want my family to second guess how I feel about spending the summers with them. Quite possibly the best perk of being a teacher is having the summers and other significant holidays off to recover and spend with family. So during these two weeks of travel and spending every waking moment together as a family (extended included), instead of reading and writing, I was thinking. I did not handle being a father and a husband in the way that I want to be remembered. I’ve got work to do. What I think I need to work on is slowing down. Not just for the sentimental moments and taking it all 18 summers, but having a posture of fatherhood that embraces slowness.

Slow to speak, and slow to become angry (James 1:19)

Our children are mirrors. Mirrors of our looks and mirrors of our lives. They pick up so much that they experience and echo it into their lives. The only way to improve what you see in the reflection is to fix the one whose image it is reflecting. And as I’ve been reflecting, that image is fast. Fast to anger and fast to speak. And not words that build up, but words that tear down. Words that issue harsh decrees for behaviors and situations that to which I have written the script.

“Please stop doing [INSERT BEHAVIOR HERE] to your brother or sister” could be (and often is) spoken against me with the things that I do and say to my family.

But my children are not the only children in this equation. I'm a child too. A beloved child of God, loved and saved by Jesus. And I’m a reflection of His image. A reflection that has been restored and yet awaits final restoration and fullness. A reflection that breaks the mirror’s fourth wall and works holiness on the one looking in it because of the One looking from behind it. A reflection that is slow. Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Because I have been loved with a slow and patient love, I should also love slow.

Because I have been loved with a slow and patient love, I can love slow.

So I’m going to work on loving and being slow.