The Beginning...

I have been a working man my whole life. Since I was 15 years old I have worked out of the house for long hours laboring away to afford the things I needed and wanted. Now I am 31 years old. I am married to my beautiful bride, Grace, and we have two bright daughters who are 6 and 3 years of age. As well as the newest arrival our 7 week old bundle of joy boy. I really do have all that I need, and now, all that I want in life. I adore being a dad and realize my role as a father is vital. Most of all I love the synergy that the members of my precious family create now that we are all together again. We are a fantastic team and we are natural winners!

Since 2002 when the birth of our first daughter changed our lives forever, my heart has always been to stay home more and help raise our daughter and now our other two little ones. Although this desire was deep in my heart I still had to work 60-80 hour weeks to make ends meet, and often times that required me to work long days where I never saw my kids. On several occasions I would be out of town away from my family for two weeks, or more, at a time. I sacrificed so much potential family time for the obligations of working for Corporate Canada and "keeping a decent job." I worked overtime, extra days and went beyond the call of duty for my employers while my family suffered in my absence. I wasn't putting my family first and it was killing me as a husband and a father to see the glaring results. Can you relate? God really brought this to my attention and to the attention of my wife when our eldest daughter started showing growing and worsening behavioural problems. These problems where trickling down to our 3 year old and nothing we tried helped. These behaviours were affecting our whole family and our unity as a husband and wife. We prayed for an answer and a solution. One thing that my wife and I both agreed upon was that to most effectively help our daughters they needed to have more focused time with us. More specifically they needed more focused "daddy time." After our son was born my brother asked me if I was going to take parental leave like he had done twice before. I had never considered that option for myself but something compelled me to look into it. Holly and I were facing an ever worsening problem with our daughters at home that we could not ignore much longer. As parents we prayed and followed the leading of the Lord for myself to take parental leave. Needless to say it was the right choice. My extended family were in complete agreement with us as they have seen our struggles first hand. We cherish that they care about us all so much. My employer accommodated our decision to take this sabbatical, although it came as a shock I'm sure. One thing I had to come to grips with was the fact that anyone with a few skills could do my job as a truck driver, but only I could be what my daughters needed most, their Daddy. God has been so good to us and has faithfully provided what we have needed to make this transition. Biting the bullet, admitting our kids where in crisis, and putting our family first again has taken us from being an un-unified family with challenges to overcome, to being a unified family with those same challenges to overcome. I am so glad that we are the latter!

Sabbatical Dad