Being A Dad

I think that Kelly's Post titled 'Ow!' was the greatest complement I have ever had. This is why. It comes from a General Conference talk entitled "The Hands of the Fathers", by Jeffrey R. Holland

"As a father, I wonder if I and all other fathers could do more to build a sweeter, stronger relationship with our sons and daughters here on earth. Dads, is it too bold to hope that our children might have some small portion of the feeling for us that the Divine Son felt for His Father? Might we earn more of that love by trying to be more of what God was to His child? In any case, we do know that a young person’s developing concept of God centers on characteristics observed in that child’s earthly parents"

This General Conference was in April of 1999. I was just gaining a deep love for general conference, and this talk , for some reason or another hit me like a load of bricks. It was perhaps the first or second time I had gone to the Saturday Morning Session, my parents always worked on Saturdays growing up so we only went on Sunday of General Conference, so maybe that's why it stuck out. I remember thinking "I want to be the kind of dad that will help my son know the Eternal Father." I understood that I would be a dad one day and hoped that I would be enough like God the Father to help my children form a proper idea of God. Not to say that I think I'm anything like God but I do feel that in developing Christlike characteristics we not only become better parents for our children, but we become for them the first type or shadow of Christ and thus the Father (see The Grandeur of God, Jeffrey R. Holland) that they observe in life, and certainly the most intimate, that is, until the point that they develop (or redevelop rather) their personal relationship with God.