Memories on Father’s Day
I remember calling my parents in October 2011, the night before leaving on a work trip. I had just taken a pregnancy test, and it was positive. When I spoke to my father, I instructed him not to tell anyone, not even my brother, just to pray that this one made it. What a way to receive the news of your first grandchild, but at this point, I had already lost two pregnancies at 8 and 11 weeks and could not access joy. The fear of another loss was unbearable, and he could hear it in my voice,
“Beckyma, I know you are scared, but it is ok for you to be joyful, to accept this child that is coming. It is ok to receive this blessing. To believe God will bless you. You don’t have to be afraid.”
I feel obligated to disclose that my dad is not a sweetheart. He can be very terse and acerbic. As a child, you didn’t want to catch a scolding from him because it would be death by verbal evisceration, from which I have been resurrected many times by my mother. He wasn’t prone to saying things for the sake of being nice. For better or worse, he told his truths as he saw fit. So when he said this to me, I felt a license and safe passage to grab hold of joy. It was something that only he could offer because he intimately understood the devastation of loss and the cost of hope. There was a weight to his invitation. It wasn’t just words, he could hold the reality of my circumstance and temper it with his unyielding faith, battle-tested and fortified by life itself. His own father did not live to see him or any of his brothers marry and become fathers. The year I was born, he watched his youngest brother die of leukemia; six months later, he laid his mother to rest as a new father in a foreign land. This wasn’t the plan, we were all supposed to be together. He worked so hard to get us here just to have them snatched away. Life was never ever fair. It was cruel and unrelenting with grief as a constant companion. So I received his words as a balm to my soul and courage to hope.
I successfully carried to term with my father, quietly standing guard along the journey. I don’t have sticky, sweet daddy-daughter stories to tell, but these memories root me in the story of my people, firmly planted, deeply loved, and held across generations. I often say that I am not a Daddy’s girl, but I am my father’s daughter. Happy Father’s Day Dad.
“Beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified.” ISAIAH 61:3
