A Reason To Celebrate

Today marks my first Father's Day without a father.

Well, that's certainly a melancholy sentence. I wasn't sure how I'd feel this month. June marks a lot of things--his birthday, three months since he died, Father's Day...And while I knew I wouldn't be a total wreck (that's just not Parsons style), I've also learned that grief can return out of nowhere. Maybe it's tears, maybe it's stress, maybe it's a need to read or write constantly, but it will manifest itself somehow. And that can be a good thing. It gets it out where I have to confront it and pour it into something productive.

Today, I may shed a few tears or at the very least swallow away the burning lump in my throat. I may feel a bit sad that I can't give my dad a sarcastic greeting card and a meal at a buffet. I'll definitely think about him all day long and feel his absence acutely.

But, more than the sadness, I am just so happy.

I've found you can be happy and sad at the same time. It's confusing, but it works.

I'm happy because I had a good relationship with my dad. I'm happy because I truly do feel honored to be his daughter. I'm happy because I had a dad who loved me, loved my sisters, loved my mom, and most of all, loved Jesus.

When I was little, I definitely felt like I was daddy's girl. Our relationship looked different than the usual doting father/adoring daughter, because neither of us were particularly affectionate people, at least not in the "normal" ways. We didn't say I love you or hug and kiss, and truthfully, it has always irritated me that everyone assumes love isn't valid if it isn't lovey dovey. I never doubted my dad loved me. Never. If I needed actual manifestations of his love, I had them in abundance. The twinkle in his eye. The way he gently teased. How he called me "Squirt". The way he photographed and video taped every big and small event in my life...

I wanted to be around my dad. He'd let me help him with his church business. I remember going on many visitations to elderly church members, or stuffing envelopes with his newsletter, or playing in the vacant office outside his office after everyone else had gone home from church. I called him Pastor Dad, which I thought was just so hilarious and witty, and he appeased me by signing my yearbook with that name. He'd let me sit in the front seat of the van (before children weren't supposed to sit in the front), and I remember mimicking him as he drove, trying to figure out what the pedals and gears did. I wanted to photograph like my dad, so for my eighth birthday, my parents gave me my first camera. Then later in high school when I took photography classes, he let me borrow his lenses for the ancient Pentax I managed to buy. When we moved to Ohio, I sat beside Dad in the moving truck for the entire trip. We could both appreciate a comfortable silence, and yet, when I wanted to talk, I certainly did and he didn't seem bothered by my chatter. I felt like Dad and I understood each other. To be honest, I always sort of felt like the son of the family.

My teenage years, as they often are, were a little more strained, but when I look back, I remember the touching things Dad did more than the disagreements. When a certain boy dumped me and I was devastated, he wrote me a beautiful letter about his own break up experience as a young man and how God used it to teach him lessons I was now learning. He told me he was praying for me. I still have that letter. I remember him repeating to me that someone had mentioned that I'd grown into a beautiful young lady. I knew him enough to realize that in sharing that comment, he was telling me he agreed with it--which for a girl who has always thought she was strange looking at best was surprising praise indeed. When my sisters and I fought too much, I remember him hanging a verse on the refrigerator that said "Behold, how good it is for (sisters) to dwell together in unity." His communication might not have been the most obvious choices, but it worked. He taught my English and Bible and Driver's Ed classes. He praised some of my creative writing with notes as he graded, and I can still remember his encouraging words in red ink.On the other hand, I remember once I didn't put much effort into a Bible report and he called me on it. I didn't like disappointing him, because I knew he knew what I was capable of. And when I was eighteen years old, and that same boy that had once broken up with me asked him if he could marry me, Dad didn't hesitate to give his blessing, because he knew that it was what I truly desired and that God had a plan for us. He wasn't going to micro manage my decisions and he trusted me (and even more so, God) even though I was young.

As an adult is when I really feel like our relationship hit its sweet spot. After I became a mom, I found it to be much easier to talk to my parents. And I began to notice that my mom and dad were a great example of letting God shape you no matter how old you are or how long you've been a Christian. They modeled the truth that regardless of where you are in your walk with Christ, you will never reach a pinnacle or stop having to deal with personal sin. They have grown more humble instead of more stubborn, which is not the usual course of events where aging is concerned. Dad would listen to me if I told him he was talking about politics too much on Facebook. He didn't gripe when our church transitioned to more contemporary music in our services--he actually expressed how much he loved it. When our marriage went through a tough time, Dad was there with no judgment, only grace and Scripture. I saw my dad grow more selfless, more friendly, more committed to serving others with quiet humility. Right up to the very end, my Dad was pursuing Jesus. That is a beautiful legacy that I treasure. And now, I feel like I'm getting to know him more deeply even though he's gone, because I have all his journals and essays and photos to hunt through. It's funny how since his death, I can see that each of his daughters carries different traits of his. Mandy--the writer with big dreams, Jenny--the pursuer of truth and right, and me--the purveyor of sense and sarcasm. And all of us love Jesus because we saw in our Dad that Jesus made all the difference.

So, yeah, I'm sad. And happy. (Sappy?) Every day, I thank God that He gave me the perfect dad for me. The dad I needed. The dad that needed me. Not everyone can say that they had a gem of a father. I don't take it for granted. Not one iota. So, I won't dread this day, or curse its existence, or let it only be about my loss. I will let it remind me of how richly I've been blessed.

Because of Jesus, and because of my Dad's relentless pursuit of him, for the rest of my life, I will have a reason to celebrate Father's Day.

So, let's hit the buffets.