For a while now I’ve been doing Daddy Dates. The way it works is that each week I take one of my kids out. I have 4 kids so that pretty much means each of them get to go out with me once a month. I don’t really have an agenda. It is my opinion that there is an incredible deception in our culture one that devastates families. It is the concept of “quality time”. People use this concept all the time to limit the time they spend with people, specifically their own children. The idea is that I can, because I’m so busy, plan a short amount of time with someone that is above and beyond any other time spent with that person, which is why we call it “quality”.

I actually have another word for it, but I’ll refrain. Most of the time the best moments aren’t planned, they just happen. How can I make sure that I am there for those things? If I increase the time that I spend with someone the odds that a “quality” event happens increase. The key here isn’t quality, it is quantity. The more time I spend with my kids the more I will experience them. I will be there when they have a question, fall, score a goal, draw a great picture, learn Spanish, make a silly face, burp the alphabet, whatever it is.

So back to my Daddy Dates. Which I really need a better name for when I take the boys out. There is no agenda except to increase the time that I spend with them. They have determined that it is the perfect time for us to go to Dairy Queen, and I am diligently working my way through all the Blizzard flavors. Nothing earth shattering yet, just lots of fun (and ice cream). Below is a photo I took with my phone of my daughter Anna the last time we went out.

Pastor JD