Dad

Most people fail to perform emotional self-examinations, and too often if they do, they ruminate on what they find instead of seeking resolution and healing.

T.D. Jakes Ministries/The Potter's House

     I think most of us have memories of someone destroying a project of ours.  Maybe it was as simple as lining up dominoes and an older brother knocked them over.  Maybe it was building a house of cards and Dad walked by causing just enough breeze to take the whole thing down,  I remember lying on the floor on my stomach coloring and my little sister walking over my color book.  I could not deal with a wrinkled page.  How about pottery?  I see God shaping us into a beautiful piece of pottery and the devil comes along and "CRACK"  right down the side.  Each crack and scrape and gouge turns us into a unique piece.  God uses those imperfections to make us more beautiful.
     In the last year I have had to look at the things that made me who I am.  Over the years we wonder why we react the way we do to certain situations.  Some character defects are obvious, but some we just don't understand.  Maybe it's something that happened to us at a very young age, too young to remember.
     When my youngest daughter was about four, the other kids were in school and she quickly learned to play by herself.  One day my sister was at my house and we were visiting when we noticed my daughter was slamming doors and throwing somewhat of a fit.  I finally asked her what was wrong.  "I know you both hate me.  I heard you."  We both sat there with our mouths open wondering what she was talking about.  It was my sister who finally figured it out.  There was a character on TV with the same name as my daughter.  One of us had said how much we hated this character and the other agreed.  My daughter had no way to know we weren't talking about her.  We cleared it up, but I can't help but wonder what kind of damage may have been done if I hadn't asked and she hadn't told us what she heard. 
     We all have memories of painful things people said to us, that changed who we are.  Things that probably wouldn't have been said if the person knew the extent of the pain it would cause and how it would change us.  I had to look at beliefs I had and really think about where they came from.  I have read many books and watched many videos over the last year.  One book I would highly recommend is "Breaking Free" by Beth Moore.  It's a powerful book with powerful excersises.  After looking at some of the negative affects our family has had on our character, Beth asks the reader to look for positive.  This really got me thinking.  Negative can be positive.  God can turn the negative things that happened to us into strengths.
     My dad was strict, very strict.  I saw a lot of negativity in the way I was raised, but after reading this book and doing the excersises, I saw some things differently.   My dad is a cowboy and I was raised on horses.  I was really young when I was given a pony to ride.  Duke was a character all in himself.  This pony had a personality we still talk about today.  Duke liked water.  When I would ride with dad, there was one route he liked to take that required crossing the creek.  Duke liked to lay down and many times I rode the rest of the way wet.  I can remember dad coaxing me across the creek, "Keep his head up.  Don't let him put his head down.  Kick him."  I was maybe seven at the time,  kicking like crazy and looking at dad in hopes he would do something, but most times, down we went.  Duke was in his glory and I was all wet.  After a while I learned how to get across the creek dry, but it took many trial runs.  My dad was always telling me, "Show him who is boss."  Well it wasn't me, obviously.  We rode at the fair in front of thousands of people who thought the little girl on the pony trotting around poles and barrels until her brains were jumbled was so cute.  I didn't want to be cute, I wanted to be a respected rider.  Of course that was hard to do when Duke stopped suddenly and I found myself on the ground in front of those thousands with a mouthful of dirt.  I was so mad and embarrassed.  I got up and headed straight for dad, but there was no feeling sorry for myself.  Dad wasn't having any of it.  "Get your horse."  It was not okay that I didn't care where Duke was, I had to go get him in front of all those people. 
     In the winter, I never passed up a chance to go riding, but there was a price to pay.  By the time we got back to the barn, I couldn't move my fingers.  Dad somehow was always warm, but he made it clear that it was my job to unsaddle my own horse and put my own stuff away.  I remember struggling to loosen the cinch with fingers so cold I could barely move them.  I refused to cry, because it would only make it worse.  There were kids twice my age who couldn't saddle their own horses.  Dad helped develop a resilience in me that helped me survive.
     I also realized that in some ways, I trusted my dad more than anyone.  There was one event we participated in that got us a lot of attention.  It was called "The Sweetheart Race"  A male had to ride his horse across the starting line several yards to where a female was waiting.  The female was to get on the horse behind the male and they were to ride back across the start/finish line.  Most of the girls were adults who could grab the saddle horn and swing on.  I couldn't reach the saddle horn.  I would stand at the far end of the course with my left arm extended straight up in the air while my dad rode full speed toward me on a 1000 pound beast.  I usually closed my eyes.  Then dad would grab my arm and set me behind him.  As I got older, my eyes stayed open longer and I learned to grab dads arm at the same time and help pull myself up.  I must have trusted him.
     Dad had some strange ideas.  I picked on my little sister all the time and showed no mercy.  One day as I was trying to talk to Dad, she stood in front of me asking me to put my hands on my head, "Just for a minute,"  I was irritated when Dad made me humor her.  I had been picking at her all day and was in no mood to be nice.  I put my hands on my head and continued talking to Dad not paying any attetion to what my sister was doing.  She surprised me when she slugged me in the stomach as hard as she could and knocked the wind out of me.  When I could finally breathe, I went after her, but Dad stopped me.  "If you are going to pick on somebody they better be bigger than you.  Nobody's impressed when you pick on the little guy.  You deserved that."  I did what he said from that day forward.  I always found somebody bigger and stronger to torment.
     We had special moments.  Just the two of us, riding in the truck, talking, sharing a soda, and laughing.  I was blessed with my dad's singing ability and neither of us should ever be heard singing.  But I loved it when he sang to me in the truck some old country song about loving onions and puppy dogs and me.  We spent hours together.  When he left, I was devastated. He cried when he said good-bye and I thought he was a wimp for crying, but I grabbed his leg and begged him not to go anyhow.  But like he taught me, I got up and brushed myself off and tried desperately not to feel sorry for myself.  He made me tough.  God picked him to be my dad for a reason.  Probably for more reasons than I can see.
     A few years ago, I went to the hospital with Dad for tests and it turned out that he had to have a triple bypass, first thing the next morning.  I was there before dawn.  I prayed with him, before they took him in.  It was the scariest moment when I realized I could lose a parent.  I wasn't ready.  My dad's girlfriend,my sister and I sat around all day waiting.  We laughed a lot, because that is one of our most reliable survival skills.  We talked about growing up with Dad.  They had trouble getting his heart beating again and we joked that we obviously got our hearts from him. 
     It's funny how the roles change as parents get older.  In the ICU he kept trying to get out of bed and I got to play the strict parent.  I raised and deepened my voice and demanded he get back in his bed.  I stopped short of counting to three and threatening a spanking.  He looked at me with these little boy eyes and with a little boy voice said, "I have to go to the bathroom."  I had to laugh.  That night my sister and I took turns staying with him.  I had the first shift.  He woke at one point and I jumped up to see what he needed.  I remeber one tear rolled from his eye and it killed me.  I could barely hear him, "It hurts."  I had to go get the 6' 6" gorilla of a male nurse to get him some pain medicine, but I was ready to take him down if I had to.  As he fed medication into the tube we waited for it to take affect and the nurse was watching me, more than he was watching Dad.  Reassuring me that it would be seconds and he wouldn't feel the pain.  I must have looked like the concerned parent to him.
     My sister came in between 2 and 3 that morning for her shift, but I couldn't leave.  I found a couch around the corner.  The older you get the more you understand your parent's.  The more you dig into why you are the way you are, you understand why they are.  When you look at the affects they had on you, you can't help but look at the way you affected your own kids.  There's the negative, the hurts, the pain, but there is always good stuff, you just have to look at it the right way.  I had to pick myself up and get back on the horse hundreds of times in my life when I didn't know if I could, but God gave me a father who in all his imperfections taught me not only to get back on the horse, but to laugh doing it.  There are two things I remember my dad saying my whole life.  He still says them but in a totally different tone.  "What in the hell are you trying to do?" and "It didn't kill ya did it?"

"Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers.  And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you survive it.” Bill Cosby