“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I hold my two-year-old daughter’s hand as she skips alongside me, blissfully bouncing her way toward the maternity ward.
"Madelynn, are you ready to meet your sister?" I ask. She beams, nods, and hops again.
We pass a waiting room, where I notice the magazines strewn across a table. Each subtly whispers its doctrine of the month:
Cosmopolitan promotes promiscuity, fame, and luxury as means to happiness.
Time depicts presidents, executives, and entertainers at the pinnacle of power.
Forbes preaches the gospel of wealth, measuring people by the money they pile up and the records they tear down.
I open the door to room 512. Madelynn climbs onto the bed, where my wife holds our new baby. Leaning over to see her sister’s face, Madelynn exclaims with a sense of awe and celebration, “Now we get to be a family!”
With tears welling in my eyes, I look at my precious daughters and pray: "May they be not deceived."
My little girls will still be in pigtails when they first step onto the battlefield of beliefs. In a world that often mixes up what is right and wrong, I will help them fight against the counterfeits and cheap substitutes within popular ideologies. I will show them a more excellent way.
I will show them virtue, humility, and generosity bring real happiness.
I will show them no role is more powerful or important than mother or father.
I will show them the Gospel of love, measuring myself by the lives I lift up and the hearts I help heal.
— Adam Gassin