Dads living in a rose-colored world.

TV makes fatherhood look like a joke

Movies often make dads look like plain ole idiots

But Mom ... sacred! It's become akin to "holy mother of God" status. 

Don't get me wrong. I love me some lovin' on moms. Thank you very much. 

But Dads.

A Dad and his kids... so long ago.

Not every father is an idiot.

Not every father is absent

Not every father is void of love and loving and providing.

Sadly, there are those. Too many. Absent. Unloving. Idiotic. They've missed out on so much. They have blown it. And disaster is often left in their wake.
-But there are guilty moms too-

For all the Dads who love ... Yet who's love is interpreted through the female mothering lense that culture seems to place over its view of fathering. That rose-colored filter interprets your actions and your heart, and I think that's a shame.

A dad and his girl

You are not rose-colored, you are not a Mom or deserving of judgment solely from a woman's perspective.

Don't give up Dads. You are needed, so desired, so longed for. When you're misread, please keep trying, please keep talking and expressing and doing what you do so well.

Families need more heroes that are clothed in the skin of a Dad.
Please be brave. 

Please be present.

Please be emotionally connected, even when you may feel emotionally rejected... be brave.

A grandpa, a dad and the boys

Be the doers.
Be the often silent strength, but very present safety.
Be consistent and honest and hardworking warriors-of-families that you were created to be.

And when the womanized culture screams at you to be perfect, a woman's kind of perfect, please understand its often spoken from fear, or disappointment, or even ignorance.

Lead as you were destined to lead.
Nurture like a Dad.
Teach like a father.

And don't forget to laugh and to play and to hug,

and to be a Dad.

This.