Dad...Just The Same

By the time Dad died, he and I were different people together.  My wife helped me see this the other day.

I have written before of standing in the garden with my dad at a childish age asking Jesus into my heart.  The event, though still vivid, was typical and unmoving as I recall.  One expects life to dramatically change directions at a point such as this, much like when your straying golf ball strikes a tree trunk out of bounds and lands back in the middle of the fairway.  I’m not sure mine did necessarily. 

Without questioning the authenticity of the event, my recollection was that life’s trajectory continued in a normal youthful direction.  My life went on…with Dad…just the same.

My remembrances of Dad are more rose-colored than others perhaps.  He led the family in song times after dinner with his guitar.  He brought Mom carnations on special occasions.  He kissed her in the kitchen when he got home from work.  He played UNO and Aggravation and The Dukes of Hazard Board Game with us kids.  He jogged down the road with me to the creek bridge and back, letting me win the final sprint to the mailbox.  He brought home the new-used bikes in the summer time.  He showed up at nearly all my basketball games, half-gallon of ice cream and spoon in hand.  He fixed the cars.  He cut the firewood.  He sang to Jesus for special music on Sunday’s in church.  In all these things, as I recall, he was…Dad…just the same.

Of course he had faults and flaws.  I remember a particular fight Dad had with Mom.  I remember him saying “shit” once when he lost balance and dumped a wheelbarrow full of gravel right back in the spot he just shoveled it out of.  I remember his diet was a bit weird at times. 

I know now, less by experience and more by hunch and familial story, he tended toward the heavy hand with discipline.  His manner of love didn’t always feel like love to those he loved.  At times his attitude gave away the fact that pulp and paper mill worker wasn’t his life ambition.  And he stunk up the house with his microwaved bread (part of the weird diet).  But here still, he was…Dad…just the same.

And through it all there I was…just the same…not without a few faults and flaws of my own. 

 

The youngest of three, I took the entitled place in the home; often, I’m sure, resented by my siblings.  I gave a kindergarten classmate her first black eye (yes, her).  I dragged my feet with chores.  I earned detentions at school and spankings at home, and not always in that order.  I treated girls with less than respect and sold my life to basketball in high school.  I chickened out of proper academic challenges and found plenty of easy ways out.  I gave in to worldly pleasures after high school.  I made a train wreck of my life.  I squandered money.  I went broke.  I overlooked Dad.  I was…just the same.

But as I said, by the time he died we were different people together.  Neither of us…just the same…anymore. 

I lived with Dad (and Mom) while he battled cancer.  He lived with me while I battled everything else.  One and a half years of battling…together.

He watched from the front row my gradual death…and coming to life again.  Slowly but surely I was crucified with Christ.  My life was fading away as the life of Christ in me came into view.  The life I was finally learning to live in the latter days of Dad’s life I was living by faith in the Son of God, who loved me; really loved me like no other, by dying for me.  I was learning I could not nullify or abolish the extravagant grace of God by doing good or playing by life’s rules.  I was unable on my own to earn grace, unable to become anything other than…just the same…without grace.  If I could have, well then I guess Christ died for nothing.  And I was learning all this…

…as I watched from the front row Dad’s gradual death…and coming to life again.  Slowly but surely a thorn was given to Dad, pressed and twisted deep into his flesh.  Cancer, like a darkened messenger of God’s enemy, harassed Dad.  Helpless, however, were pride and conceit against God’s extravagant grace.  Dad softened, yet pleaded with God that cancer be taken from him.  The sweet reply:  “My grace is enough; it’s all you need.  My strength comes into its own in your weakness.” (The Message)  He was becoming something other than…just the same…with grace.  So Dad boasted in his weaknesses and so God’s power came to rest upon him more than any other season of his life.  He grew content in his life lot, receiving weaknesses as gifts and greater measures of God’s extravagant grace.  He was learning that when he was weak, then he was strong. 

And so we watched one another be moved by God; shifted and shaped, melted and molded from years of…just the same…to a season of very different.  The extravagant grace of God transforming two people who lived for years as…just the same…into different people indeed.  Different people characteristically than years before in my youth, though, as I have said, by the time Dad died we were different people together…now just the same…in Christ.