It’s hard to believe Father’s Day is here again.  Where did the year go?  This year, my daughter started driving, and my nine year old son has continued to become more and more adventuresome.  These days, I’m feeling an increased pressure to become more intentional in my time with them, since days, months, and years seem to be picking up speed.

I just finished one of the best weekends I have had all year.  It is Tuesday, the day following Memorial Day weekend.  Friday night and Saturday morning I went kayaking with one of my best friends, his college aged son, and another college aged kid from a youth group on the Buffalo River in Arkansas.  We enjoyed a slow day of paddling along majestic bluffs towering 500 ft above the river, navigating around the rocks in the rushing water, taking hikes away from the river to waterfalls, and a significant amount of joking, laughing and ribbing each other as our kayaks tipped.  As the sun set on Saturday night, I was refreshed and in a different state of mind.

After church the next day, I took my son Andrew to a stream just a few minutes away from our home here in Branson.  As we drove there we decided that we had three things on our list to accomplish.  In order of importance there were 1) Andrew / Daddy time 2) Have fun walking in the stream, and 3) Try to catch a fish.  We did very well. Andrew and I talked and laughed, held hands as we walked through the rapids between the pools, and we even caught a couple of perch.  (Mind you, the perch were no longer than about three inches.)  As it turns out, driving through the mud to get there was the highlight of the trip for Andrew.

That night about 25 kids from our church’s youth group came over and played sardines (a form of hide and seek) in our neighborhood.  I found myself hiding with my daughter, the youth pastor, and some of her friends in our neighbor’s yard. We taunted the searchers by calling their cell phones the entire time they were looking for us, until well past midnight.

On Monday, our whole family joined some friends at their dock on Table Rock Lake and shared a meal, rested, caught perch, and took turns riding a Sea Doo.  We returned home last night to dinner and kids’ homework, still being done at the last possible moment (errrr!), but at the end of the evening I had a great conversation with my daughter about dating and relationships.  I’m so proud of her, and I had an opportunity to say those words to her once again.

This morning as I drove to work my wife called me.  She had just taken Andrew to school and she was sharing with me that Andrew was talking about how much fun he had this weekend.  Right now I’m on cloud nine and I feel like a million bucks.  Now before you jump to any conclusions about me, sadly, I don’t have weekends like this very often.  Andrew is probably talking about this weekend because it is in stark contrast to most of his weekends.  What is amazing to me is that the stuff that mattered the most to him took so little effort and cost all of about $20.  We were away from video games, TV, and the IPOD.  Instead, we got to explore, scare the neighbor’s dog by hiding in their yard, chase crawdads and talk about silly stuff. And, oddly enough, we connected with each other!

I’m not sure what was different about this weekend, but I know I took the time to be fully recharged, and approached the remainder of the weekend in a different mindset.  I really wasn’t Super Dad this weekend but I really was Dad, and that’s what my kids need the most from me.  Just Dad.  It’s a lesson I learn over and over and over again.

Dads, my hope for you this weekend is that you are able to recharge, and do something simple with your kids.  Regardless of their age, I just encourage you to hang out with them.  Do something silly, laugh, joke and connect.  Talk about nothing of significance unless they bring it up. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, because all they really want and need from you is … just you, being Dad.  You’ll make their day, and at the same time you’ll walk away feeling energized and refreshed.