​I didn’t get to honor my Father last week, and I so enjoyed seeing so many posts honoring your dads.  I believe we can never use our words enough to honor people while they are alive.  My father is very ill, eaten up with cancer, and so I know I will not have another Father’s Day to be with him.  He is getting weaker every day, but still such a good storyteller and in his right mind.  We enjoyed hearing a story about him trying to get a bat out of the basement several years ago last week, and that led to more stories….
 
Kim always said that Dad told us he loved us by changing our oil.  When she went through a divorce, Dad would stop at her house almost every day to see if she needed something, would check her car out and her lawnmower and all the things he was good at.  Sometimes he wasn’t so good with long, wordy, emotional conversations, but he was phenomenal with the hands-on stuff.  Although when he got saved, he became much more emotional and would hug us often and tell us how he felt.  We’d laugh because for a while, as he was transitioning into the “new” him, he would say, “I appreciate you.”  It took him a while to work up to the “I love you.”  Last Sunday, as we left, he hugged me and said, “I love you, honey – you will never, never know how much.”  We both just cried and cried, as we know these days of voices in your ear are soon going to transition to him waiting with Jesus until I arrive to hear him say those words again.
 
My father taught us how to live by his actions, not so much his words.  One of my best/worst memories was when we were headed to Myrtle Beach with three other families when I was a teenager.  We had a truck camper, one of those little campers that slides on the bed of a truck, and it served us well – all four of us could fit in that tiny thing, and we thought it was a palace.  I especially loved it because I could ride up on the bed that was over the cab and read when we went places and didn’t have to sit in the car with everyone else.  Growing up on the farm, with lots of chores to be done, reading was a guilty pleasure, and I’d hide to do it any time I could.  As we were headed to the beach, having left early, in Charleston, we came across this car that was broken down on the interstate.  I feel the truck start to slow, and I look out the window and see this car along the side of the road.  I instantly began to seethe, thinking that I could NOT believe that Dad was stopping.  WE WERE ON VACATION!  What in the world?  Not only did he stop, but we stayed there for hours, him tinkering on that car, getting parts, just totally dropping what we had going to help this family.  As the hours went on, the madder I got.  And yes, I admit, I was thinking bratty, selfish teenage thoughts:  If only we’d passed by, someone else would have helped; my friends were already there and would have hours of fun without me; how selfish could Dad be when he was only thinking of others and not his own family….you get the drift.  It wasn’t pretty.
 
But my dad showed me then – and he continued to show me throughout my life – that other people are just as important as we are, and when we have trouble, we are to be there for each other – and that our Father God does not go on vacation, so if we are His servants, how dare WE go on vacation.  It has been shown to me time and time and time again, and never was Dad put in danger when he picked up a hitchhiker or invited someone into his home or went into their home.  He is a lover of people, and if there is an ounce of strength left in his body, he will help you.  One day, he returned home from radiation and was so weak he just needed to get home, but he had a friend who had cancer and was sick, so he took time to go chase him down so he could check on him.  That’s my dad.
 
Another memory that has come to the forefront while I’m up at the Miss WV Pageant with Tal was the last year she was running for Miss WV.  It is a rare occasion when a girl enters that pageant and just wins the first time.  Most of the people who have won have competed for up to four years, until they age out.  Talia got the pageant bug when she was 11 or so and won the Miss Ripley 4th of July Pageant by promising to “sparkle for the little town of Ripley” and won $50.00.  From then on, it was her thing.  My dad sat through pageant after pageant that she wouldn’t win, but usually came home with Miss Congeniality.  He was a man’s man, not a pageant guy, but he loved this little girl, and he knew what it meant to her for him to be there.  He usually wouldn’t be at the Miss WV pageant as we knew she wasn’t going to win but was just learning and making great friends.  But the last year she competed, we had hopes that she could come close to winning, so Dad came to Morgantown to watch.  The prior year, Tal had had a horrendous thing happen to her, and she almost didn’t recover from it.  She had heard God tell her when she was 18 that someday, she was going to walk across that stage as Miss WV, and she clung to that.  This was the last year she could compete, so God was either going to fulfill that promise, or she was going to go home devastated and perhaps cycle back around to the depression and brokenness of the previous year, so a lot was on the line. 
 
As they began to call the Top 10, I was not nervous as I had watched the preliminary nights and I knew she’d done well enough to make it in.  But at the calling of the 9th girl, when it wasn’t Talia, Dad began to cry.  Slow tears were washing down his face, and I looked over and saw, and Kim saw, and then we both began to cry, just because the love and hope and fear Dad had for Tal was pouring out of his eyes.  They called her name on number 10, but by then, our whole row of people were crying, just from the love that a family shares and it had nothing to do with her making it in the Top 10 or not.  It was another way Dad showed us he loved us, by tearing up if something bad was happening or if he was filled with joy.  We often cry when saying the prayer at a meal, because Dad will cry, and then we just all start. 
 
Another way Dad showed who he was is how he always wanted to share his faith with others.  He would not be afraid to talk to someone about their soul, even someone who wanted nothing to do with the message he was giving.  He cared enough about them to risk that they would never care back, just so he could introduce them to the Lord.  A few years ago, when he came out of anesthesia from a surgery to fix a punctured lung from a lawnmower accident, he was out of his mind, seeing bugs and making Kim and Mom and I do construction work from his bed, thinking he was on a job.  Even then, when he was out of his mind, he was witnessing to the doctors and the nurses, holding them tight and asking them if they had made a decision to ask Jesus into their heart.  See, when he invited Jesus into his heart, he got turned inside out, became a man who would cry before he would curse, became a man who would love in the face of rejection, became a man he’d never dreamed he would be, and he wanted everyone to know that peace and joy that comes from being who Jesus makes you, not who you make you. 
 
As I’ve thought about these things, all of them remind me of God – the God who cries with us when we are hurting and when our dreams just might not come true; the God who loves us enough to call us to Him when we are rejecting Him at every turn; the God who sees us with a vision of who we can be, not who we currently are.  I am blessed beyond measure to know both of these fathers – and I would ask you – would you like to meet my Father God, my Savior, my Lord?  I would be privileged to introduce Him to you!  Your life will never be the same….