Meet the Newest Addition To Your Support Team! (Part 1)

Meet the Newest Addition To Your Support Team! (Part 1)

When I was a little girl I was my dad’s biggest fan. I was an admirer of all things daddy. What I truly admired was all his creative abilities. I noticed those at a young age. Every time we played together, created art together or worked on a school project I saw the obvious. He was so much more talented than me. Though I looked just like him, I didn’t inherit his natural artistic (and athletic) abilities like my brother did. I would get emotionally down about that sometimes. Though most of the time, I just wanted to watch him do his thing as a creative! I was always putting a pen in his hand to draw something amazing. Or asking him to read a book to me in a theatrical way like only he could. Or to teach me one more time how to sew a new pillow for my bed, after our special dance with my clumsy feet on top of his. He was even my coach for state speech competition in junior high, at which my shy self shockingly won 3rd place. I wanted everyone to see and admire his art like I did! But I wondered, how would they when he spent over 30 years of his life working 60+ hours a week at a chemical plant?

So I called my dad and had a talk with him about life and his life as a creative. I wanted to find out if he had any regrets about not providing for his family through his natural and creative giftings and talents. You see my dad was always a great provider. I never went without what I needed. He provided by extremely hard physical labor all of my upbringing. I remember when he would show me a picture of himself inside the over 100-degree “Cell Room” of the chemical plant. He was smiling ear-to-ear as he held a ball of mercury while wearing a hazmat type suit to protect himself. Then on the weekends, when he was working on his floor cleaning business it involved a lot of up and down on his knees and hours of standing. You would catch him smiling at his finished work of a wood floor so shiny you could see your reflection. None of this was using much of his natural gifts and talents per se. As a little girl that kind of bothered me. I knew how creative my daddy was. What a great writer, speaker, presenter and just entertaining he was and is still. But he never created a platform to allow the masses to see this side of him. What if he would’ve enjoyed providing for his family through those gifts and talents instead of only doing the back-breaking work that he had to do every day to provide?

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