Ken Fite

I’ve been in the church for most of my life, so I must have heard the Parable of the Talents a million times by now. If it’s new to you, I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version of the story.

A master (who represents God) sets out on a long journey and puts three servants (who represent you and me) in charge of his estate of eight talents. A talent was a unit of measurement of about 80 pounds of silver or gold. Some think it may have been the equivalent of a million dollars in today’s currency – that’s a lot of Benjamins. So an estate of eight talents was kind of a big deal.

To one servant, the master gave five talents. To another, he gave two talents. And to the third, he gave one talent. Each of the men was given a talent according to their specific skills and ability.

Because even one talent would have been the equivalent of a million dollars, I can completely understand the third man’s decision on what he decided to do with the talent that he was given.

While the first man put his five talents to work and doubled his money, as did the second man who did the same, the third man was too worried about how to use the talent that he had been given.

So he decided to bury it in the ground where it would be safe.

The third man knew that if his talent was buried, it wouldn’t have the opportunity to multiply. But it also meant that he wouldn’t misuse what he was given, and that’s what mattered more to him.

When the master returned, he was pleased with the first two men.

They each doubled what they had been given and were invited to celebrate with the master. But the third man was called wicked and lazy for not even putting the talent in the bank to earn interest. I’m pretty sure I remember something about gnashing of teeth. It didn’t end well for that guy.

While the word talent refers to a large sum of money, I think talent really refers to the gifts that we’ve been given here on Earth. When I think about the parable, a few things jump out at me.

We’re not created equally.
When it comes to gifts, we’re not created equally. Some people have a gift of leadership while others are good worker bees. Some have a talent for speaking while others prefer to write. While we can feel sorry for the third man who was only given one talent compared to the other two men, we need to change our focus and stop comparing our abilities to other people’s. Because we’re not measured against what we’re given, we’re measured by what we do with what we’ve been given.

The master didn’t give specific instructions.
The master never really instructed the men to do anything specific with the talents that they were given. He didn’t tell them to go out and multiply their talents. But he also didn’t tell them to preserve their talents or warn the men not to lose what they were given. He just gave them the talents and stepped away to see what they would do with them. I think a lot of the time, we know what our unique gifts are, but we’re waiting around for specific instructions on how to use them. Maybe there are no instructions. Maybe the master is just waiting to see what we’re going to do with our talents.

You have a responsibility to do something with your talent.
Recognizing that you have a talent isn’t enough, you have a responsibility to do something with it. Using your talent may feel risky, but a life without risk isn’t much of a life at all. If you’ve decided to bury your talent, you’re not only robbing yourself of doing what you may have been called to do, but you’re also robbing the world of the blessings that your gifts would have given them, too.

For far too long, I’ve been the third man. I’ve looked at what others have and wished many times that I was them. And because I didn’t have their gifts, I decided to dismiss and bury my own.

But we’ve all been given exactly what we need to follow our calling. We’re not created equally when it comes to gifts and talents, and that’s a good thing. We need to realize that there are no instructions. It’s up to us to discover our talents and use them for good. When we get nervous about doubling down and using our talents, we need to remember that obedience bears fruit.

There are lots of people who will tell us what we’re supposed to do and who we’re supposed to be.

If you let them, they can talk you into doing just about anything other than the very thing that you were meant to do. The challenge is discovering what that purpose is and doing something about it.

You were created for a purpose. It’s time to dig up your talent and find the courage to act on it.

I’ve been waiting on God to answer a prayer of mine for a long time. He hasn’t yet. And the waiting can be enough to drive anyone mad. On my way out of the house the other day, I ruffled my boys’ hair and kissed Missy goodbye. She stopped me at the door and said, “How you wait matters.”

“What?” I asked, a little confused. “How you wait matters,” she said again. I just nodded and left.

She’s right, I thought as I drove off. It’s just so easy to get discouraged when you have to wait a long time to see a promise in your heart come to pass. You start to feel completely helpless.

It can take a ridiculous amount of time for something we’re waiting on to become a reality. In the process, we can become bitter or we can become better, depending on how we handle the waiting.

And if I’m honest with myself, I start to become bitter. But if I listen to the wisdom of my wife (as we all should!) there might be something there. Here’s a few reasons why Missy just might be right:

1. When we’re forced to wait, it reveals our motives. Waiting forces us to slow down and think through our true intentions. It reveals why we want something to come to pass. If we’re honest enough to examine our true motives, we can better understand if what we’re hoping for is really going to be what’s best for us in the end. Sometimes it won’t be.
2. The longer we wait, the more we appreciate. We don’t value things that are just handed to us with little work. They quickly lose their shine. But the longer we wait in faith that we’re going to see our breakthrough, the more we appreciate it when our hope becomes reality.
3. Waiting builds our character. I know, nobody likes this one. We all hate the “it’s building your character” spiel. If you want to annoy someone, tell them not to worry when they have a problem. Say that it’s building their character and slap them on the back. They’ll love that. But the truth is that spiritual growth happens only when we’re completely dependent on God and one of the best tools He has is for us to depend on Him for a promise to come to pass.

Here’s the deal. Whatever you’re going through right now probably won’t matter that much a few years down the road. But how you handle the time that you spend waiting will absolutely matter.

Who we become while we wait just might be the best part of waiting. In Romans it says that hope that is seen is not hope. If you have hope for something, you are waiting. It’s in the waiting that we have the opportunity to become transformed and how we wait can change us from the inside out.

Yes, it will teach us patience (sorry). Yes, it will help us appreciate things. But it will CHANGE who we are, CHANGE how we handle the next challenge, and CHANGE our relationship with God.

Maybe that’s the point.

Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards. If you’ve been waiting for a prayer to be answered, take some time to look back on your life at similar situations that you’ve been through. Remember how you felt while you were in the messy middle and realize that how you wait matters. It just might be the most important part. And know that His blessings are always worth waiting for.

I wouldn’t consider myself to be a “tree guy.” I’m not even sure if that’s a thing. But, I happened to be reading an article on sequoias that caught my eye while scrolling my Facebook news feed the other night and I learned a few interesting things about these trees that I thought I would share.

If you’re not up to date on your sequoias, let me catch you up.

Sequoias are often referred to as nature’s skyscrapers. If you’ve never seen a sequoia, Google it. They’re big. Really big. Sequoias can grow to over 30 feet in diameter and 250 feet tall. In the United States, they’re found in northern California and can live to be over 3,000 years old.

While going down the mighty sequoia rabbit hole, a.k.a. wasting time while my boys took a bubble bath, I noticed two lessons about the trials of life that we could learn from these amazing trees.

Don’t just grow deeper, grow wider.

We’re often told when we go through the storms of life that we need deep roots. That may be true. But, the sequoia doesn’t have deep roots. Instead, these mighty trees become so mighty because while most roots grow deep, their roots grow wide. One of the secrets of the sequoia is that if the tree is to have a chance in reaching its full potential and weathering the storms that come its way, it can’t grow alone. If a sequoia grows by itself, it will topple over. It doesn’t stand a chance.

But, when sequoias grow with other sequoias, something amazing happens just below the surface – their roots that grow wide will reach out and look for the roots of other nearby sequoias. And when it finds another sequoia’s roots, they begin to intertwine and interlock, making them stronger than they would have been by themselves and allowing them to grow taller than any other tree.

If we want to weather the storms of life, we must be intentional with creating relationships with others. Establish deep roots, know who you are, but if we want to stand tall we must go wide.

The fires of life are required for future growth.

As the evening wore on and I dove deeper into my reading of dendrology (the study of trees – you’re welcome), I discovered another secret of how the sequoia grows so large and lives so long. The tree’s bark is fire-resistant and protects the trees from the inevitable fires of life. Because these trees live so long, at some point, lightening will strike and cause a fire in a sequoia grove. But, because the tree’s bark contains tannic acid, the same stuff used in fire extinguishers, it protects the tree from burning up when the flames come into contact with the trunks of these trees.

While the tree has a way to protect itself from being consumed by fire, it still needs a way to create life. The cones that fall to the ground don’t open on their own, they must be dried out. For years, people tried to prevent fires until they realized that they were actually preventing new sequoias from growing. That’s because fire is one of the only things that will dry up the cones and allow the seeds to germinate. While a grown sequoia is protected from the flames by its bark, fire is a necessity for the tree to be able to give life to something new. It clears the underbrush, allowing more sunlight to reach the ground, and the ashes make good fertilizer for new sequoias to grow.

While we like to avoid the fires in our lives, because trials aren’t comfortable, we need to hold onto the things that will protect us and keep us from being consumed by the fire. And we need to realize that the fires we endure are often the very thing we need in order to give life to something new.

Of the many things I’ve ever written, my dad’s obituary has to have been the hardest.

I wrote it at my mom’s house, bleary-eyed and tired from a week of spending time at my dad’s side in the hospital, rushing my mom around from place to place, and making funeral arrangements.

When I finished writing the obituary, I sent a copy to the funeral home, my pastor, and my family. Then I stared at the words that I wrote for a long time, not feeling good about them, at all.

They were accurate. They were short and sweet, like an obituary should be. But they didn’t tell the real story about my dad. I started to think about the years of his life, May 9th, 1931 – January 2nd, 2016, and my eyes focused on one thing: the dash between the years that represented his life.

That’s where the real story lived.

Last week I wrote about my dad’s death. This week, I’m writing about his life.

At Christmas dinner, he sat across from me and told me the same story he told so many times before, about a bad boss he once had at a Bank he worked at. After the man called him into his office and accused him of having bad credit, which he didn’t – it was a mistake, my dad told his boss off, the door slipping from his hand as he left his office, causing the entire glass room to shake so badly that everyone in the office stared at the boss as my dad walked off. We laughed at the story. The guy never questioned my dad again. My dad taught me to stand up for myself.

When my dad was a kid, he got a phone call from “the phantom” who wanted to fight him out in the woods “in twenty minutes.” He didn’t hesitate at all. He put on his cape, told his mom he would be right back, and went to the designated spot to rumble with the mystery caller. He ended up standing on a rotting tree stump which gave way and hurt his arm as he fell to the ground, but managed to scare “the phantom” who ran away. He never found out who the phantom really was. My dad taught me to be courageous.

A few years later, my dad and a friend somehow figured out how to rig their own broadcast radio station in his parent’s basement. What was supposed to be used for fun became a full-blown radio station as my dad climbed the tree in the backyard and brought an antenna with him, making his homemade setup the most powerful radio station in Anniston, Alabama, causing the FCC to knock on his parent’s door and make him shut the whole thing down. My dad taught me to take risks.

One day, while walking through the woods, my dad heard someone calling for help. He walked closer and came upon a cliff and saw a kid hanging off the side and holding onto a root, desperate for someone to help him climb up before he couldn’t hold on any longer. My dad saw the huge drop off and although he was scared, he found a way to save that kid’s life. When my dad pulled him up, the kid didn’t even say thank you – he just ran off, happy to be alive, but never to be seen again. My dad taught me that everyday people can become someone’s hero, if they choose to be.

When my dad was in the Air Force in the early 50s, he decided to drive home to Alabama one Christmas when he had some time to be away and a friend of his and fellow airman, who happened to be African American, was headed the same way. My dad offered him a ride and along the way, decided to stop at a bar. His friend said he didn’t think that would be a good idea because it wasn’t the “right kind of bar” and he was right. Although the bartender gave them a hard time, my dad insisted that he give his friend a drink. My dad taught me to stand up for what is right.

In the 70s, he went undercover with his cousin, the famous writer and journalist Jack Nelson, to investigate the KKK for a story his cousin was writing for the L.A. Times. Although he was just along for the ride, it was a thrill to be a part of that, and he created a memory and a good story worthy of being told over and over again. My dad taught me to do things, even if they scare you.

Looking through pictures for the funeral, I couldn’t help but notice how happy my dad was whenever he was around children. My niece created a wonderful video tribute to my dad and my favorite picture, one I’ve never seen, or maybe I just never noticed before, is of my dad holding me and looking so proud to be my father. He seems to have the same expression in every picture with his kids. I remember him sticking his tongue out at little children while in line at the grocery store and making goofy faces to try to make them laugh. What used to embarrass me now warms my heart, knowing just how much he loved little kids. My dad taught me to love my children.

I’ll treasure these stories and what he taught me in my heart for the rest of my life.

But this isn’t really about my dad. It’s about you. And it’s about me.

It’s the dash between the years that represents every challenge, every victory, and every story that we create while we live our lives here on Earth. The dash is a little character, easy to overlook, but represents our character, and who we are as people and how we live our days. It represents the decisions that we make and how we respond to the many everyday problems that we face.

The good news is that if you’re reading this, it’s not too late. You’re still living the dash. You can decide – right now – to pay more attention to your life and become more intentional about it.

That’s why I write. It’s my way of making sense of the world. It’s my way of keeping myself accountable. It’s my way of leaving something meaningful behind. My experiences. My stories.

When I have a tough decision to make, I’ll try to remember my dad, and I’ll try to understand that when it comes to decisions, sometimes the best choice is the one that will make for the best story.

Because it’s in the stories that we live and tell to others that leaves our legacy. It’s the stories that will forever live inside of the dash. And it’s the stories that will keep those we love in our hearts.

My dad went to be with the Lord last Saturday.

After what I think was probably his first helicopter ride ever as the doctors rushed to try to save his life, and several days in another hospital, he finally let go. In 38 years, I never heard my dad say that he felt sick. Not once. He was so strong and someone that I will always look up to. My hero.

The next day, after we had called all of our family and my dad’s friends, I left my parent’s house and drove the thirty-five minutes home. I had one more person that I needed to tell. My son Kyle.

Noah is only three. He wouldn’t understand, I figured, but Kyle is seven. He needed to know about what happened and I was very worried about how he would handle the news. He and Noah had visited my dad in the hospital a few days prior. We knew from some friends that it might be a good “in between” step. The boys each drew rainbows, which we taped to the wall of the hospital’s ICU. They kept asking why Paw Paw wasn’t waking up and shushing me every time I’d speak louder than they thought I should. They didn’t know the truth yet, that Paw Paw wasn’t going to wake up.

I drove home in silence for the first time in ages and I thought about what I would say to Kyle. How do you tell a little boy that his grandfather is gone? I wasn’t sure how he would take the news.

After I got home, the boys and I played and wrestled for about half an hour. Then, my wife and I sat on the floor and told Kyle that we needed to talk with him. “I wanted to let you know that Paw Paw went to heaven,” I said and Kyle gave me a look that said that he wasn’t sure how to react.

“How do you know that he’s in heaven?” he asked and my wife Missy and I looked at each other and then explained that we knew that’s where Paw Paw was because Jesus was in his heart.

For a brief moment, Kyle looked like he was going to cry. I saw his lip start to quiver almost as badly as mine. He was almost there. But, then Kyle did something completely unexpected.

He started smiling. He was happy. I think he may have even done a little dance. My heart sank as I realized that maybe he didn’t understand what I was telling him and I was going to have to be more direct. But, Kyle beat me to the punch by asking if that meant that Paw Paw died and I said Yes.

I waited for tears, but they never came. Only more smiles. Kyle was overjoyed to know that my dad was no longer in pain. He was so happy. It’s not the reaction I expected, but it should have been.

In Proverbs, it says to “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” I should have had more faith in my son, knowing that my church, my wife, and I have been talking about heaven all of his life and that when you get to go there, it’s a good thing.

May we all have the faith of a little seven-year-old boy. No more sadness. No more tears. Only joy.

May we all have the courage to believe that there’s something more after this life is over.

May we all smile, laugh, and maybe do a little dance when we lose someone we loved so much.

I was very proud of Kyle. And I know that my father was as well. I hugged Kyle and told him that I loved him. I ruffled his hair and patted him on the back twice. Once for me. Once for Paw Paw.

I’ll miss you, Dad, and will never forget you. I love you, Pal.

And I know that I’ll see you again, because Jesus is in my heart, too.

I just went to the dentist for my six-month checkup. Monica likes to ask me open-ended questions whenever she cleans my teeth which is probably the most awkward thing in the world. I’d much prefer a blink once for Yes, blink twice for No routine. In my mind, I sound like a wounded whale when I try to answer her while she’s poking around with a tarter scraper inside of my mouth.

So this time, I decided to try to avoid – or at least delay – the bi-annual awkwardness by preempting Monica with a question of my own, just as she was getting started.

“Are your kids ready for Christmas?” I asked and closed my eyes, pleased with myself for buying a minute or two of non-awkward whale response time.

Monica said that they were but told me that she was struggling with her daughter, Rose.

She wanted everything she saw on TV. Monica tried explaining that Rose had a lot of toys already, much more than other, less fortunate kids, but the little girl wasn’t buying it. She saw an ad for Barbie’s dream house and wanted it. She saw a commercial for the new game Pie Face and wanted it. If it was on TV, she wanted it! Rose’s Christmas list was becoming never-ending.

And her mom decided to do something about it.

So she decided to drive her daughter to the mall to pick an angel to adopt from the angel tree. Each angel on the tree lists a child’s first name, age, gender, and sizes. It’s a program sponsored by the Salvation Army to help less fortunate kids get the clothes that they need for Christmas.

When Rose saw the tree and her mom explained what they were doing, the little girl stared at it for a long time. Monica told me how proud she was, watching her daughter start to understand that each angel on the tree represented a little boy or girl that would soon have Christmas presents.

Then her daughter walked up to her mom and said, “How can I get my name on that tree?”

We laughed and I mumbled some nonsensical comment that sounded like my whale had now become beached and Monica agreed with me and started polishing my teeth. I wondered if dental hygienist training included lessons in speech pathology so they could understand their patients.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that conversation. This morning, I woke up before the boys who would soon be ravaging through the many presents under the Christmas tree and I started to think about the reality of how throughout the year, but especially on Christmas, we all have our own “trees” that we want to put our names on. They may come in many forms, but we all have them.

There’s the tree that many people have who are still waiting to find the right person to spend the rest of their lives with before they can be happy.

There’s the tree of having a better home to raise a family in, one with a bigger porch or a fenced-in yard or something else that we say we need to be happy.

There’s the tree of seeing a dream come true, whether it’s becoming a full-time writer, or a stay-at-home mommy, or anything in between. A tree we focus on too much sometimes that it keeps us from being happy in the moment.

There’s the tree of wanting a newer car, or better clothes, or a less stressful job, or more money, or… the kinds of trees we all desperately yearn for is like Rose’s Christmas list. Endless.

What we fail to realize is that just like real trees, every tree in our lives has a different season.

The new home you just had to have isn’t as perfect as you thought it would be once you move in. The dream job you wanted eventually becomes not-so-dreamy. What once shined brightly becomes old and dull after a while. The thing we had to have in order to be happy gets replaced by another tree that will really make us happy if we can just put our name on it and call it ours.

Only it doesn’t. Not, really.

Understand that the trees in our lives are only temporary. They don’t last forever.

This Christmas, try to focus on the things that really matter. Spend time with people that you love. Pay attention to the look on your kid’s face when they open their presents. Enjoy today, no matter what you may be going through. Know that struggles come and go and waiting until everything in your life is perfect to be happy is time wasted.

And know that there’s only one tree that we should care about having our names pinned to, the one tree that won’t fade away. The one whose birth we celebrate today.

Merry Christmas.

I almost didn’t write this post today. Not because I overslept. Not because I had writer’s block.

I almost didn’t write this morning because my blog was down. With bleary eyes, desperately waiting on my coffee to brew, and adrenaline starting to flow through me because I only have a few hours until my Saturday morning posts get emailed to my readers, I contacted my hosting company to understand why I was getting a connection timeout error. Tech support told me that they were aware of the problem and were working on it as fast as they could. There was no ETA.

But how will I write my blog? What about my readers who expect a new post today? I thought.

So I almost gave up. I was this close to walking away and saying, Oh well. Nobody will notice. Maybe I’ll just write it tonight or tomorrow or whenever the thing comes back online. But then I remembered something a friend told me once. A memory that comes to mind very often, actually, any time I get myself in a situation like this or have a difficult either/or decision that I have to make.

Think in zebra.

In college, my friend Tony used to tell me this all of the time. Whenever I’d have a tough decision, should I do A or B, Tony would tell me to find a way to do both. “Think in zebra,” he’d say and it annoyed the bejesus out of me. I didn’t like the advice back then. Things seemed to be more black and white to me than my friend could understand. But eventually, I came around and realized that he was right. And when that happened, I started applying the advice to every aspect of my life.

When I wanted to go back to school to check off the goal of getting an MBA, even though I had a newborn and a demanding job that would have been terrific excuses to put my dream on hold, I almost put it off as something to do later when the kids were grown. But instead, my amazing wife offered to watch our son so I could spend hours studying and insisted that I knock it out while I could and I did, taking more credits than I thought I could handle but ended up being just fine.

When my alma mater sent me a rejection letter in the mail, I was devastated. But I thought in zebra and enrolled in East Carolina’s online MBA program instead and I had to laugh when I found out where my testing center was – the business department at the very school that I wanted to attend. What felt like a slap in the face ended up being a blessing in disguise. The proctor happened to be the assistant to the dean and urged me to reapply after a year of straight A’s. I got accepted and graduated a few years ago with that MBA from the school I wanted to go to, UCF. I could have given up when I didn’t get accepted. But I decided to think in zebra and found another way.

When I wanted to become a writer and I read that I’d have to dedicate at least two hours a day learning the craft, I could have given up. I could have said that the only way someone can spend that much time learning a new skill is if they have a cake job, no family, and no outside commitments. Instead, I thought in zebra. How could I do both? That’s when I realized that if I could get to bed two hours early, I could wake up two hours early, and use that time to learn and practice before my day started. (That’s how the idea for my latest book was born, by the way).

Even last night, I wanted to go for a walk, a new habit I’m trying to form to get in shape and spend time thinking, but I also needed to work on edits for my first novel that I’m finishing. Think in zebra, I thought to myself. So I walked a mile instead of two and came back home and edited another chapter before going to bed. I found a way to do both. Thinking in zebra is not my default response when it comes to decision making. Twenty years later, I still tend to forget my friend’s advice.

So here I am. Typing this up in notepad like it’s 1992. And wouldn’t you know it – my Website just came back up. I guess I’ll be able to send you my blog this morning, after all. Right on schedule.

That’s how this works. Stop thinking that decisions have to be A or B. Stop telling yourself there’s no way out of the situations that you find yourself in, no matter how difficult they may seem. There’s always a third option, a way you can do both. You just have to take the time to look for it.

Stop thinking in black and white. Start thinking in zebra.

Thanks, Tony.

Every Sunday I do my grocery shopping at the same place and at the same time. And every Sunday I do the same thing when I check out – I talk with my cashier. I ask them how their day has been. If it’s been busy for them. Just chit-chat to avoid the awkward silence that exists in the five minutes between the Hello when they start scanning and when they tell me how much the bill is.

While that’s the origin of why I started talking to my cashiers, that’s not why I talk with them now.

Now I make conversation because I like to see their face light up when someone, a perfect stranger, sees them as more than an obstacle between the grocery store aisles and their car door. I do it because I like to see the difference in their demeanor from the customer in line ahead of me to when they start talking with me. And I like walking away and hearing them greet the next customer with more enthusiasm than they had before I showed up and connected with them.

That got me thinking about the time of year that we’re in.

We have two more weeks to search for the perfect Christmas gift for the people that we love. Two more weeks of standing behind overly enthusiastic people ordering Pumpkin Spice lattes. And two more weeks of trying to find more hiding spots for that stupid elf on the shelf that we knew we shouldn’t have let enter our house when Santa sent him this year because the thought of finding two weeks’ worth of hiding spots stresses us out. In less than two weeks, Christmas will be here and our kids will be tearing into their gifts with a twinkle in their eyes and ready to go outside and play with that new toy that we bought which we hope will entertain them long enough for Mommy and Daddy to sip their “special egg nog” and relax for once. Then the parents will exchange their own gifts, a new pair of socks or a robe or something that their spouse thought they needed.

But I’ve become convinced that the present that the people in our lives really need is our presence.

We like to believe that offering our time to a worthy cause will have to be as complicated as signing up to go on a mission trip to Africa. But it’s not true. That’s a lie we like to tell ourselves so we have a good excuse for being selfish and lazy in the smaller, less dramatic moments in our everyday lives. The truth is, offering our time by giving someone the gift of presence can be as simple as sitting on the couch and being fully engaged with a loved one and listening to their thoughts, concerns, and dreams. It’s seeking first to understand before worrying about being understood.

While giving someone your presence might not be complicated, it is inconvenient.

It means you’ll have to be intentional with your intention. No phones. No Facebook. No TV. No thinking about self-imposed to-do lists of things you “have to get done” right now that in reality could have been done weeks ago. Giving your presence might be the best Christmas gift you could give someone this year. And if they don’t celebrate Christmas, give your presence for Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Festivus or Flag Day or maybe just because it’s grocery shopping day.

When was the last time you showed someone how much you cared about them by being fully present? By looking in someone’s eyes while you talked with them instead of connecting with dragonheart57 on Twitter or watching a cute cat video on Facebook while having a conversation that mattered deeply to the other person but a conversation that you were half interested in?

This year, let’s give the people that we say we care about a gift that nobody else can give them – our presence. This year, when we hand someone a gift we can’t wait for them to open, let’s give them another gift, one that they’ll never see coming. One that they’ll be thinking about for hours, days, or maybe for the rest of their lives. Stop searching for the perfect gift. You already have it.

Your presence is the one gift we all need this Christmas.

My three-year-old woke up crying at one o’clock in the morning on Wednesday.

As a parent, you quickly learn to recognize your kids’ different kinds of cries. There’s the I don’t want to go to sleep cry, the I’m hungry cry, the I had a nightmare cry, and my all-time favorite, the I-bet-you-didn’t-want-to-get-any-sleep-tonight-so-I’m-going-to-make-sure-you-don’t cry, too.

But this one was different. It was the cry – no, the scream – of a little boy in severe pain.

Noah told us, the best he could, that his leg was hurting. We tried to get him to walk and he limped in severe pain. I stepped away and when I came back, I noticed that my wife was crying, too.

She wasn’t crying because our little boy was hurting. She said she was crying because on Monday, he was complaining about his leg and she brushed it off – but now the pain was back.

And she was crying because this was the same way that a nightmare started for the family of a little boy named Cannon who was diagnosed with neuroblastoma that she follows on Facebook. My first reaction was to look up the symptoms on my phone to confirm for myself.

Warning: don’t ever do this unless you want to drive yourself crazy before you can see a doctor.

So, being half asleep, I typed ‘bone cancer leg’ into google to see what the signs and symptoms were to watch for. It read “…pain in the affected bone is the most common complaint…at first the pain is not constant. It may be worse at night…and the person might limp if a leg is involved.”

I did another search and came across a post by a mother who ignored her daughter’s complaints about her leg hurting because the pain kept going away and eventually took her to the doctor and received bad news. I thought about Noah and how Missy said his leg was hurting two days before.

Why would his leg hurt on Monday and not again until Wednesday? We asked ourselves, becoming more worried as Noah’s screams got louder and more intense.

An hour later, we finally got some children’s Tylenol in him and Noah fell asleep. Missy and I went back to bed, too. But I could not fall asleep. When my alarm went off at five, I went downstairs.

For the first time in eighteen months, I didn’t write. I prayed. Harder than I’ve ever prayed in my life.

I prayed that there would be some other explanation. Some reason why he had this pain in his leg. An answer for why the pain was not constant. Why it hurt so much. Why it left and why it was back.

An hour later, I heard another scream, so I went upstairs to lay down with him. After I calmed him down, I put a hand on his back and as he fell asleep, I realized that while I had laid down with my oldest son many times while he fell asleep, I had never done that with Noah. It was the first time I had really watched over him as he slept and I listened to him breathing. And that’s when I lost it.

As he slept, I rubbed his back and I whispered about all of the things that I was sorry for.

I told him that I was sorry for No being my default answer most of the time. No, we can’t go in the backyard to play in the sand table. No, we can’t blow bubbles. No, we can’t go outside.

I was sorry for saying No when he would sometimes ask for a piggy-back ride because my back hurt. My back didn’t always hurt. Sometimes – no most times – I was just being lazy.

I was sorry for showing favoritism to his older brother, if I ever had. It wasn’t intentional.

I was sorry for being so gruff all of the time instead of listening and being understanding.

I was sorry for not being interested in things that interested him. To parents, everyday things seem mundane. To little boys, the mundane is magical. I was sorry if I took any of that magic away.

I was sorry for not capturing all of his special moments like I had for his big brother. I could have written a book with all of Kyle’s milestones that I wrote down, from losing his first tooth to going “pee-pee-in-the-potty” the first time… five years’ worth of  memories captured before I lost interest.

But I had nothing written down for Noah.

I thought about what that would mean if God-forbid something really was wrong with him.

How would I remember all of those special “firsts?” How would I remember his first words or the first time he called me Daddy or the first time he threw a Chicken McNugget across the room?

When he woke up we took him to the doctor who ordered x-rays, an ultrasound, and blood work.

The results confirmed the doctor’s diagnosis – something called toxic synovitis – which sounds scarier than it is. The problem was in Noah’s hip, not his leg, and it was just a temporary inflammation that caused limping and pain. When I looked up the symptoms, I felt a lot better. It’s common in children between three and eight and the pain starts suddenly and mostly at night.

To say that Missy and I were relieved would be an understatement.

I think as a parent you tend to assume the worst but hope for the best. While it worked out for Noah, that’s not always how this kind of thing turns out. We are blessed to have two healthy, unruly, wildly rambunctious, sometimes crazy, often uncontrollable, but always lovable boys.

And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

While I’d love to put a bow on this and say that from now on I’m going to be a perfect father, I can’t. Parents aren’t perfect. We get tired and overwhelmed and frustrated. We have long, hard days, and our kids are the ones who suffer. A week from now, we’ll all be back to our old, selfish ways.

But I will try to remember.

I will try to be better.

I will try to be a real father, one that gives piggy-back rides, even when I don’t feel like it.

Because in the end, it’s not the memories of our kids that really matters. It’s their memories of us.

My favorite story about how to deal with the haters in your life is Abraham Lincoln’s. Years ago, I read about the former president and was shocked when I learned about his early childhood.

His dad hated that Abraham wanted to learn how to read so he could become somebody.

Instead, Thomas Lincoln wanted his son to focus on learning how to use an axe and to become a carpenter, like himself. To use his hands and help make money for the family. But Abraham knew himself even at a young age. He wanted to become educated and go into law. Not carpentry.

So Thomas made fun of his son’s desire to learn. He told him not to read. He picked on him. He said he’d never amount to anything. And when tragedy struck, things got a whole lot worse.

When he was only nine years old, Abraham Lincoln buried his mother after she got sick and passed away in their cabin home. He loved her dearly. They had a very special bond.

She was kind to him and he was very much like her. She loved to read and he loved being read to.

But the day his mother passed away, everything changed for young Abraham. His father made him help build her coffin and bury his mom without a proper funeral. Then his dad left and disappeared.

No explanation. No instructions. No family. No babysitters. Their father abandoned Abraham and left him to take care of himself and his eleven-year-old sister for over a year before he returned.

He was so afraid of his father that when Thomas Lincoln finally came back home and tried to introduce Abraham to his “new mother,” the young boy hid behind some furniture.

Abraham eventually warmed up to her. She had a huge library of books and the boy read everything she had brought. They formed a bond of their own and she encouraged his reading.

Life could have been easier for the boy who became the 16th President of the United States, but ignoring his father was critical to forming the young man to become who he was meant to be.

We have to stop listening to the haters.

We have to stop believing people who tell us that we’ll never make anything of ourselves.

We have to stop listening to people who tell us that we’ll never see our dreams become reality.

We have to realize that the very presence of a hater means that we’re doing something right.

Remember that while our haters are loud, our fans are quiet. We like to focus our energy on the haters but don’t realize that the people who love us the most often speak up the least.

Haters have a burning desire to make us feel terrible, but our fans don’t always have the same desire to make sure we know we’re appreciated. They usually love us from afar. And that’s okay.

We can find haters and critics of our work everywhere, but they usually find us first.

When I received my first one-star review, the critic wrote, “Terrible writing and no real information.” But another critic rated the book five-stars and said it was, “Well-written and very informative.” How can two people read the same book and think it was “well-written” and “terrible” at the same time?

Because some people will love you and others will love to hate you. How do you deal with that?

You learn to not let the compliments go to your head or the criticism go to your heart. That’s how.

What we need to remember is that if we don’t have any haters, people who don’t believe in us and our dreams, then we aren’t doing work that’s relevant. The next time you happen to come across a hater – or more likely, they come across you – realize that they are necessary for your success.

It means you’re doing work that matters.