Today I started reading a book, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, with a buddy of mine, who is also a dad.

Just a thought: It is a great experience to read and discuss good books with other people. If you have a good book, don’t keep it to yourself… share the journey with a friend!

A few quotables from chapter one:

• “Fathers, more than anyone else, set the course for a daughter’s life.”

• “If you fully understood just how profoundly you can influence your daughter’s life, you would be terrified, overwhelmed, or both. Boyfriends, brothers, even husbands can’t shape her character the way you do. You will influence her entire life because she gives you an authority she gives no other man.”

• “Fathers, you need to know that your daughters are growing up in a culture that is yanking the best right out of them. […] Fathers are what stand between daughters and this toxic world.”

• “When you are with her, whether you eat dinner and do homework together or even when you are present but don’t say much, the quality and stability of her life – and, you’ll find, your own – improves immeasurably. Even if you think the two of you operate on different planes, even if you worry that time spent with her shows no measurable results, even if you doubt you are having a meaningful impact on her, the clinical fact is that  you are giving your daughter the greatest of gifts. And you’re helping yourself too – research shows that parenting may increase a man’s emotional growth and increase his feelings of value and significance. Your daughter will view this time spent with you vastly differently than you do.”

Oh man… this last line hit me! Sometimes, when I’m on a date or playing or reading, etc. with “The Ladies” I feel torn… kind of like, “Man, I need to be doing church work” or “Big people stuff.” Sometimes I wonder stupid stuff like, “How am I going to change the world by reading Dr. Seuss?”

Maybe I am changing the world by dating, or playing or reading Dr. Seuss with “The Ladies”. Maybe I’m changing the world for my little girls.