What "Collateral Beauty" Taught Me

Guest Post by Stepping into Fatherhood aka Nathan Glenn

My wife has been wanting me to write a guest post on this blog for a while now.  I hadn’t known what I wanted to write about until now.  I just watched a movie called “Collateral Beauty.”  Though it really didn’t get very good reviews, I feel that it was a very powerful movie.  In fact I don’t know how you could watch it and not have to wipe tears away from your eyes, especially if you have young children.

Without ruining this movie for you… this movie is about dealing with loss.  Specifically the loss of a young child.  Whenever I watch a movie like this I can’t help butt imagine what that must be like and I can feel the pain as I put myself in the characters' shoes.  It really got me thinking about how we live our lives…more specifically how we live our lives with our children. 

Especially with modern technology, too often we check out.  How many times are you present with your children?  I mean really present???  I got to thinking about this on a personal level and I know that too often, way too often, we are physically present with our children but checked out because we are on Facebook, watching TV, playing games on our phone, doing work, etc, which my wife and I are guilty of all at different moments. Time goes too fast for us to continue to do this and we know it's something we need to really consciously work on.

 The time we have with our children will never be again.  There is no rewind button in life.  We don’t want to miss those special moments because we were checked out on our phone. We can’t get them back again!  We do our best to enjoy our children and cherish every moment, but we both feel we could do better.   As is pointed out in the movie “tomorrow is not promised.”  I could not even imagine losing a child.  My children are my everything and I really don’t know how I would be able to go on. However, I do know that I can enjoy the beauty that my children bring into the world.    Every day my children, your children, bring beauty into this world simply by being in it.  Be it a laugh, a smile, a hug, a cuddle, or a thought there is something every day that is truly special.  Every day we get to spend with them is a gift! 

This also reminds me of something I often tell my wife when she complains about our girls crawling into our bed.  Cherish these moment because one of these days it will be the last of its kind.  The last time crawling into our bed to get snuggles, the last time needing us to do their hair, the last piggy back ride, the last bedtime story, the last, the last, the last.  We are going to miss these things when they are gone so we need to experience as many of these moments as possible.  We can’t do that when we are checked out doing other much less important things.

So from now on we're going to look up from our phone, put down our work, turn off the TV and enjoy what really matters in life… our children.  There is a saying that life is what happens while we are busy making other plans.   Our children love us, they look up to us, and they yearn for our attention.    One day the “mommy, daddy” moments will become less frequent and begin to disappear and I don’t know about anyone else but I'm going to miss these moments.

 

 

 

                                     The Hubby's other Stepping into Fatherhood Guest Post

                               How Marriage is Like Riding a Bike: also written by the Hubby