After 20 years, my relationship with my father has finally come full circle. When I was young, I was “Daddy’s little girl,” his only daughter and child. I was the apple of his eye and the object of most of his affection — he had to save some for my mom, you know.

He would stop at Taco John’s before he brought me to kindergarten in the afternoons, and everyone in class wanted to be my friend just because I shared the Potato Oles he gave me.

When I hit middle school, though, the proverbial crap hit the fan between us. Like every other teenager does at one point or another, I began to push him away. I never wanted him to be anywhere near where I was approximately 90 percent of the time, so that ruled out any meaningful contact we could have possibly had for four years.

To me, it seemed like he tried to run my life for me, dictating what I could do and where I could go with whom — I didn’t think being “Daddy’s little girl” was so great anymore. It only meant that he disapproved of almost every guy I dated and really hated a few of them. And he didn’t like my weird-looking friends, either.

We were always fighting about something, whether it was about what I was wearing that day, not being able to hang out at certain places, or making me get out of bed at 7 a.m. to go to church every Sunday. Sometimes I didn’t think we would ever be able to get along again.

I felt like he would never chill out and leave me alone, but my dad did what he did because he was trying to protect me from the big, bad world out there, and he did the best he could do. No matter how much I hated it when he kept track of me and asked a trillion questions about my friends and what we did together, it kept me (for the most part) from doing things I shouldn’t have been doing because I didn’t want to get caught.

Of course, no parent is perfect. There were times my dad lost his temper; times he broke things, even a time that he grounded me for six months straight — then again, that was probably my fault. And children certainly don’t pop out of the womb with a comprehensive instruction manual. It’s all an experiment at first to see what works; sometimes he had to yell at me repeatedly to get me to listen. I have what some people would call “selective hearing.”

But during my senior year in high school, I began to realize just how much I appreciate being “Daddy’s little girl” and how much he’s sacrificed out of his love for me. He’s worked at a job he doesn’t really like for an ungodly long amount of time, standing on his feet 10 hours a day to make sure that my mother and I live comfortably. He also made a huge sacrifice so I could do what I’ve always wanted — he gave me what he had in his retirement fund to pay for my first semester of college. And despite the wear-and-tear his job has on him, my dad was willing to volunteer much of his time and energy helping out with my high school choir functions and to this day spends lots of time doing outreach work with middle school youth at his church.

Now I have come to a full realization of the love I have for him. We’ve both worked to get us to where we are in our relationship today, but it wasn’t much work on my part: All I had to do was grow up.

My father, however, has changed so much since I was younger, and it’s not just because I’ve changed my view of him — he says it’s because he let God into his heart. I, for one, am apt to agree with him since I’ve noticed a slow but dramatic change in the way he deals with conflict and opposing viewpoints. As we both have matured, I have been able to talk with him much more freely about touchy subjects (read: my life). Even though he doesn’t agree with me on many, many issues, rather than just being negative, he will discuss things with me and use facts instead of the phrase, “Because I said so,” to back up his arguments. Above all, he never condemns me for what I do, but is there for me to talk to when I need him the most, which these days is more like every day. That, I say, is true love.

Unfortunately, we don’t get the chance to talk very often because both of us are busy, but that’s the way life is: We spend too much time working for what we really don’t need (money, possessions, etc.) and too little time building what really matters most — close relationships with those that matter most to us.

Father’s Day is a time to give tribute to our fathers. But fathers deserve much more than a day to be respected and revered. After all, if my dad hadn’t been there for me through all those yesterdays, I wouldn’t be able to follow my dreams today.

Today is also his birthday.

So, Happy Birthday, daddy. I love you.