In my weekly Crosswalk devotional, I wrote about how my Dad’s insistence on making me work helped mold me into a man:
It was 6 am and while the rest of my friends were sleeping in, dreaming of two weeks filled with Nintendo, cookies, and hanging out, I was putting on every layer of clothes I could find.
I was getting up and getting dressed against my will, forced to face a frigid environment with no bathrooms, no Christmas cookies, and hard, dirty labor. I didn’t like it one bit.
But I was doing it because my father made me do it. Yes, while every other junior high kid wasted away his Christmas break I was toiling on some construction site alongside my dad, a licensed plumber who owned his own business.
Dad had this antiquated idea that boys should learn how to work hard at a young age. I thought it was cruel and unusual punishment. But the older I have gotten, I now realize the treasure Dad gave me in teaching me through his example and his prodding the value of hard work. Dad was molding me into a man and I didn’t even know it.
I’m thirty-four years old now. I have four children of my own. I still hate working on construction sites, but the lessons of hard work have stayed with me. As a pastor, a writer, a father, a husband, I now see that Dad gave me something that few young men are privileged to have received.
Dad taught me how to be a man.
You can read the whole thing here: Time to Man Up.