Father Figure

Today while I was at a restaurant with my family, I notice a man sitting in a booth with two young girls and a baby boy. I knew that this was a father with his three young children. My first thought was “aw they're so cute", but next that came to mind was “where is their mother?". I immediately then realize this was a father, that probably only gets to see his kids once or twice a week when he takes them out to dinner because he and their mother couldn't make things work. It honestly broke my heart. A father who truly cared and loved his kids, was on a two hour restriction that the court felt was "Fair enough". When was it ever fair for a father to only see his kids once or twice a week? Now don't get me wrong, I don't know this man or really anything about him; but I did see the way he looked at his kids. The joy in his eyes when he looked at them; the smile that reached ear to ear when his daughter called his name. It was beautiful, without him even realizing it.
The reason I wanted to talk about this moment was because the whole time I watched this father with his kids, I had a flashback. I saw myself with my siblings and my father, at our weekly dinner night. See when I was five my parents got a divorced, it was devastating! I couldn't grasp the concept, why wasn't my father walking in the front door anymore and giving a bear hug to his little girl? I'd cry when my father would drop us back off at home after his "two hours" were over, I blamed my mother for the longest time.I regret hating my mother so much as a kid for something she couldn't control.
My father was always a great dad to us, even if we may not be his “Pride and Joys" anymore. I know he still loves us because when I see him, I can tell he still has the same joy in his eyes and the smile from ear to ear.
After dinner I prayed for those three kids. I prayed asking god to not let them go through what we had to go though and that their father never loses interest in them.

Chutes and Ladders

Do you remember that childhood board game "chutes and ladders"? Where you’re trying to reach the top before everyone else just so you can say that you did it; but somewhere along the way you run into chutes, that brings you down. You get so angry at yourself like "why did you have to spin a 3!" and just like that, you lose all hope. It was hard as a kid to see your friends get ladders when you’re just get chutes, but just when you want to quit you come spin again. Right in that exact moment you land on a ladder and you fly up the board, you’re untouchable. That's how I feel about life.
In life we want to be the best and we expect some much out of ourselves as kids, but as we get older so many things get in our way from reaching our dreams. Like sex, drugs, alcohol and so on; that's our chutes. They're there to test us, to see if we are strong enough to get back up after we fall. We as humans can decided our fate (for the most part), so make a decision. Are you going to let the chutes get the best of you or are you going to climb ladders to reach your dreams?
A childhood board game I thought was just laughs and giggles actually tract and still is teaching me important life lessons.