Between the Rock and a hard spot: "I Will Be Your Father"

Between the Rock and a hard spot: "I Will Be Your Father":

“I Will Be Your Father”

As we entered the home, my mother gave me some crayons and a piece of notebook paper and sent me to an adjacent sitting room to busy myself with coloring. A number of men and women were all surrounding the kitchen area. My mother and some other women were huddled together when I heard some disturbing chatter. My Dad had not been home much for some time now. As a traveling salesman, he was gone a lot. But this time, it seemed from the conversation that my Dad was not going to be coming home to us anymore. The youngest of five children, I was only 5 years old.  My heart was afraid of what I didn’t understand. What did it mean? I knew my mom was crying a lot, she had me sleeping in her room at night to keep her company. As I continued coloring, a great feeling of fear had gripped me. Though I continued drawing, my little head was trying to comprehend what I heard, and my heart began to feel a loss for which there was no understanding. As I felt all alone in the confusion of my soul, before I could think of running to my mommy for reassurance and comfort,  I suddenly felt a strong presence enter the room beside me. Then a warm sense of a strong embrace surrounded me. Immediately I felt my fears melted away from me and replacing it with peace settling down in my heart. Everything would be okay.

 A five year old girl can hardly put to words an experience of such things, or be aware of its effect to alter ones life. But now, I can describe in words what that moment meant to me then. I have seen my journey since, and the Voice of one whom never left my side.  Afterwards, throughout every challenge I would face, one thing I became sure of was this; that God was declaring to me then, “I will be your Father”.  This first encounter with the Lord would be the beginning of my new Fathers care over my life, and His revealing Himself to me, that He would always be right there with me, when I reached for Him. I was so moved by this experience that I decided to make a fan from my notebook paper. Coloring it with flowers, and putting my name on the front in cursive, I put a secret message in one of the folds.  I wrote “I Love God”. It was my response to this incredible experience. And a memento that I still possess. But it would take a long time before I would really know Him.

 We had not been a church going family. So it would take others to expose me to the One who had embraced me that day and placed a hunger in my heart that would eventually lead me straight to Him. My parents divorced and I remember the day she went to court. She was putting on a green dress suit and a nice pair of earrings as I lay on her bed looking up at the seagull mobile she put above me, so that it would help me go to sleep at night. I asked her if Daddy would ever be coming home again. “No” she said. I lay there quietly questioning. Was my mom not pretty enough? She was stunning. Was she fat? Well, she wasn’t the skinny girl of her youth after having five children. What could have driven our daddy away? It must be me, just too many kids. It didn’t matter. The gaping hole his absence made, the sense of security, value and direction a father’s love brings was replaced with the gnawing sense of being rejected and abandoned, and a belief that we must not be worthwhile enough to stick around for or invest in. He rarely showed up for visits, and didn’t financially support us beyond the first couple of years. 

All my siblings were deeply affected, but I felt the pain of it more acutely for my three brothers. All the father- son events that they had to borrow someone else’s dad for, or maybe an uncle. It was terribly painful. Divorce was not such a common occurrence as it is today. And no one talked about it. And I remember my Mom suffered with the stigma of being a divorced woman. For me, in all my memories that shaped my life, the one that profoundly affected me the most was that I never saw my mother loved by anyone. I never saw her hugged or kissed by any man. No affection beyond her own kids. She never had a boyfriend or ever married again. She had poured her life into her children. This made me also feel so unlovable, and that I would have to be something so flawless, (which I knew I could never be) if I were to find a man to love me. 

But my search was satisfied. I thank My Father for His steadfast love and compassion. His Love has healed the little girl and has made this woman His own.  To You, My Father, Happy Fathers Day. I admire and adore You. And when I see the admiration and praise of earthly fathers toward their children, I can see You there in my minds eye, taking delight in me.