In Memory of My Father

I'm blessed to have had my father for so many years. While I didn’t expect to have him alive until the end of my days, he kept wanting me to believe that we'd be raptured soon and thus we’d avoid having to say goodbye. I never really gave the idea of daddy departing much thought until recently, until after his heart problems and his need for a permanent catheter. Even then, in diminished health, he continued to serve me like he always had – handling my U.S. Mail, answering my summons for jury duty by letting the court know I wasn't living in town and being a steadfast prayer warrior on my behalf.

As he began to look increasingly frail, the reality that he wasn’t going to be here much longer began to sink in. It brought me up short, because frail isn’t what my daddy was nor was it how he was supposed to be.

Daddy was always strong of body and mind, someone who could work hard and play hard. Daddy was the one who held my hand on the first day of kindergarten as we walked down to the school together that day. Daddy was the one with the beautiful tenor voice whose singing gladdened my heart. Daddy was the one I'd walk home with from school when I was in the second grade, with whom I always struggled to just keep up. Daddy was the one who played Monopoly with me, producing untold riches just when I thought I was getting ahead. He was the one who read “King Solomon's Mines” aloud to me during the summer break following third grade and gave me a love for reading.

It was daddy who fixed the house in the country during the summer following fourth grade, putting up paneling and getting the bees out of the house so we could move in. It was daddy who put up a backstop and basketball goal so that we could enjoy baseball and learn basketball between the work of cutting down locust trees with a cross-cut saw, digging postholes to build fences, working in the garden or mowing the lawn. It was daddy who supervised the spreading of the gravel on our quarter mile driveway, pretending that we were on a chain-gang of which he was the detention officer, making a game out of the work. Daddy taught us to work hard and play hard.

Most importantly, daddy taught us to love God. His walk with God was at the heart of who he was. He wasn’t perfect, but he taught us God's word by faithfully reading it to us in the mornings as we ate breakfast before going to school. Daddy demonstrated his love of God by seeking to live according to His word. How well I remember the argument on the way home from Sunday evening services where I asked him to allow me to grow out my hair. His answer was, “No!” and when asked for an explanation as to why not, the answer was, “Because I said so!” But in response to my tears and hurt feelings at not being given an answer, he humbled himself to come up to my bedroom and discuss it with me. He showed me consideration and backed away from his authoritarian position to consider his seventh-grade son’s feelings and to connect with my heart. He bent out of love on what was a matter of secondary importance for the sake of our relationship.

Daddy stood with me as I launched out away from home and welcomed me back after I finished my degree. He and mom cleared a bedroom at home as I moved back in until Heidi and I were married. They let the two of us move in with them again when we began to serve as campus missionaries. And again, and again as overseas missionaries, no matter how crowded it might be, we were always welcome to come “home”. He and mom never complained about how far away I’d taken their precious grandchildren, but only offered their loving support and abundant prayers, entrusting us together into the hands of the Lord.

Daddy entered with us into the joy of our children’s births, in visiting us and spending time with us in Israel. And he entered into our tragedy at losing his granddaughter and the terrible repercussions which this had on us as a family. He was a faithful prayer warrior for each of our children. How I will miss the one who taught me what it means to be a man, a husband and a father! How I will miss his care for me and for those whom he loved so much! How greatly will I miss his prayers!

In the grief of seeing him frail of body, I was tempted to forget that in the end this body is only a seed. When planted in the ground it is assured of the hope that it will rise again imperishable, glorious, powerful, spiritual. Overpowered by the loss, it can be hard for me to remember that daddy – indeed all of us – have been promised to once again be of strong body and mind in a new imperishable body.

I find myself mourning the loss of those I love! And yet how wonderful to know that death is swallowed up in victory. To know that my daddy and the others whom I have lost so tragically, have entered into the presence of the Lord and are now beholding Him face-to-face.