Good morning…
Yesterday, her email was short and sweet: “I hope you will feel honored that your devotional was something I read to my dad in his last days – and a part of what I will say at his funeral tomorrow. Thank you for using your words and your gifts to bless others.” Attached to her email, she sent a copy of the message she will share at her father’s funeral today at 2:00 pm. With her permission, I share with you her words of blessing, truly believing our hearts will be joined in prayerful solidarity with this fortunate family as they lay to rest a well loved man this Easter afternoon.
Here are her loving words: “What is a dad? How do you define a good father? He is one who loves you so much no matter what, one you can always count on, one who is wise, one who leads by example. My brother and I had no idea when we were children, teens, or even young adults that we were blessed to have such a father. The older we become and the more we hear the real stories of people’s childhood issues, the more we realize that our dad was not just above average, he was extraordinary.
I never wondered if I was loved. I can’t remember a single night in my life that I was home when he did not come into my room to kiss me good night and tell me of his love for me. I never wondered if I was safe, because my dad always locked the doors (even if you were on the porch or in the garage), changed the oil on time, made sure the tire pressure was right, and ensured the fire in the wood stove was secured. I never wondered what was the right thing to do. My brother and I learned the value of hard work as we mowed grass, stacked wood, and picked up sticks during play time. We learned to give and to save as we watched an envelope go in the offering plate each Sunday and saw our savings account grow. When my husband and I took the Crown Financial Bible study, I kept wondering why this information on “give first, save second, and live on the rest” was such a foreign concept to most people. Didn’t everyone’s dad teach them these principles? “Finish what you start”. “Once a job has begun never leave it till it’s done.” “Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.” These were not just cute sayings on the wall in our house, but principles lived out over and over again. Responsibility and “doing what you say you will do” were qualities our dad desired to instill in us. My brother and I hated to get up early on a Saturday and head out to the Stokesland Cemetery for what seemed like an all day mowing event. Dad didn’t just tell us what to do and wait for us to do it, he worked alongside us teaching us as he went. I swore I would never cut grass as an adult, and it turns out it is one of my favorite chores. Our dad taught us the satisfaction of a job well done and taking pride in our work. I didn’t always know it at the time, but my dad was wise.
Every life has seasons, and I feel so privileged to have seen my dad go through several. He softened as he got older. When I was just out of college, my Nanny, his mother, died and he was devastated. When I invited him to come to Australia with me, he agreed. He never liked travel and my worldly 22-year-old self was so excited to teach him about another country. After we had been out of on the Great Barrier Reef, seen the rain forest, and looked for crocodiles, we were walking down a street in Sydney with every different ethnic restaurant you can imagine. There were Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Malaysian, and Australian foods all around us and I said, “Isn’t this so great?” And he replied, “Well, darling, I don’t see how it’s all that different from home.” Back then I thought he was so provincial, but now I see how wise he was. He loved his home, his church, his community, and his people – and why would he want to leave? Now I understand.
I believe one reason it is so easy for me to love and trust God, our Heavenly Father, is because my earthly father provided the example of God’s love, protection, provision, and wisdom in my life. I can never be grateful enough for this gift, this generational blessing that Dad gave to our family and me our whole lives. It spills over to all of our children, and to all those who were close enough to really see what a man of character and faith he truly was.
Last week, as dad lay in the hospital bed, I received a devotional from my friend Sue about one of the favorite books we read to our children, “The Velveteen Rabbit.” I read her words out loud to Dad and would like to share them with you.
*****Rubbed thin. That is how many of us feel right now. Rubbed thin from incomprehensible tragedy. Rubbed thin from a plethora of needs jockeying for our time and attention. Rubbed thin from jumbled up emotions we can not put into words. We who feel rubbed thin are ones who have taken the “often amazing, sometimes awful” risk of loving, really loving.
When I think of being rubbed thin, my mind wanders back to a bedtime book. In Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit, the seasoned Skin Horse knows by experience the painful privilege of allowing love to rub us thin, to rub us Real.
“’Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’
‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.
‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’
‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’
‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’”
When our hair feels loved off and our eyes drop out from too many tears, when the joints holding life together are loose and we feel very, very shabby, the Spirit rises up from within to carry us through each exhausting hour. As the skin of our human heart is rubbed thin, more of God’s unending love becomes Real to the world.*****
As I gently stroked Poppy’s almost bald head and read this into his ear, I couldn’t help but cry tears of gratefulness for his courage to really love with his whole heart and his whole being, even with the risk and the reality of pain and hurt. To those of us who have been rubbed thin by the last few weeks and really the last few years, I pray that the love that has made you real will carry you through. To the rest of us who are somewhere on the journey of becoming real, may we remember that as we love more and more, and risk the pain, we become more real. We shine God’s light to the world. As John 3:30 says, “He must become greater and greater, and I’ become less and less.” We love you, Poppy, and we are grateful for the example you lived out with your life. He was more and you were less and we are all better for it.”
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! 1 John 3:1a (NIV),
Sue
