Okay, Amigo: the party is officially over for 2025. As of today, the prep for ’26 becomes your continuing priority. Will you be giving sufficient attention to that ramp-up effort, or will you be waving it off until your lack of focus brings it into collision with your less-essential life distractions?

Yesterday was Father’s Day, and the backdrops and center-stage performances – across homes, patios, restaurants, beaches, ballparks and campgrounds coast-to-coast – were often nothing like the celebrations staged for moms, just a month ago.

The bonds between mothers and their offspring have far more functional familiarity from family to family than differences. Cutting across cultural, ethnic, regional and sociological categories, moms hold the winning position for most folks, slotted just below the Virgin Mary in sainthood status. Strike up the conversation with people you know about their family of origin, and then zero-in on their mom. Use your security clearance to probe the nature of their relationship with their mother, and you’ll likely find a warm field of engagement that they’ll be willing to describe.

Turn your journal page; leave the notes from their affectionate remembrances of their madre and start a new memo sheet. You’ve been allowed into meaningful dialog concerning the formative figures in your friend’s background. Use your visitor access card to explore the next secure exhibit in their Hall of History: “Tell me about your relationship with your dad…”

Allow me to play convo coach with this Monday morning missive: brace yourself, because there’s no telling what comes next. My extensive research – conducted through meaningful conversations with people with whom I’ve earned honest interaction about the most intimate realities – has revealed to me a troubling but consistent truth: moms usually have a much higher impact score – measured by their now-adult offspring – than the dads who participated in the same family systems.

That makes Father’s Day a dicey proposition, stretching through the decades that begin with an empty nest and end with a father’s closed casket. 

My own story will never be the basis for a Hallmark holiday movie. My own dad left seven children behind when his first family ended with a hasty divorce and a hurry-up marriage. I was second-of-three for my mom; I was ninth-of-ten for my dad. Home – for me – wasn’t a safe space or a nurturing environment: I moved out two months after turning 17 and never looked back.

The natural phenomenon is to replicate the model with which we were raised. As a result, dysfunction breeds dysfunction, across generations. Every layer in the DNA downline manages to perfect imperfection, and God’s original intent and design become more and more distant and dismissed.

God never leaves us in the wilderness without water: He’s able to make rivers come out of rocks. For me, He brought a series of mentors – men who assumed the role in my story that God would have loved for my own father to play – who supplied me with paternal surrogacy that topped my tank.

My commitment to God, to my wife, and to the family system we’re blessed to lead: it’s my decision to be first-generation healthy with God’s blueprint as the working drawings. That will allow our kids/grandkids/great-grands (one day) to archive the evidence of an earthly father who is taking his cues from our Heavenly Father. Never perfect, but always perfecting, to ensure that our family downline is honoring our Holy Upline by finding and pursuing their own paths to purpose and eternal impact.

It’s my job – in the next 364 days – to give my progeny something to celebrate when Father’s Day 2026 hits the “today” calendar. My desire to make a mark in history begins with my family; if it does not, it ends with my family. I’m staying close; I’m providing value; I’m earning their respect and keeping myself available to them as they choose His ways in a cultural minefield that is full of allure and poison.

How about you? What are you doing today that will add to the compounding legacy of your life, well-lived?

Bob Shank

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