Still Here

I remember dusty dirt roads and a brand new pair of boots

A boy who didn't know yet he'd be tracing back these roots

I watched you take your first steps on a morning cold and clear

And everything I ever was just suddenly made sense right here

I put you on that yellow bus and watched it pull away

Your eyes were wide and wondering if the world would stay the same

I know that fear like my own heartbeat, I was that kid once too

But every road I ever walked down brought me straight to you

So when the day comes and you're standing where I lay to rest

Don't let the weight of missing me put your dreams to rest

I am in your laughter and I'm in your stubbornness too

Every lesson that I ever learned, I left inside of you

I ain't the kind of man who goes and fades into the night

I'll be riding every victory and every uphill climb

Dry your eyes and raise your chin and do what I'd have done

I ain't gone, I'm just becoming everything you will become

Now I never built my life on what somebody handed me

I clawed it out of nothing just to show you it could be

That it don't matter where you start or what you're starting with

What matters is you never let the fire in you quit

And to the one who walked into my life already grown and strong

You took a place inside my heart like you had been there all along

It don't take a single day of diapers or of scraped up knees

To make a man your father, girl, you always belonged to me

I have felt the ones I've lost on quiet Sunday mornings

In a smell, in a song, in a voice without a warning

So when you feel me close like that, don't you dare turn away

That ain't grief talking, that's me saying I ain't gone a single day

Let the tears fall hard and heavy, that's the price of being brave

Every single thing that made me, I poured straight into you

I ain't the kind of man who goes and fades into the night

I'll be riding every victory, I'll be there for every climb

Dry your eyes and raise your chin and do what I'd have done

I ain't gone, I'm just becoming everything you will become

Everything you will become

Everything you will become

I'm still here

I'm still here