Holidays are simultaneously a time to rejoice and a time for sorrow. Sorrow and joy intertwine, but Jesus holds the keys for a trade as in Isaiah 61. Mourning becomes joy, the faint spirit becomes praise, the mark of sorrow on one’s forehead becomes a mark of beauty. Instead of shame, there is a placeholder of hope. So it is on Father’s Day for the fatherless.
My years with my dad were short. Although I would have never called myself a daddy’s girl, I wanted to be smart, strong, and capable like my dad. I thought being strong meant stuffing my emotions deep inside. He was passionately fierce with his anger and emotion, never hiding it. I just wanted to please him, and any hint of anger that burned within I killed. It would take me longer to relearn the tears and softness of my mother which was more natural to me. If dad was intensely angry, then he was intensely loving too. He gave the biggest bear hugs.
Whenever we went out to eat, I sat on the side of the booth with my dad. Traveling, dad walked first, then me, then my sister, then mom. My mom was as smart as my dad. As a child, it was my dad whom I looked up to when I needed homework help or math advice. I would ask him for help to see how he would solve the puzzle and to be near him. I was crushed when he stopped being able to help me.
My dad was imperfect. He never advised me on boys, and we didn’t have deep conversations. Dads back then in my community were more distant like the 1950’s and 1960’s dads instead of how dads are today. They were not hands on. I was probably closer to my mom, but I enjoyed my dad’s presence and respected him. I’ve always been the quiet, observant type that understands things about people that they don’t yet understand about themselves. When mom and dad fought, I could explain why he was angry. Of course, I now understand that I couldn’t have really understood it all.
Even though times were really tough in my family before my dad died, I didn’t understand fatherlessness and how you never, ever stop needing a parent no matter how old you are. Girls never stop needing their dads, even if and when they get married. I assumed that somehow time made the passing of a parent easier, more accepted, but I also assumed that as an adult, I would understand all the mysteries of the world. Surely, something magical happened to you when you became an adult.
I didn’t know how when you become an adult, you are really the same, only hopefully a little bit more mature. Being an adult doesn’t make you mature or knowledgeable or able to understand the mystery. You keep needing a father and a mother, even when you aren’t supposed to anymore. It was shocking to lose my dad since none of my grandparents had yet passed when he did. Maybe then I would have understood how you keep needing your parents had I seen my mom or my dad lose a parent first.
God deemed experience the best teacher for me. In the years before my dad’s death, he was in deep sin, to the point of me wondering where he would spend eternity. Dad’s death was part of my journey to learning who God is and how deeply I am loved. I prayed for years for my dad to be healed, and his death was not the healing I longed for.
I worked at the same company with dad, and I had the luxury of people telling me that they heard my dad say how deeply proud he was of me. After he died and I returned to work, those words brought me great encouragement. But knowing that was not enough. There was still a void only the Heavenly Father could fill.
In those years surrounding his death, I started believing life was a crapshoot. Dad’s death didn’t start that feeling, but helped exasperate it. It became a deeply held belief, and I would have never thought of trading in my sorrows for His joy and goodness when I wasn’t sure He was good or wanted me to be joyful.
God being the merciful and gracious Father that He is did it anyway. He used the means of suffering to give me joy. He is the God who gives and takes away. I’d grown used to Him taking much more than what He’d given, at least in my mind’s eye. Thirteen years after dad’s death and after many deeply painful years and I am only just grasping what God wanted to give me when He took from me.
Only the fatherless can truly understand the gaping hole left in the place of a father. The fatherless grow to understand the deep need for a Father. He called me His child, made me His own, and wiped the shame of my past and my father’s sin and my deep sin away. I’ve written about my wrestlings about my dad. I believe his eternity is in heaven. I had so much to learn about how loving God is. Most of all, God gave me Himself. He accepted me, made a place for me to belong. He held me always. I am always amazed at what I am still learning.
I will always still miss my dad and wish for a dad to touch and one to hug and squeeze me so. Death does not seem a gift. It is a heart wrenching, painful, searing loss. But indeed, I know that God is bigger and better even than death. Paul really does know what he writes about when he says that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, not even death. The hope of glory is a true hope indeed. Thankfully, it starts here on earth. This I know. This is joy unfathomable.
Leave a Reply