I’ve been thinking about this for the last few weeks. We seem to be facing a crisis of manliness in this country. We have lots of men with no chests. We have absent fathers. We vilify fathers and men in particular in our media. What makes a man? I have been blessed to have strong men in my life that have provided good examples of what it is to be a man.

A man keeps his word. When a man says that he will do something, he does it. My maternal grandpa was great at this. You knew that when he said that he’d do something that it would get done. This was in large part due to his work. He worked in a variety of fields throughout his life. He was a mechanic, owning his own shop. He ran a timber business for a number of years. He was a trucker for a few years. He did various other manual labor jobs in his life. In each one of those fields, his word was paramount. He cared about the quality of work he produced. He cared about his clients. If his clients couldn’t trust him when he said that these trees would be cleared in a set number of days then he’d lose business. If he didn’t care about keeping his word, he would have starved. If he didn’t care about keeping his word, he wouldn’t have been able to support his family.