All too soon the garden of childhood is paved cold with the asphalt roads of adulthood. And while it is not within her power to halt this unrelenting progression, a mother can diligently guard this most precious garden and insure that the roads become gentle paths that wind through it instead of byways that kill it.

A parent holds within their hands the gift of a child to which they must expend the gift of themselves. And in such a monumental outpouring, the parent will lose both the child and the gifts given, but they will possess the far greater gift of knowing that they gave both.

The child you hold in your arms is your gift to a future that you will not see. Therefore, we must turn a blind eye to ourselves and selflessly pour the best of ourselves into our children while rigorously sifting out the worst of ourselves. And once we are utterly spent by such daring gestures, we will shockingly discover the resulting emptiness as astonishingly filled.

When she was frustrated with us Mom used to say, ‘You weren’t born in a barn!’ But the way I sometimes acted often made me wonder if I’d been born in a barn that collapsed long before I had ever gotten out of it.

If I have held a part of myself back from my children, I have obviously spent some time calculating the expense of being a father. And the fact is, a real father doesn't do that kind of math.

My Dad did nothing to elevate himself, for selflessness was a trait within himself that compelled him to live outside of himself. And while I doubt that he ever grasped the immensity of his selflessness as it was unleashed into the lives of his children, that forever unleashed life within us that is now being unleashed outside of us.