The Blessing of a Father

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost ten years since Daddy went to heaven. In some ways, it seems as though it was yesterday, and in other ways, it seems like it’s been a really long time. I miss talking with my dad a lot, because he had a lot of wisdom. He was the kind of man you could sit down with and just share your heart with. He could tell when something was on your mind, and he was always willing to listen. Daddy was by no means perfect, but he rated pretty high in my book.

Daddy was born in the early 1920s and grew up during the Great Depression. He told me stories about buying a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve for a quarter and about the year he only received an orange for Christmas (which was quite a treat, at that.) His family was so poor during that time that they ate corn flakes with water. His dad worked as a floor sander, and his mom was a seamstress. Times were hard, but somehow, they always made it.

Daddy didn’t serve the Lord for much of my life, but he instilled in me a love for the Lord and for the Word of God. Some of my fondest memories of Daddy are sitting around the kitchen table with him, reading the Bible. He taught me a lot of things about the Bible and helped me understand the King James Version Bible until it seemed like an old friend. Daddy probably read the Bible a lot more than some "good Christians."

Daddy taught me good morals and that a man’s word was his bond. He taught me a lot about dealing with people, as well as the importance of having compassion for others. A lot of this was taught to me by example. Even though our family would have been considered far down on the socio-economic scale, Daddy was a giver, with a heart as big as all of outdoors. If he heard of a family in need, he found a way to bless them. He spent several weeks stripping wire in the evenings to earn money to send me to Summer Bible School one year.

Daddy was not all sweetness and light, though. He wasn’t afraid to confront someone if it needed to be done, and he wasn’t afraid to tell something like it was. If that hurt your feelings, he would give you a hug when it was all over, but he would always tell you the truth. And even after I became an adult, if Daddy thought I was straying from the straight and narrow, he didn’t mind telling me.

I’m told that in Jewish families when a boy reaches the age of twelve, he goes through a certain ritual in the synagogue that publicly acknowledges he has reached manhood. Part of this ritual includes the blessing of his father. The father speaks words of blessing and encouragement to his son; sometimes the words are prophetic, as Jacob’s were, but always they show the love and acceptance of the father of his son.

I know that one of the greatest blessings of my life is to have been raised by the man who was my father. Those that he loved, he loved unconditionally, no matter how many times he was hurt or wronged. He wasn’t a glutton for punishment, but for those people that he truly cared about, he was willing to go the extra mile. I saw him apologize more than once when he was not in the wrong. He was just that kind of man.

Daddy taught me to love others in the same way. He taught me that the risk of loving others was a risk worth taking. While you might get your heart stepped on a few times, he taught me through his life that the rewards were priceless.

We didn’t have much money when I was growing up, but we always had a lot of love in our home. I will forever thank God for all that he gave me in the blessing of a father.