De facto: (adj) actually existing, especially when without lawful authority

There aren’t enough moms and dads in the world for all the children born to this planet.

Mainly, some of these folks who could have filled the job became weary in well-doing and fainted from the responsibility.

On this Father’s Day, I was hooked up on a Zoom call with all my “children.”

I actually fathered five boys.

One of them was killed through a hit-and-run car accident, and one was lost through a miscarriage.

But along with my three “birthers,” three other young men crossed my path. They were in the clutches of a father who was ill-suited for the position, and in danger of passing the destruction in his own life into theirs.

I had a choice.

Was I going to intervene and help the mother of these children escape the bondage, and welcome them into my household?

Or was I going to keep my nose to myself and continue my journey with my own offspring?

Life is having the humility to know that you’re insufficient while living in the arrogance of “what the hell.”

Because if you’re humble all the time, you will passively talk yourself out of anything that isn’t red-letter law. And if you’re just arrogant, without humility, you become just like the father who brought these children into peril.

So today, as I talked to these now-grown men who passed through my house, who now have families of their own, I recognize that I have become “de facto Dad” to a whole horde of people over time.

Maybe in a perfect world, they should have been with their biological parents, but since perfect never shows up…

 I did my best impersonation.