Mom." "Oh, I don't have a dad." We all come from two parents. That's just biology. A fact that is rooted deep into who we are, one that comes with stories and pasts and intrinsic facts of what makes us, us. So when you're a girl without a dad, you get used to the explanations. Because life is telling our stories to each other and our stories start with our parents.
I've been fatherless since I was 11. That's 21 years without a dad, 21 Father's Day's without anyone to buy a card for, 21 years...
I'm not the first girl to loose her father. I'm not the first girl to loose her father in a really crappy way--thought really any way you loose someone you love, is crappy. (And sometimes you have a dad and it's not good, he's abusive or absent or something is just not good, and if that's you I'm sorry, your story may be more like mine. I had a step-dad for awhile and that's how it was with us, and that is a whole other world of hurt.)
But I am alive and my dad is not, and one of the things I want to do while I'm alive is tell my story, and remind other people how beautiful life is, because when you loose someone you love you're even more acutely aware of the beauty of life. So.
Hopefully you have a dad to buy a card for and things are good. Hopefully you don't know what it's like. Once when we were dating my husband asked me what it was like to grow up without a dad and I told him it was kind of like always being scared, all the time a little bit, in a way. I watch my best friends kids, the way they look at their dads, with a confidence and a security--a knowledge that they will be safe and loved, that someone strong has their back. A bond with mom is so so special but so is this bond with dad, it's palpable and I can see it when I watch my friends son hug his daddy goodnight, when my goddaughter grabs her daddy's hand and pulls him around the zoo, him smiling with pride down at her little blond head; when I hear my husband talking to his dad on the phone...when your dad is in the world you're not afraid. You have moments of fear, sure but in general you know that the guy a part of you literally comes from, he will always have your back, and there is a power in that.
I miss it. For 21 years I've missed it.
So that's what it's like, not to have a dad for 21 years. There are days when it's not a big deal and days when it is. Just like any loss, some seasons of life it's felt more acutely than others. It was the worst around my wedding--once I went to David's Bridal to make a payment on my dress and saw another bride trying on her dress for her father. He was in tears and held her as he wept, calling her his 'beautiful baby girl'...I barely made it out of the store, I was so overcome with grief and anger and jealousy that it was like lead. I prayed hard that the other bride would soak that moment in, and that she would realize how unbelievably blessed and favored she was, to have her dad there, in the David's Bridal salon with her. To walk her down the aisle.
So that's what it's like, not to have a dad for 21 years.
A couple years after my dad died my youth pastor was doing a lesson about how we are all different but all parts of the body, on 1st Corinthians 12, and he was using Chips Ahoy cookies as a reference. He used the cookie to point out how we are all different shapes, sizes, colors--and then he looked at me and said "and some of us have lost someone important, or are missing someone, like this cookie with the chocolate chip that's fallen off", and that was the first time I really realized that my fathers loss would always be with me, always be one of the defining facts of me. Like my name, my eye color, my Starbucks order, my health history, my dad died when I was 11. That's it. It's a fact, a part of me, something I can't change.
So that's what it's like, to not have a dad for 21 years.
By the grace of God I have come a long way--I can now listen to the song "Cinderella" by Steven Curtis Chapman on KLOVE without being angry; I can watch my friends dance with their fathers at their weddings without wanting to cry and punch someone simultaneously; I can sit while my coworker gripes about her live in boyfriend being overprotective of said co-workers young daughter and not liking the daughters bad-news boyfriend without shaking her, my coworker and yelling in her ear, "she needs him to do that! Let him be that presence for her!" Because that's what I want to do but I don't.
So that's what it's like, to not have a dad for 21 years.
And even though I've grown up "in the church", and have grown up praying to God and calling Him 'Father', it took a long time for my heart to call Him Father. Once in Life Group many years ago we were talking about the way God is to us, the ways the Holy Spirit takes care of us, and what ways were easiest for us to accept and what weren't. I have been single for most of my life, I only dated one man semi seriously before my husband and that wasn't for very long. I married at 30 and spent 99% of my teens and twenties as a very independent and very single girl. That being said it has always been easy for me to trust God as my provider, the Lover of my soul, my first love. When I met my husband I was coming off a period of years of being unhappily single and had truly become content, and happy to be on my own with God, single if that's what He wanted. So that side of God, I had down. But the Father side? Nope. That was a hard one. I had to pray for God to fill my orphan heart, to help me trust Him, to be all that He says He is to my daddy-wounded heart. I still have to pray that. It's getting easier though. Because He is good, and He has always been my Father, even when I couldn't see it.
So that's what it's like to not have a dad for 21 years.
On an episode of "Six Feet Under", one of my favorite shows (set in a funeral home) a character who was there to bury a loved one asked Nate, the protagonist and funeral director, "why do people have to die?" He simply replied, "To make life important." This is my banner as a girl who's dad died. Life is so important. When you go through crappy things, the more and the crappier the better, the more it makes you realize how every breath you breathe is a miracle. I am so thankful for every moment. I'm introverted by nature and don't have a big group of close friends, but if you are one of my people, I love you fiercely. I claim you and celebrate you with all that I am. You're not just my friend, you're my family. I will pray for you and worry about you and buy you birthday presents. My mom and I have an irreparable bond forged by grief and tears and love. I whisper "thank you God" silently over and over in the back of my head every time I look at my husband's handsome face. My job isn't my dream job but I'm proud to go to work every day and work hard, then punch out and come home to our little apartment that I've painstakingly decorated with joy and love. I savor music, books and coffee. I don't deny myself ice cream. I've stopped worrying people will look at me weird when I throw my head back and sing in church and at concerts. I pray about everything and tear up at almost anything. Because I'm alive. And my dad isn't.
So that's what it's like. To not have a dad for 21 years.
Now I'm in a season of life where I'm, we, are wanting to make my husband a father. We are (ironically) on nine months of trying unsuccessfully to make this happen. And I also mourn that this Father's Day, feeling a longing as I walk past the greeting card aisle at Target that I was buying 2 cards, for 2 different types of daddies. But I have hope that someday God will bless us with a miracle and soon as they're out Earthside I will search his or her left forearm and look for a birthmark--a darkened patch of amplified freckles that my daddy had and I have, too. And maybe he or she will, as well.
Happy Father's Day, to my daddy in heaven--I'll see you again.
To all the dads who are doing so well, to the dads who aren't. You are loved and needed and wanted, dads. Friends, especially daughters--if you have a dad on earth and he is good to you, love him well back. Call him, appreciate him, tell him how much he means to you. Because next year you may not have someone to buy a Father's Day card for.
Father to the fatherless, defender of widows— this is God, whose dwelling is holy. (Psalms 68:5 NLT)
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