He Is My Father
By Carol Blansett
It was an August day in the early 1950’s in Houston , Texas ~ far from our family’s Missouri roots. I remember the scene as if it were yesterday, the day my father left our family standing, crying at the door. A picture is frozen in my mind of him, outside the door, taking suitcases and car while Mother, my two small brothers and I, at age six, stood inside. The sadness I felt at seeing my mother cry returns. We truly didn’t understand the impact of that day ~ just that to a child: Mother cried, it was sad to see, and that was my daddy, leaving. Soon after, our television was repossessed.
We didn’t see or hear from him again (well, a Christmas card one year, 1968 after we were grown) ~ except for a two week visit to his friend’s house with her children soon after his exit from our lives. The day we returned to our mother from that visit, she had made a chocolate cake. I still remember how good that cake tasted, made from scratch with a mother’s love! In a few months, out of necessity my aunt and uncle came to transport us back to Missouri to live with Mother’s parents on a small farm. In a year she rented a house in nearby town in which we grew up, attended school and church, and walked everywhere. All the children we knew in school, except for one sibling group our ages, had two parents in the home. In those long ago days, it was rare to be from a one-parent family. Contrast that fact with today’s divorce rate and latchkey children! Not a pretty sight, by far, although today’s families have sadly gone the way of some other valuable, lost things in life.
It has been said that we tend to think that Almighty God has the attributes of one’s strongest, most dominant parent, due to our only frame of reference, especially as children. We expect God to treat us in the same way that dominant people in our lives have treated us and have the same attitude toward us as we have known. My grandfather was gruff and quick to ‘shame’ us ~ three small children who came to live with him in need. We were shown little compassion or love, strict rules only, but I‘m guessing in hindsight that he didn’t know how to rear children, except for the way he was reared. Through it all, however, I knew and felt God’s grace shown through the love of Jesus with me even then, and I received Him at age ten at youth camp.
OK ~ absent father, gruff grandfather, two strikes. Then my husband, after 17 years of marriage, left. He was drafted and sent to Viet Nam soon after our marriage and upon his return he demonstrated unfaithfulness a couple of times, years apart to my knowledge. However, I stayed with him until he left me, I so wanted a home for my child. “Strike three!” the enemy whispered.
My bruised heart held God at a distance for years. I still didn’t know I could let Him
in completely ~ to be my Father and husband, my all ~ until I was long an adult. Walls I threw up were incredibly thick! Then I discovered a gold mine! I could let Him in to be my husband, my father ~ He wants to be everything to me! It has been over twenty years since my divorce, shattering my childhood dreams, but God has been there every step of the way! He has promised, “ I will never leave you or forsake you.”
I asked my singles’ minister and brother at different times, over 20 years ago, to check out my budget and see if there was anything I could improve upon, financially. Each threw up his hands and walked away, stating that, on paper my budget didn’t work! Still, my daughter and I made it! God is so good! He takes a weary, mistrusting, confused heart and gives it life ~ even more abundantly! He even creates in it a desire to encourage others who may be walking by faith,, in need of a nudge along the way!
Praise be unto the LORD; for He is mighty. He has POWER! We need to remember the POWER He offers, if we will but draw upon His and not trust in ours and what the eye may see. Just plug in to HIS light source! HIS POWER never has blackouts! You see, the problem is when we disconnect from the Source!
Proverbs “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him . . . and He will direct thy paths.”
“Now we see through a glass darkly; but then, face to face . . . now we know in part but then we shall see Him as He is.”
Proverbs 3:5: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him . . . and He will direct thy paths.”
1 Co 13:12: “For now we see through a glass darkly; but then, face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
Copyright © December 27, 2005 – Carol Blansett. All rights reserved.
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