Father’s Day?

Father’s day was Sunday, and honestly, I really have a hard time, on that day. I know that it was the way that, I was brought up, and the events of my childhood. My parents divorced when I was really young. Actually, I was so young that, I can’t even remember that event. The things that I do remember have haunted me, all my life. 

My mother eventually admitted to me that, she purposely keep me, from my father, for my protection, because he had an alcohol problem. I found out much later that she had the same problem. I can remember as a child being so torn up that, daddy would ride by the house slow and wave and, I ran in the house in tears. I wouldn’t go out of the house for days. Mother had instilled a great fear of my dad in me. 

I don’t know if mother just had a thing for men, or if she was trying to find me a replacement dad, because there were different opportunities, during my life.  In all actuality, I began to rebel in a way that, hurt me, and shamed my parents. I have not been a stranger to the county jail, and I know all about being on probation. I was smoking, drinking, and doing drugs. I was acting like a heathen, and was totally out of control.

One day I was in the county jail, and this old man came up to the cell, and called out Jimmy. I have not been called Jimmy in so long that, I didn’t pay it any mind. Then he called out my full name, and I sprang into action spreading all different colorful metaphors, in the cell. (Cussing) Who are you, I asked the old man, and he replied that, he was my daddy. Then he asks, “Do you want to go home?” I said yes, and he walked off.

In a few minutes I was released from that jail. We are talking about thirty years ago, when it didn’t take from, six to eight hours, to go through processing. When I walked out that door I found both, my mother and dad waiting for me. I don’t remember all that dad said to me, but the thing that, I remember was the fact that he was not condemning. I can’t say the same with the ride home with mother. I know now that mother was a control freak, and her biggest weapon on me was shame.

Less than a month later, I was in a different county jail, and once again, my father showed up to get me out. This time my daddy gave me the offer to spend the weekend with him. He was living with one of his daughters by another woman. She was my half-sister, by all rights, and she accepted me as her brother, but there was something just not right in my Spirit about her. There were two actually. I know what wasn’t right about them. They would talk bad, about my mother every time that, I was with them, when I was young. 

I went and spent the weekend with my daddy, and had a great time simply talking with daddy. He talked about mother, and had nothing bad to say about her. I love mother with every fiber, of my being. You can call me a momma’s boy and, I will just smile at you.  My mother was a terror, on the lives of both, my daddy and me. My daddy urged me to not hold anything against my mother, because she was doing the best that she could.

Less than a month later my daddy died. He was seventy years old, because he was fifty, when I was born, and by the way, mother was thirty. I am so glad that, I had that weekend to spend, with my daddy. The truth is that, I had loved him all my life, but I did it secretly. I don’t understand the attraction, after so many years, and how I didn’t hold anything against him. I have saw my daddy in knockdown; drag out fights, on the front porch of my home with mother. I have seen mother crack his head with a frying pan, and daddy lying on the porch bleeding, until the cops took him away. I saw daddy come to the house with a shotgun, threatening to kill everyone, in the house. I saw mother go out that door, and take the shotgun from daddy, and busting it, on the edge, of the porch.

I have never been married. It is not the fact that, I don’t love women, because I really do. I think it is the commitment part. I have no children that I know of, but I thought that I did one time. She was a beautiful girl, and I lived with her and her mother, for three years. I said that she was beautiful, so I doubted that she was mine. Not because was beautiful, but because she was blond, with blue eyes. Mother said that, she wasn’t the first time, that she saw me holding this darling baby girl.

One day after thinking about this for three years, I gave the mother a proposition. Let’s do a paternity test, and if this baby is mine, then I will pay all the expenses, and we will get married. If it is not my baby, then you’re stuck with the bill, and I am gone. She refused this offer, and I left knowing that this sweet little girl was not mine.

The only reference to what it means to be a father, I get from God’s word. I have really never had on, and I have surely not ever been one either. As I set in the church service on Father Day, I had mixed emotions. I keep thinking the what if’s.     What if my daddy could have been a father?        What if that baby was really mine?        Did I abandon my child?       Would it have changed my life?

This was an over-whelming day for me, as it each year when it passes. I would have thought that it would get easier by now, but it is not. The church that have been, in the last couple Father’s Day has looked at   the fact that, all adult men will have the chance to mentor a younger person, in their lives. Oh well another responsibility, for me to fail at!!

If I do, I at least hope that, he is a Christian, because the only I will be able to this, is by the Word of God. That is the best way that, I have ever found to live, and that is the only advice that I can give. I know in my heart that Jesus is the only solution that, we have in the life, and there won’t be another. Daddy spent his entire life not believing in God, or Hell. He said that there wasn’t a Hell, because if there were he was already there.

Daddy’s other daughters told me that, he accepted Jesus, on his final breath. I hope that is true, but I will have to see him in Heaven, before I believe it is true. At daddy funeral, there was not any talk of this, or at his viewing. Everybody that came up to me talked, about how much that, daddy loved me, and how much that, they would miss him. 

This was not meant to be a sad story, or a pity story. It is simply a factual, about the way that, it was in my life. This story will end on as very great note, because of this verse that I want to share in closing. 

Psalms 27:10  When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up. 

Ain’t God Awesome?

                  ….Much Love