OK, So Life's Not Always About Baseball

I do love the game. It's just taken a back seat lately.
My daughters have moved home.
One is going to college this fall, and has issues with things at her other parent's house that have nothing to do with me, and no interest for me.
The other has come home after some time wandering in the wilderness.
And I am the happiest guy on the planet.
There was significant conflict, post-divorce, a few years ago. I appealed to our judge for relief. He appointed a guardian ad litem. That's a lawyer who can't make a living on his/her own, and has time on their hands to take assignments for the court. In our case, an African-American woman was assigned. She interviewed everyone in sight, including my children. Her report agreed that everything that I alleged had actually happened, and in specifically the way I alleged it had happened. In fact, more than I had alleged had happened. These extra facts only came to light because I had the good sense, and generous brother, to hire a good lawyer the second time through this case. I was given everything I asked for, EVERYTHING, but the final step of moving my children to my home. There was just no way, out of her culture, that the African-American woman with the time on her hands to be a guardian ad litem was going to remove two young girls from their mother's home. She was ok finding that they had been mistreated in all kinds of ways, but she wouldn't move them. So I did the best I could under the circumstances.
I have to say, I feel tremendously validated by my grown daughters' choice to live in my home.
The overwhelming majority of us stumble through life doing the best we can figure at any given moment in raising our children. I made my mistakes. I don't know anyone who hasn't. I'd love to revisit a few moments here and there and get another shot at some things. But on the whole, I am proud of my performance when it comes to my kids.
The whole time they were growing up, I sacrificed money and prestige to stay in the specific area where my girls were. I went on every field trip the older one had in school, and missed only one that the younger one had. I was almost always the only dad in sight. It was educational sitting in rooms while uncomfortable teachers addressed us parents as "Moms, thank you for coming today," "Ladies, we'll need to keep the children together," "Mothers, if you have any questions..."
I arranged my working life to have time, every day, to pick my girls up from school and spend time with them until their mother got home from work. 2:15 to 6 isn't full time, but it beats the heck out of every other weekend. I'm proud of that effort.
And now, I have pretty strong evidence that it means something to my daughters to have known that Dad is always here, always reliable, always with an open door. I haven't been willing to worship at the altar of "Don't damage their self-esteem no matter what." I have been honest with them at times when they didn't want to hear it, and when no one else in their lives would tell them the truth. I've been accused of being hard and tough. Guilty. Sometimes people in their late teens and early twenties need nothing in this world more than someone who will tell them the truth, even if it seems to interrupt the relationship for a while. Because in the end, they will learn who told them the truth and who didn't. And that matters. You can't trust people who don't tell you the truth.
I am grateful for all the blessings that have graced my life, and I know exactly where they have come from. But after the saving work of Christ, having my kids at home, under my roof at the end of the day, at a time when it is totally their choice to be here, is the greatest gift that I have ever received.