Introduction

I have known all my life that I wanted to be the father of daughters. I dreamed of the day I would hear my daughters tell my wife when they grew up they wanted to marry their daddy. And, that no matter how hard my wife tried to explain to the young little mind that this just couldn't be and that she would just have to settle for someone just like daddy, my wife would eventually have to resign in frustration to letting our dear little girl, to whom she already would have known she had lost my heart to, would figure it out on her own that mommy was the only girl who would ever own the privilege of marrying daddy.

Let me start way back as far as I can remember. When I was in kindergarten, one day my teacher asked everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up. Of course, the little girls wanted to be teachers, nurses, secretaries or moms and the boys all wanted to be soldiers, policeman, fireman or astronauts. When she came to me, I promptly answered, "I want to be a daddy."

I realize now that I totally upset the status quo with my response, but I have never been one to operate within the box known as normative. To my teacher's credit she did try to redirect me towards normalcy, in order to attempt spare me the terrible teasing of my peers that was sure to follow, by asking me if I didn't want to follow one of the heroic models, like my friends. I answered, "Yes, so I can be a dad."

Even at the age of five I had a clear sense of purpose: the most important thing in the world to me was to be a dad. Everything else served that purpose, a means to that end. It wasn't until several years later that purpose became defined as a desire to be the father of daughters.

Now, I should take a little space here and talk about a few factors that may have contributed to my point of view. I wasn’t your typical overly macho guy, trying to find his sexual identity, coming-of-age teenage boy. I wasn’t athletic. I didn’t date lots of girls. I wasn’t into cars, guns, or guitars. The closest that I came to being macho was being Air Force Jr. ROTC during my freshman year of high school.

I wasn't effeminate. I had lots of guy friends that I ran with and did typical guy things with. But, the majority of my closest, personal relationships were always with girls. I was the oldest son in a household of all boys, but I had little in common with my brothers. My whole life I remember desperately longing for a sister.

Like most men my generation I was rapidly approaching manhood not feeling in anyway that I had what it took to be successful as a man. I was terrified of how I would fail a son, but felt confident in my ability to connect with a daughter.

This by no means that I saw girls as my only chance at being a successful father, but it just may explain why I never even considered the idea of raising sons.

From the time I became old enough to begin imagining what my future family portrait might look like, it was always four girls. There was a wife in that picture, she was important, and she would definitely be very important to me before the four girls came into the picture. But, for now, I didn’t know her. Yet, in my heart, I already knew my four girls intimately and I was only sixteen.

There were lots of girls who were more than a casual part of my life. They spent time in my home and I in theirs. My parents knew them and theirs knew me. As a result of all of this exposure to their families I got the chance to observe their relationships with their fathers. I began to pay close attention and learn.

While most of my guy friends hung out at the mall purely to look at girls, and trust me I did my fair share of that as well, I also learned to become a student of human behavior as well. In other words, I became almost as much of a people watcher as I did girl watcher. I began to observe fathers and daughters engaging each other in public.

Both of these exercises became extremely enjoyable to me because I one day hoped to join their ranks. The desire of my heart to be the father of daughters was quickly beginning to set down deep, deep roots.

I began to notice that there was a natural and simple dynamic between father and daughter. One that was rewarding on so many levels it spoke of a gift that could only be divinely imparted. I also noticed that while God designed this relationship to be simple and rewarding, it could so easily be complex and completely draining.

I saw teenage daughters who walked five steps ahead of their fathers barely acknowledging his presence, of course, that is, until they wanted him to whip out his credit card and pay for their material desires. I also noticed the look of desperation in the eyes of those same fathers as they followed along hoping the next retrieval of the charge plate would gain them entrance back into their little princess’ heart.

At the other end of the spectrum, I saw middle-aged fathers who were doting over their grandkids at the mall play area while their adult daughter did some much needed, long put off shopping. At some point, either at the end or during the middle of the shopping trip, she walked up to him, beaming, sat on his lap, kissed him, and said, “I love you daddy.” She did this in front of all of the other moms and grandparents in the play area. This was a father who still beamed with pride when he caught sight of his daughter. They still had the special relationship God gives as a gift to every father and daughter at the very moment she is born.

I knew without a doubt that I wanted to be a father of daughters. I knew which of those two types fathers I wanted to be. I was now on a mission.

Even dating took on a new purpose for me. I knew the kind of father I wanted to be to my daughters. I figured the best way to find a mentor to teach me to be that kind of father was to marry a girl who already had that very relationship with her own father. So, it was safe to say, if they didn’t have that special relationship with their father they probably didn’t have much of a chance of anything ever getting very serious.

Well, fortunately for me, the first part of my mission was easily accomplished. I was able to observe many father-daughter relationships up close and personal. I was even able to get some fathers to talk to me about their relationships with their daughters. I eventually fell in love with and married a girl who had a wonderful relationship with her daddy.



Now, there is an old cliché that goes, “Man plans and God laughs.” I understand that all to well. My life has been quite the example of that. One of those has been the master plan that I had in achieving my ideal family portrait.

Before my wife, Julie, and I got married we had agreed that we would wait five years before intentionally adding children to our family. Our purpose was ensuring that our marriage had a solid foundation before we began to build a family on it.

Eighteen months after we got married we left to go to college. This still fit well into our master plan. We would stop preventing pregnancy at the beginning of our senior year in college. We would get pregnant during the spring when we were student teaching. My wife would deliver our first daughter during the following summer. We would begin teaching in the fall and every twenty to thirty months we would have another daughter until we had four. Our family portrait would be full before my wife was thirty.

Unfortunately, plans and life rarely coincide. During my junior year in college I became very ill and was unable to finish school. We stopped all forms at the beginning of Julie’s senior year of college. Months went by and no positive signs of pregnancy.

I went to work managing a retail store and had to move six hours away from my wife during her last semester in college. It wasn’t easy or fun, but I had to pay the bills. Fortunately, she was able to arrange her student teaching in the same town where I was working. More time went buy and still no positive signs of a pregnancy.

Julie finished her student teaching and graduated from college. My job was not working out well. We soon decided to return to California to start over. Now, several years went by and still no sign of ever getting pregnant. In fact, we had medical verification that it was nearly, not quite virtually impossible that we would ever get pregnant without a miracle or medical intervention.

These were very hard years to live through. My whole life had become about three things: becoming the father of four little girls, building a home for children, and answering God’s calling on my life to full-time ministry. During these years I began to see all of those things evaporate.

Because of my sudden decline in health, with no apparent cause or treatment, I was forced to drop out of Bible College. While this did not completely remove all career paths for fulfilling my calling to service, it did greatly impede the road to finding opportunities. The health issues that continued to reveal themselves and increasingly become more problematic over the following years made life even more difficult. It took some time to adjust to living with some conditions that would never go away, learning to live with and manage pain that I may always live with, and working with a very patient doctor to find some treatments to help alleviate as many of the symptoms as possible. Life did eventually become livable again. But before it did, I honestly feared that I would be forced to give up my greatest desire in life of being a dad because I wouldn’t be able to give them anything of myself as a result of my declining health.

Then, if my health concerns weren’t enough to give me trepidation about whether it would be fair for a child to have me as a father, we received the official medical diagnosis of infertility, casting a cloud of doubt and anxiety over our hearts wondering if we would ever be able to have children anyway.

During this time, my father-in-law and I became very good friends and I was able to cherish the relationship he had with my wife that much more. We spent a lot of time with my in-laws during the first fifteen years of our marriage and I don’t remember a single night that we dinner with them or just spent an afternoon at their home that my wife didn’t at some point end up in her daddy’s lap in one of those cherished father-daughter moments.

My wife and I dealt with infertility for more than ten years before God brought our first child into our family, a son.

Just two months before our eleventh wedding anniversary God literally, and, I do mean literally, dropped a son into our family through adoption. It is a miracle story that is best suited for another place. By this time in my life, while I still dreamed of daughters, but by now my heart just ached for any child to hold as my own. I was grateful for a son, but I was no less terrified that I would screw up his life now than I was at sixteen years old.

Barely more than a month after our son’s first birthday my wife lost her father, our son lost his grandfather, whom he had become very attached to, and I lost my mentor. God had more than answered my prayers of youth for good in-laws. In my father-in-law I not only had a good example to follow in the father-daughter relationship role, but he had come to be one of my closest companions, as well. As much as it hurt for me to see the queen of my heart lose her daddy, I lost my second father too.

It has been nearly ten years since my father-in-law received his promotion orders to take his place as part of the host of heaven, but I have learned, in that time, that there are certain aspects of the father-daughter relationship whose flame is not cut short with the passing of the princess’s first love from this life to the next. His imprint on her, for good or for bad, will continue with her and impact everyone her life touches until her days on this earth are completed. It is an awesome responsibility to be the father of a daughter.

It would be another six years before God would relieve the sting of infertility in our marriage and my little princess was born. And, then two years after that our youngest, another boy, followed her.

Though she never said a word about it, I know that my father-in-law’s presence was greatly missed by my wife on each of the days when our two younger children were born. He was there when we brought our first child home from the hospital, his first day as a forever member of our family. And, through just a set of unplanned circumstances, he was the first member of any of our family to hold and embrace him that day. I know that she had always dreamed of her daddy coming into the delivery room and being able to hand over her children to him for the first time, for him to beam down on her with immense pride on his face and probably kiss her on the forehead before he even kissed her baby for the first time.

I still have not seen my lifelong dream of four little girls and God has blessed us with another little boy. My heart still longs for more children and, who knows, maybe someday that will still have the chance to become a reality. I may still have my four daughters. Only time will tell. The desire is still in my heart.

I do not love my boys any less than my little princess. I have learned that I have a lot to offer my sons, even if I am not Mister Machismo. I am raising two Prince Valliants who will one day sweep a young woman off her feet whose little princess will still be inside her looking for an adventurous live to take part in.

Along the road to fatherhood I spent many years as either a youth worker or as a youth pastor, so I had many opportunities to observe the relationships of fathers and daughters, up close and personal. Some I got to only observe from the periphery, like the people watching done in public places, and others I was invited into a more intimate observation by taking part in family events or counseling a troubled teen during those tough coming of age years.

I have had lots of opportunity to see the fruits of the time invested or neglected by fathers in their daughter’s lives. I was surprised to find out that only a rare few fathers had a clue as to how important even the simplest act between father and daughter can be to her whole life. The time spent or ignored, the words said or not said, the praise given or criticism delivered can have an impact that can not only affect her emotional well-being, but it can determine the types of friends that she chooses to associate with, the types of men that she prefers to be romantically involved with or marry, even the kind of mom she will eventually become.

It is an awesome responsibility to be the father of a daughter. I have come to believe, both through observation and personal life experience, that God blesses the father-daughter relationship with a unique anointing upon first sight of each other following birth (I know for me it began with the first prenatal glimpse of her heartbeat). This blessing makes the first several years of life the easiest in which to build and maintain that relationship.

If a father courts his daughter’s heart during the early years of her life, he will earn the right to maintain a close seat to her heart throughout the rest of her life. It also sets the standards by which all men that pass through her life will be judged. If daddy invested the time and love in her life in those important early years, other men will have to meet or exceed that standard if they want to gain entrance. If he didn’t, then she may go out looking for almost any other man to fill the void her father didn’t fill in those formative years.

I have witnessed that bear out as fact in too many lives. I have seen it set destructive patterns in the lives of young women barely even into their teen years. Too many fathers who then realize that they may have failed their daughters either bury their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong or sink into depression, becoming no good to themselves or anyone, let alone their daughters who still need them.

It is never too late, as long as both father and daughter are still living to build, repair, nurture, and grow the relationship that was meant to be, that both father and daughter at the core of their being need (even if they are too stubborn or hardhearted to admit it). Even an aged daughter who has made mess after mess of her life trying to replace what she never got from her father, still longs for daddy’s love, blessing, and unconditional acceptance.

My desire is to make sure that the investment is made in my little princess’ life and that I continue to nurture that relationship as long as I am living. Along the way if I can wake up a few other dads to the same responsibility facing them and possibility help a few other mend broken relationships, then the burden weighing on my heart will have been all that much more worth the carrying.

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John Donahue author of Every Daddy's Princess

Author's Note

In previous blog entries I kind of made shotgun approach and covered the big picture of my thoughts. In the following entries I am going to attempt to take a step back and unpack some of the issues discussed in those entries in greater detail. Along the way I may ask for some of your input.

I am looking for real life father daughter stories and data. I want to know about your relationships with your daddies. I want to know about outstanding memories from different times in your lives, the good, the bad, the exceptional, and the horrible. I want to know when he met you just where you were and hit the nail right on the head, even if he didn’t know he was doing it. And, I want to know when he completely missed the opportunity to make the moment special or maybe even stole one away because of a comment or criticism made at just the wrong time or the absence or presence or praise when you needed it the most. Don’t worry, I would never use anyone’s name at any time and I would never even use an obvious element of your personal story without your permission. I really just want to collect some data.

While several women have read this blog, and I definitely want women to continue to come back, frequently, and give me feedback, my ultimate goal from this project is two fold. First, I am gathering material, data, and testing out my ideas here before moving forward with formal “real-world” projects. I know that the lines between “real-world” and the Internet or “virtual-world” are almost completely blurred in the twenty-first century, but here on the internet I can practice, test, and try out things, invite an audience and get feedback. Off the “net” I have to have a finished, polished, tested, and mostly proven “product”, so to speak, to present to those with the authority to allow me to speak to an audience, whether that is a live audience in auditorium or a live media presentation, in print form, like in a book or a magazine series.

Second, my heart’s passion is to reach out to dads. I want to stir up a desire in them to become the father every little princess need the first standard bearer in her life to be. We live in a world that is suffering from a serious breakdown in fatherhood. We need to break the cycle and make serious strides to make sure that the next generation of girls arrives at womanhood knowing what it means to have been loved by the first Prince Charming in their life.

Bear with me while I may begin to sound a little redundant. I am stepping back a little and starting to explore my thoughts with greater detail and purpose.

I apologize in advance for the fact that I can tend to be rather prolific, so many of these posts can become sometimes lengthy. But, if the words written here ever do progress to something more, like a book, then chapters are definitely going to be much longer than these lengthy blog posts.

John Donahue

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John Donahue author of Every Daddy's Princess

Our Hearts Go Out to You

Many of you may have already heard the news, but for those of you who haven't late yesterday afternoon Maria Chapman, the youngest daughter of Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman died after suffering a tragic vehicle accident. Her brother was driving down the driveway of their home and did not see her. She was taken by Life Flight to Vanderbilt Hospital but unfortunately her injuries were too severe.

While our hearts are surely breaking for them, during this time of extreme grief, let us not forget to pray for her older brother as we pray for the family. While the loss of a family member, especially a young child is a terrible burden to bare, it cannot compare to the unimaginable ache he will be shouldering during this coming season in his life. He will need his family and friends more than he has ever needed them at any other time in his life. Pray for the family, they need to be born up during their grief, but pray double for their son.

Many of us have been greatly touched by the third track off of his latest album, "This Moment", entitled "Cinderella". In fact, as many of you can easily guess, it was the final motivation to get me to start putting my thoughts on paper concerning the father-daughter relationship dynamic. If you are a Steven Curtis Chapman fan and have dug deeper into this song you have discovered that his youngest daughters, Stevie Joy and Maria were the inspiration for this song. He tells the story of his taking a break from songwriting to get them ready for bed. He is desperately trying to hurry up and give them a bath and they are sneaking off to dress up in their princess costumes (you have to have little princesses in your lives to understand this because in this day most little girls with a doting king for a daddy have at least one, if not more, Disney princess costume in their dress up collection) because they have to get ready for the ball. What they wanted was for daddy to play with them. This goes on through the entire bedtime routine. He is trying to hurry them up to bed, so he can get back to work and they are trying their best to get him to "play with us daddy!" He is reminded of how fast the years went by with his oldest daughter, who is now grown and on her own, and thus came the inspiration for such a beautiful song.

Steven Curtis Chapman has definitely invested much into the lives of so many in immeasurable ways and indirectly by their willingness to share their husband and father with us for often unfair extended periods of time, his family has sacrificed to invest in our lives as well. As a result we feel connected to them and because of this we have shared in the joy of their family as it has expanded through adoption, in recent years. And, we have also caught their enthusiasm to spread their passion for adoption to other Christian families across the United States. Now, our hearts equally are broken for them during this time of grief and heartache. But, we can take comfort in this fact because the Chapmans took Maria and made her a part of their family she came to know Jesus and because of that in the midst of a horrible tragedy she received an invitation to the grandest ball of them all with a request to dance with the Prince of Peace and the King of kings.

Every little girl dreams of being swept away by a handsome prince, but none ever imagines that they would be standing there one moment, without a care in the world, and the next they would be swept away by the Prince by which all other will be judged and found wanting.

Goodbye Maria. You are safe in the arms of Jesus. We will be praying for your family and your brother. We will join you soon.

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John Donahue author of Every Daddy's Princess

Her Daddy's Cinderella

Tribute to Maria Chapman"

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John Donahue author of Every Daddy's Princess

Courting Your Daughter's Heart Point your kids in the right direction—when they’re old they won’t be lost. (Proverbs 22:6—The Message)
“Your children love you, they want to play with you. How long do you think that lasts? … We have a few special years with our children when they’re the ones that want us around. After that you are going to be running after them for a bit of attention. It’s so fast…it’s a few years and then it’s over.” –Moira speaking to Peter in the movie Hook (1991, Tri-Star Pictures/Amblin Entertainment)

I remember sitting in the theater that holiday season and being taken aback by that line. I know that this was a family oriented movie. And, I really should not have been surprised to find the line coming from a Steven Spielberg production. He has produced some of Hollywood’s highest grossing films without having to lower himself or his art to the lowest denominator to resort to titillation to achieve his accolades. He has made decent movies that have promoted family values throughout his entire career. But to hear such a profound statement as that from a Hollywood production. It was a very fine moment in film history that probably has gone unnoticed anywhere else.

I remember those words so clearly because they struck a cord with me. When that movie first hit theaters my wife and I had just decided to stop practicing birth control and start preparing to expand our family. Thoughts about family values were central to my thinking at the time, even if it were still going to be another sixteen years before I became a father.

As parents we really do have only a few years where our children chase after us for our attention. This is a gift from God and if we do not cherish it while we have it, we will be the ones chasing after them in their teen years, and beyond, begging for whatever scraps of their lives they can spare for us.

As a father of a daughter I also know that there is even a greater importance placed on these times that I have where she is pursuing me. These years have a great impact on the young woman she will become and how that young woman’s coming of age years will shape the woman she will be.

I know that I not only have a responsibility, but I also have the privilege of being the first one to court my daughter’s heart. I know that I am her first love and as such I have a sacred duty. My relationship with her will help to define what romance means to her. My relationship with her will fulfill in her, for this first part of her life, the need that God created in her heart that can only be received from a male authority figure in her young life. A need that, if left unfulfilled, she may feel the need later in life to find false ways to satisfy that need through improper relationship with other men. My relationship with her will help set a standard she will one expect a man to exceed, if he is going to win her hand in marriage.

I know that if I do my job right now, not only will she feel confident in her daddy’s approval and love, but she will also feel confident and valuable in herself. She will see herself as worthy and valuable and won’t allow the world to rob her of her self-esteem. If I do the best I can to court her heart now, she won’t need to seek out the ever-fleeting false fulfillment of that need to be met in her future.

John Eldredge, in his book Wild at Heart, identifies three basic needs that God created in the heart of both women and men. These needs are distinctly unique for each of the sexes. Every little girl recognizes these needs and demonstrates her understanding of them in her imaginative play times. And, no matter how jaded life or society has tried to make adult women, inside every grown woman, that same little girl exists who still knows she needs those basic three things. They are at the very core of her being, written on the walls of her heart.

Every little girl and every grown woman needs to know and feel she is worth it. She wants to feel she is worth fighting for. She wants to be caught up into something greater than herself (an adventure to share with Prince Charming). And, she wants to know that she possesses a real beauty that will be realized by Prince Charming, not merely conjured up by a professional makeover.

Every little girl wants to be the princess that the hero slays the dragon for and wins her beauty and hand in marriage. She dreams of riding off into the sunset to live happily ever after, living a life of great adventure with her hero at her side. This is one of the first dreams that every little girl grabs a hold of, and it is one of the last most women let go of before they settle for Squire Flunk-Out and a humdrum life.

What do I do now? I court my children’s hearts. My sons get to have regular times where they get alone with dad and I give them my blessing. I let them know how proud I am of them, what a joy I get out of being their dad. I let them know the things they do and the abilities they demonstrate that I am really proud of. I reinforce that I believe that they will do great things as they continue through life. That they possess the ability to succeed at whatever brings them the greatest joy.

My daughter, gets daddy’s blessing too. She gets the same pep rally that they boys do, but she gets a date with daddy. We get all dressed up. Daddy cleans the car until it is spotless inside and out. We go out to a nice place to eat and do something fun together after dinner and good conversation. We usually go to a movie because that is something we really enjoy doing together, at this point in her life.

I am doing everything I can to instill in my little princess that she is worth it. She is worth waiting for. She is worth fighting for. She is worth holding out for the best, no settling for comfortable and easy.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am deeply in love with all of my children. But, if you are fortunate to the father of a daughter, you know that the love relationship between father and daughter is undeniably different than it is between father and son. My wife realized this only moments after our daughter was born.

My wife had always gloried in how much in love I am with our children, but even given the great relationship she had with her father, I don’t think she was completely prepared for how different that love would be for a daughter than a son. I remember hearing her ask another mother of a little girl who was less than a year older than our daughter, whose daddy was obviously dead gone over his little princess, as well, “Will I ever get his heart back?” The other mother just smiled and watched her husband holding her daughter for a moment and then answered sheepishly, “No.”

My wife realized from the moment that our little girl was first placed in my arms, moments after she entered this world, which a part of my heart that had previously belonged only to her, now belonged to her daughter. I think se was jealous for all of about five minutes and, fortunately, she was too exhausted and on painkillers to give too much thought to it, before she had time to really think about it.

In time, I think my wife came to realize that this was just how it was meant to be. Being one of three daughters who shared a close relationship with their father, up and until he passed on to the next life, I think she realized that there was a time when her mother had faced the same realization.

I love my daughter and she is my little princess. She knows her name to be “Princess” when it is spoken in her daddy’s voice as well as if any called her by her given name. Her whole countenance lights up when I call “Princess” to her from across a room that she didn’t know I was in. She drops everything and comes running into my arms. We spend a lot of time walking and talking, holding hands and just glowing in each other’s company. I cherish these years when captivating her heart is nearly as easy for me as her captivating mine is for her, but I do not want to keep her my little girl forever.

I do not want to keep any of my children little forever. I cherish the days of their youth that I have with them, but during these years I am their parent, their teacher, their priest, and their disciplinarian. I do not pretend that in these years that I can be their friend. We can be very close and equally cherish each other, but, for now, I am the parent and they are the children. When they become adults, then we can become friends. I look forward to getting to know the adults they grow up to be and becoming friends and equals with them, then.

My little princess needs to grow up, not too fast, but she does need to grow up. And, part of that growing up process will one day include having to share her heart with another. Eventually, I will even have to be willing to let go of possessing the totality of her heart that I do today because it will naturally transition to the ownership of the man who will have proven that he is worthy of her and can love her even more than I can.

As much as imagining the day when I will give my daughter away to another, in marriage, is hard to think of today, I will embrace it when that day comes. For, when that time comes, she will be transitioning into a stage of her development, as a person, where she will realize a completeness that she could never fully realize alone, even with her daddy’s unconditional love.

I will be able to embrace that day because I know that what I invest in her life now has set the stage for her to be able to make good choices in the future. Because I taught her what to expect from a healthy romantic relationship, because I taught her how to expect to be treated by a man who really loves her, because I taught her how to expect to be treated by a man who respects her for who and all that she is, I know that she will never settle—she will hold out for what is best.

I hope that, in some small way, my ramblings here make even a little sense to you and inspire you in the relationships you have with the little princess in your life.

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John Donahue author of Every Daddy's Princess

Every Daddy's Princess - First Installment

There is a dynamic in the father-daughter relationship that is unlike any other relationship two human beings have. Not that father-son relationship are not equally important, but the father-daughter relationship is unique.

I know that I am not a unique example of the male of the human species. I was never very athletic when I was growing up and I probably did more things that would traditionally be associated with girls than boys. That is probably why I had more close friendships with girls growing up than I did boys my own age.

My whole life I knew that I wanted to be a dad. Even in kindergarten when the teacher asked everybody what they wanted to be when they grew up, I said, “I want to be a dad.” My teacher was taken aback, she tried to redirect me by asking me if I didn’t want to do one of the heroic occupations that my male classmates had all chosen. I said, “Yes, but only so I can afford to be a dad.” You see even at a very young age nothing else mattered to me, if I couldn’t be a dad. And, I was very specific, I wanted to be a dad of girls.

I grew up the oldest son in a house of all boys. My younger brothers were close together in age and distant from me. Like I already said, I had little in common with most boys my age, so I felt more comfortable with girls, so it seemed natural to me that I just wanted to be the dad to girls.

As I got a little older, I began to become an astute observer of human behavior. I love to go to a crowded shopping mall and just sit and watch people. When I was a teen ager I used to go with my guy friends and watch girls, and I did really like watching the girls, but unlike my friends I probably watched as many other people around me as I did girls.

I love to observe people and their behaviors and try and figure out things about them. I don’t usually try to delve to deep, that requires too much assumption, that is without getting to know the individuals personally. But, surface things in their character and about their relationships can often be easily detected. Usually, if you watch them long enough they will prove your observation correct. Sometimes I am wrong, but usually, I am right.

One of the things that I began to really enjoy to watch, especially because I wanted to one day join their ranks, were fathers and daughters.

I began to notice how easily one of the simplest and most rewarding relationships God gave to human beings can become so complex and draining. I noticed the teenage girls who walked five steps ahead or behind their fathers barely acknowledging his presence until they wanted him to pull out his credit card and pay for their material desires. I noticed those same fathers desperately following along hoping that this would help to accumulate to an entrance price back into her heart.

At the other end of the spectrum, I noticed middle-aged fathers who might be resting at a play area watching the grandkids play when their adult daughter approached, sat on his lap, kissed him, and said, “I love you daddy. Thank you for watching the kids while I ….”. This was a father who still beamed with pride when he saw his daughter, even out of the corner of his eye. They still have the special relationship they were gifted by God when she was first born.

I knew that I wanted to be a father of daughters and I knew which of those fathers I wanted to be. I was now on a mission. I was not only dating girls or spending time with my close friends that were girls, I was learning from them and their fathers. And the girls that I dated, if they didn’t have that special relationship with their father’s they probably didn’t have much of a chance of anything ever getting very serious. I wasn’t going to marry a woman who did not have that special relationship with her father. After all, I wanted a father-in-law who could round-out my education before I became the father of a daughter.

Well, fortunately for me, the first part of my mission was easily accomplished. I was able to observe many father-daughter relationships up close and personal. I even was able to get some fathers to talk to me about their relationships with their daughters. And, I eventually fell in love with and married one of those girls who had a wonderful relationship with her daddy.

Unfortunately, my wife and I dealt with infertility for over seventeen years before our daughter was born, so the second part of my mission took a painstakingly long time to come to reality, but it did give me the chance to continue my education.

In that time, my father-in-law and I became good friends and I was able to cherish the relationship he had with my wife that much more. We spent a lot of time with my in-laws during the first fifteen years of our marriage and I don’t remember a single time that we got together that my wife didn’t at some point end up in her daddy’s lap in a cherished moment.

I became the father to a son before I became the father to a daughter and that scared the life out of me. I was afraid that I was going to really screw this boy up. But, God, literally, dropped this little boy into our lives through an unplanned adoption and I fell head over heels in love with him. We have a great relationship and I don’t think that he is any the worse for my lack of machismo. He and my father-in-law had a great relationship together. He was the only person my son would willingly leave my side for during that first year of his life. But, sadly, shortly after my son turned a year old, we lost my father-in-law to a couple of really bad and unexpected heart attacks.

My wife lost her daddy, I lost my good friend and second father, and my son had lost his grandfather. My father-daughter mentor had been graduated to the next existence before any of us were through loving and living with him. It was devastating.

I have come to learn from my experiences with my father-in-law and those of my observations of the fathers and daughters of my whole life, that there is nothing more precious than the moment you have with your daughters right now. For the fathers whose daughters are still very young, they have the very best opportunity to build lifelong loving relationships with their daughters. For others whose daughters may have entered the rebellious teenage years, adulthood, or even the later stages of life estranged from you, it is never to late to repair, rebuild, or even start building a rewarding relationship with them. No matter how much pain may exist from past wrongdoings, a rewarding future is possible if you are both willing to work towards it. It may be hard, but it will always be worth it.

The relationship that a little girl develops with her daddy is so vital not only to her self esteem, but to all of the relationships that she develops for the rest of her life. If she knows that she is daddy’s little princess-that she is the most beautiful girl in the world in his eyes, that she is capable of doing anything she sets her mind to, that she captivates him whenever she’s around-she will possess a confidence in life that no self-help guru could ever teach.

From that relationship she will learn what to expect from romantic relationships. She will either have a measure by which to judge what is offered to her or she will be searching to compensate for what she didn’t receive from her father.

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John Donahue author of Every Daddy's Princess

Cinderella
Words and Music by
Steven Curtis Chapman
from the album "This Moment"

She spins and she sways to whatever song plays,
Without a care in the world.
And I’m sitting here wearing the weight of the world on my shoulders.
It’s been a long day and there’s still work to do,
She’s pulling at me saying "Dad I need you!
There’s a ball at the castle and I’ve been invited
And I need to practice my dancin’"
"Oh please, daddy, please!"

Chorus:
So I will dance with Cinderella
While she is here in my arms
’Cause I know something the prince never knew
Oh I will dance with Cinderella
I don’t want to miss even one song
’Cause all too soon the clock will strike midnight
And she’ll be gone.

Verse 2:
She says he’s a nice guy and I’d be impressed
She wants to know if I approve of the dress
She says, "Dad the prom is just one week away
And I need to practice my dancin’
"Oh please, daddy , please!"

Chorus:
So I will dance with Cinderella
While she is here in my arms
’Cause I know something the prince never knew
Oh I will dance with Cinderella
I don’t want to miss even one song
’Cause all too soon the clock will strike midnight
And she’ll be gone
She will be gone

Verse 3:
But she came home today with a ring on her hand
Just glowin’ and tellin’ us all they had planned
She says, "Dad the wedding’s still six months away
But I need to practice my dancin’
"Oh please, daddy , please!"

Chorus:
So I will dance with Cinderella
While she is here in my arms
’Cause I know something the prince never knew
Oh I will dance with Cinderella
I don’t want to miss even one song
’Cause all too soon the clock will strike midnight
And she’ll be gone

©2007 Sparrow Song
Administered by EMI Copyright Management Group Publishing
Peach Hill Songs
Administered by EMI Copyright Management Group Publishing
BMI

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click on the link below.

John Donahue author of Every Daddy's Princess