Seven and that is all!

I heard the most beautiful, descriptive and inspired thought the other night.

‘You only have seven summers with children

Giving it some thought, the first three to four years of your children’s lives are spent as babies and toddlers. They grow in leaps and bounds! Then your seven summers kick in. Seven short years before teenage hormones start to play havoc and parents become far less important than friends and girlfriends. If you are lucky you will get eight or nine, but you can only be guaranteed seven.

Summer is filled with thoughts of still late evenings, water sports, hiking, camping, time in the pool, picnics, and juicy ripe watermelons. All of the things that I need to be enjoying with my boys while we have those summers together. Those summers have been given to me to shape and guide my children, to provide them with skills and an unwavering example. Ultimately building father son relationships that will last for the rest of our lives!

How sad that most of us spend these precious few summers locked in our offices, tethered to our email, chained to our cell phones, just building those precious careers......

And then that time, that will never be again, is gone....