My Father across the street.

when you hear the word “Father” what comes to your mind? For me when I was younger when I heard the word father I didn’t really think anything about it. But when you take the time to think about what fathers do for us in this world, you can’t do anything but be grateful. What is a father? Is it someone that you are just related to? No of course not, today I’m here to tell you about my father that I didn’t know for a while. Growing up my biological father was never in my life, I always had my mom so when I heard the word “father”, it didn’t make me angry I just didn’t felt it applied to me. When I was Growing up I stayed across from this retired veteran, His name was Joe. Joe would always come over and play the game with me, he brought me and my siblings food and he was always there for us whenever we needed him. Now at the time I didn’t really think of Joe as a father figure and that was just because of what my idea of a father figure was. My first time learning how to weld, drive a car, and even something as simple as just pumping gas was all taught to me by Joe. I remember going into highscool I just wasn’t right mentally, I hated school and I never had to many friends. For my junior everyone took a trip to the beach, and I wanted to go really bad but we couldn’t afford to pay the trip so I wasn’t able to go, a couple of the guys from school heard about how I couldn’t afford to go and the whole school clowned me for weeks when I started school back. I was so angry and upset, words couldn’t describe how I felt, I started to skip school, not do my work , and party. That was until Joe had found out about what happened and he came to me and he told me that if you want to be happy in life you have to be grateful for the things you have now, he told me you’ll never be happy in life with greed because you’ll just want more and more. And when he told me that I just felt so relieved because I didn’t have to feel like I had to have something or do something just because someone else has it or does it. I listened to what Joe told me and he suggested that I do stuff for other people, wether it’s helping a elderly with groceries or giving a homeless person some food. As I started to become more grateful for the things that I had life had gotten a lot better. One Sunday Joe would always come over to watch the game, and we would talk about life and dream goals. One of the things that I always wanted to do at that time was to get on a airplane and travel. Joe Asked me how I felt about traveling still, I told him that I’m still going to do it, but now im grateful for just the small things in life like food, family, and just to be alive. When I told him that he grabbed his Bible and he told me to open it, as I opened it I realized that there was a plane ticket to Hawaii. I’ve always wanted to go there but I was so confused as to why it was there because he was older and had said he’s done all the traveling he’s going to do. I asked him “what is this “? He said your plane ticket to Hawaii. I asked him how long he has this for and he told me since before my trip I was supposed to go on. I asked him why didn’t you tell me you had it? He told me son you weren’t happy because you weren’t content with what you had. You needed to be taught to be grateful and now you can enjoy your trip the right way. And when he told me that it just really hit me because that has literally changed my whole life, fathers do so much for us that we miss the small things. I encourage all of you to take the time and tell the father figure of your life thank you.