Memories of My Father

Yesterday was Father’s Day, and social media was flooded with tributes to fathers of all kinds, both living and deceased. But after nearly 16 years, specific memories of my own father seem distant at best. This I remember clearly: My Dad was a wonderful man who loved God and his family deeply. He was a man of few words but freely offered both his time and money to invest in the lives of others, especially those he loved. He was a very good father and grandfather and would have loved being a great-grandpa.

Good fathers are formed in many different ways, and my Dad’s early life in New Mexico wasn’t the most fertile soil for growing a great father. He never knew his own father, as Dad’s parents were separated when he was just six weeks old. My grandmother loved her boys but couldn’t take care of them alone, so she moved in with her parents for the next five years. My Dad’s grandpa was a loving and hard-working man who helped to daily influence Dad’s early years until my grandma re-married. Dad’s new stepfather was a good and hard-working man who provided security and love but without any spiritual context.

Dad’s childhood and adolescent years were full of hard work and change as the family moved from farm to farm, working for others and living in less-than-ideal situations. Dad’s 5^th grade year was spent living with his stepdad’s aunt and uncle. Dad’s parents didn’t own their own home until he was sixteen years old. Before the age of ten, Dad milked cows and learned to drive tractors and fix them when they broke down in a field far away from the house. In his junior high years, Dad had to ride his horse to school after milking the cows and then send the horse home, with Dad and the saddle riding the bus home in the afternoon. I know where my Dad learned his strong work ethic and his desire to provide stability for his own family as an adult.  

Dad’s later teen years were greatly influenced by the family’s move to southern California. Though much more rural in those days than now, Dad was introduced to new experiences while still living very meagerly. He started earning his own money early so he could buy himself the things he needed or wanted. His first car was a 1936 Ford that he purchased at age fourteen. His high school years were spent drag racing and rebuilding his car’s engine after each race, as well as playing varsity basketball all four years of high school. His life was completely different than the life he would later provide for me and my brother, and yet all of Dad’s experiences helped to make him into the type of father he would later become.

And then, at the age of eighteen, a friend introduced Dad to Jesus; and everything that had formed him before that point found a framework to fit into that made sense. Dad’s transformation was immediate and complete – and he never looked back. And while Dad’s strong work ethic and desire to provide stability for his own family probably took root in his upbringing, I suspect that his gentle, kind, and humble spirit and his generosity and servant’s heart came from his relationship with God. Like I said, good fathers are formed in many different ways. And my Dad was one of the best. 

2008 - Dad's last Father's Day

New Beginnings

I hate moving, but that’s probably because I’ve done it a lot. My husband and I have moved ten times since our first apartment at the beginning of our marriage nearly 44 years ago; and I moved four times before that during my childhood. Most of these moves were short distances and not very impactful – only one (during my childhood) constituted changing states and traveling hundreds of miles. I remember that move from a 9-year-old’s perspective as a great family adventure! But moving is a lot of work even if it’s a short distance.

As I write this, one of my sons and his family are traveling across five states and over 1700 miles to their new home in a completely different part of our country. With four children under the age of ten and five pets, I’m not sure if their description at the end of it all will be “a great family adventure”! The process of buying and selling homes has already been stressful, as well as sorting and packing up the lives they have been accumulating in the thirteen years they have lived in the state they are leaving. My son has already made three trips by himself to their new state over the past few months. And then there is the plethora of emotions involved in leaving friends and jobs they have loved. Indeed, moving can be hard.

But moving can be exciting, too, because moving involves a new beginning. When I was a child, my family left behind a standard-sized city lot in a metropolitan area in California and moved onto five acres on the outskirts of a small rural town in Washington. We got horses and a boat, and my parents eventually bought lake property and built their dream home there. Ultimately, three generations ended up spending many hours swimming and enjoying water sports together as well as ministering and leading together in our small-town church. Most of these things would not have happened if we hadn’t moved.

And that’s where faith comes into the equation. My parents took a leap of faith and moved their family to a completely different environment and lifestyle during a time of great turbulence in our nation. They were looking for a better place to finish raising their kids. They trusted God to provide for all of their needs and to guide their decisions. And although my Dad had landed a job six weeks earlier while we vacationed in our new state, we even rolled into our new town in a U-Haul full of our belongings with no housing yet secured. God was faithful, and we only stayed in a motel for one night – transitioning to our amazing waterfront rental house on thirteen acres the day after we arrived in town! (Here’s a mind-blower: the rent was only $150/month!) A few months later, we moved onto our own five acres of heaven.

Our son and daughter-in-law have been putting faith to work for their move as well - and under similar circumstances in some ways. Looking for a more conservative and family-friendly place to raise their kids, they prayed over many months and trusted God to lead them to the right place. And God has answered with a job, housing, and a school for the kids that exceeds their expectations – all in an inviting small rural town. Yes, it’s been hard work; but everything has fallen into place in ways that could only come from God’s hand. Now they get to start their exciting new beginning and see what God does next!

New friends, new experiences, new ministries, new place. And new opportunities to watch God’s faithfulness in action. Another great family adventure brought to you by faith . . . 

Moving Ahead While Looking Back

I have been pasting mementos into large scrapbooks since I was a pre-teen – and long before scrapbooking became a “thing”. No fancy background papers, no special stickers or borders, just glue, tape, and priceless treasures. I watched my mother’s diligent scrapbook collection of greeting cards and loved ones’ accomplishments grow throughout my childhood, and I decided early on that I wanted to do something similar with the things that I deemed important. When my Mom passed two years ago, I inherited the remnants of her life and was reminded of precious relatives who are long gone and activities I participated in as a child and teenager. And, for the first time in many years, I have recently been working my way through my own scrapbooks and remembering the people who mattered way back when and the many special times that I had as a young person and then later as a mother raising my children.

There are church events, school accomplishments, vacation memories, promotions, graduations, weddings, and birth announcements. I kept every ticket and receipt from the dates my husband and I went on during our 21-month courtship. Steak dinners for less than five dollars and $8 concert tickets and $2 movie tickets. Parking at Disneyland on our honeymoon cost fifty cents! And then there are kids’ report cards and school awards along with every program from every event they ever performed in or participated in. Treasures, for sure! Another life, another time. Remembering brings joy to my nostalgic-by-nature soul.

But as I am enjoying these memories, I am reminded that there is also a danger in spending too much time looking at the past. I need to always be careful to store up treasures in heaven rather than on earth (Matthew 6:19-20); and “treasures” are not only money and things, but also anything else that takes priority in our lives or tempts us to boast or find our confidence in ourselves. Among other things, this can include personal accomplishments, careers, and even our families.

The apostle Paul’s words in Philippians 3 need to guide my foray into the memories of the past as well as how I walk into the future. After outlining in verses 4-6 all of the reasons that he personally could be confident in himself, he renounces it all as rubbish and counts everything as loss compared to the “surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (verse 8). And in verses 13 and 14, Paul says this: “. . . forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.”

I don’t think God expects us to renounce everything about our past. Families were originally God’s idea and are a wonderful blessing from him; and many of the memories in my past involve times of ministry with Christian friends and family members that hopefully made a difference for God’s kingdom. But I need to temper my nostalgic emotions with a reminder from Jesus in John 15:5 – “. . . apart from me you can do nothing”. It is God who gives me the ability to accomplish anything in this life, and he alone deserves the praise; and he alone should be the reason behind everything I do. That needs to be my guiding principle as I move into the future, even if it wasn’t always that way in the past.

Another lasting memory from my childhood comes to mind – a plaque that hung on our wall for years with these words from a poem by British missionary C.T. Studd: “Only one life, ‘twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”