This past weekend I attended an exceptionally beautiful wedding in a small, brick church nestled within the Appalachian mountains. The bride and groom were a young couple, friends from high school, and I had never seen them so happy as I did that day. I'm not one for getting married young, but seeing them together, relishing in their union, it was sure hard not to fall in love with the idea of marriage.
I sat at a table close to the dance floor and watched the newlyweds swirl each other around, laughing and smiling with each turn. The immense love they had for each other was overwhelming, but I managed to keep a dry eye and pristine winged eyeliner throughout the whole evening, even through their first dance.
But then came the father-daughter dance... and so did the ruin of my eyeliner.
The bride let go of her now-husband's hands and joined her father under a glistening chandelier in the middle of the grandiose room. Smiling ear-to-ear, he took hold of his daughter, looked lovingly into her eyes and waited for the music to cue him in.
As he spun her around the room, I couldn't help but look at my own dad sitting right beside me. There my friend was dancing, now only daddy's little girl at heart, and here I sat thinking, I'm still daddy's little girl at mind.
My dad is still my everything, the strong pillar I lean on.
He's the guidance that I seek almost every day because I still believe he is the smartest man in the world, and he'll always have the answer no matter what ridiculous question I throw at him.
He's the one man who has never stopped loving me even when I get unreasonably difficult... Although, he does have no problem telling you the tale of his decade in hell, also known as my pre-teen and, more especially, teen years. But he's the only man to make it through those years and still love me more and more with each day.
He's the approval I seek when I've made even the smallest achievement in my life because, while it doesn't take too much to make him proud, knowing I've done so is the best achievement I've ever gotten.
But most importantly, he's the man I look up to, a person I aspire to be. I don't know when I'll be ready to trade his hands for another's, like my friend, but I do know he'll have to be one heck of a guy .
So here's to the man whom I've always had faith in and has always had faith in me.
To the man who has always loved me even when I didn't always love myself.
And who will always have a place in my heart no matter who else may take it and me from him.
Happy Father's Day to the man I love most: my dad.
