My father raised six boys and one girl. I was the girl and the oldest. We grew up in the outdoors and my father taught us to love nature and the grand creations of God. He was a brave man to take all of us on backpacking trips and camping trips—many times alone as the sole adult.
The thing I remember most of all from those trips is that, going with him, I felt that I could do anything! I could climb the highest mountain, help catch the important fish for our dinners, find wood for our campfires, and so many other salient survival acts. I truly felt amazing, needed and capable.
I grew up with those wonderful feelings and tried to pass it on to my five daughters and one son. With few exceptions, my husband and I have taken our children every year up to the Uintah's, the White Clouds’, or the Sawtooth's and hopefully we have inspired in them how amazing, needed and important they are as well as inspiring them to love the grand creations of our Heavenly Father.
Fortunately, we have been blessed to take my father on many of those momentous occasions and now, as he is getting older, he moves a little more slowly. But, I hang back with him to help him feel amazing, needed and capable. It is precious to me that he feels that it is I who needs him to hang back with me and I let him believe it, because, he did so for me when I was young and slow.
This cycle of sharing beautiful things is only possible as we keep it alive in a multi-generational cycle that spans the life of each of us. We begin as a child needing help and encouragement, then we grow more and more capable just in time to help our aged feel the help and encouragement they gave us when we were young. What a beautiful thing. What a beautiful father I have! What a beautiful life and a beautiful future!
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