MY DAD

I have been thinking a lot about my dad lately for some reason. Maybe it is because David and I are taking a counseling training class, where we have to share our salvation stories with others. My dad is always a huge part of that story, though maybe not in the sense that one would imagine. Anyway, as I think about him, I realize that there are so many different directions his life could have gone.

I don’t know all of the details of his childhood, but I do know that he came from a broken home. He started smoking as a third grader and drinking not long after that. I think his smoking habit continued up until just shortly before he passed away. He swore up and down that he had quit years earlier, but the cigarette butts we found all over his workshop leaves much room for suspicion. He also went to prison at age 17, and then again as a married man who had just recently become a father. I can’t tell you much more about those early years, before I entered his life. I know it involved a lot of drugs, and sex and stories that I will probably never get to hear this side of heaven. I will tell you that he was an abusive alcoholic, but I will also tell you that he had one of the biggest, most tender hearts I have ever seen in a man (with the exception of my husband). My dad had five children, and I was the youngest. Because of the nature of my childhood, I only have scattered memories… some very vague, while other so vivid that I can close my eyes and relive them. There are some things that my dad did as an alcoholic that make us kids laugh as we recall them. The time we found him passed out upside down in a tall bush outside of our house. The time he took us kids to a restaurant, but was so drunk that he passed out with his face in his plate. But we have other memories that provide no room for laughter. We often lived life in a state of fear at the unpredictability of my father. It was hard to gauge whether he was going to be a funny drunk or an angry one. And he could shift from one to the other at the drop of a hat. We were afraid to upset him, but never quite knew what it was that would upset him. There were so many times that bitterness would rise up in me towards my mother for making the choice to stay with my dad. I just could not understand why someone would allow themselves and their children to live in such a state. Of course, I know now why my mother stayed. She was a new believer. Excited about her new-found faith, she would soak up the Word as if it were the only thing that could satisfy her insatiable thirst. She read 1 Corinthians 7:14, which said “the unbelieving husband will be sanctified by his believing wife”. She truly believed, that as long as she stayed married to him, he would be sanctified by her faith in Christ. I can’t claim to understand how it works, but in my mother’s case, it proved to be a faithful verse that made good on its promise.

We lived in utter poverty as children. My father would spend a lot of his paycheck at the bar. And why he did not leave us, knowing the burden and responsibility that awaited him at home, I do not really understand. I believe that many fathers in his position would have just walked away. But he didn’t. He had five children to care for, and somehow, in spite of all of his faults, he still found a way to make each of us feel loved by him. He definitely made us feel a lot of other not so good things too, but those are not the things that have stuck with me through the years. When I think about my dad, what I remember is the place on his lap that was always reserved for me. I remember the rough feel of his skin as I would cuddle up to him. I remember the warmth that always seemed to radiate from his body, providing a source of heat to warm my cold hands. I remember his laugh that, from a lifetime of smoking, would always turn into an uncontrollable cough. I remember his sense of humor, and how he would always get such pleasure out of scaring our socks off. He loved to jump out of places when we least expected it, and watch the startled look on our faces. I think that is why I love scaring my kids so much. He would constantly buy us gifts with money he did not have. It was probably his way of saying sorry, because I don’t think he ever quite knew how to put it into words.

And over the years, as God ever so gently worked on his heart, we watched our dad transform into something that none of us could have predicted. He was no longer a drinker, no longer abusive or scary. He just became soft, tender and kind. Granted, he was never a man of many words. He was hesitant and unsure of how to express his feelings. Because of this, there were a lot of conversations that never got to take place. There are things that us kids would have loved to hear from him, that he never found a way to tells us. There were so many apologies that I am certain he was dying to give, but never quite found a way to get them off his lips. But, as all five of us kids gathered around his bed in his last few hours before death, I realized something so amazing. We were all there! How many other men in this world could have done the things that my dad had done to his children, and still have all five of them lovingly gathered around him in his last moments of life? And in this, I saw the beauty of God’s redemption. 

My mother stayed with my dad because she truly believed that he would be sanctified by her faith in Christ. And sure enough, my father was sanctified. I had no doubt in my mind, as I watched him passing away, that he was about to be in the presence of Jesus. He had a quiet, subtle faith. He was not a Bible reader or an evangelist. He wasn’t even a church-goer. But he loved Jesus, and we all saw the fruit of that transforming love. I don’t think anyone would have predicted that my father’s life would have ended the way it did. After all of the mistakes he made along the way, somehow his life ended with such sweetness and beauty. It was a life covered in the blood of Jesus, and redeemed in a way that is only possible through Christ. I can’t wait to meet my dad in heaven; My real dad, untainted by sin and fully redeemed. I can hardly imagine what he will be like. My excitement grows every time I think of heaven. I am so glad that my mom stayed with my dad. What a beautiful story it turned out to be.