Saturday, July 22, 2006

He wasn't much of a runner...


My father wasn’t much of a runner. After a bit of time, he wasn’t much of a walker either. I remember going to my sister’s softball practice in Huntsville. You probably didn’t know my father, but he loved to play games. At my sister’s softball practice, we played a game that I assume he had made up. We would take out a bat, a ball, and a glove. The idea is that he would hit the ball with the bat and I would catch it or run after it. Then, as I’m running towards him, he would drop the bat. As soon as the bat would hit the ground, I would have to stop. At that point, I would roll the ball to see if I could hit the bat with the ball. Almost invariably, I would miss the bat altogether. But, on the rare occasions I did hit the bat, we would switch. Almost invariably, he would hit the bat.

I really don’t think too often about my dad. I dream about him (as evidenced) but don’t really think about him. Over the years, we had some pretty hard conversations. I found out later (from my mother) that a few of the conversations we had while I was in college actually made him cry.


He was a man who tried to seem so hard on the outside. He had a penetrating stare. He had a smile that could melt your heart and a grip that could crush your hand. He seemed so tired so often.


He never knew, but I learned a lot about how to love my wife from him – whether good or bad, I learned. He taught me a lot about what it means to be a man. He taught me a lot about a lot of things.


My hope was that Christ would be communicated to him through the way my wife and I interact and through the way we would interact with our [future] children. I think that it was always hard for him [on so many different levels] to hear of Christ from his son. He had seen my struggles. He was there to see how much of a hypocrite I was while growing up. He saw my vanity, my arrogance, and my inconsistencies.


Was I his stumbling block?

Maybe not.


Part of what scared him was how Christ was changing my life. I know because we talked about it. Part of what scared him was how much of a different man I had become than what he had expected. Part of what [I think] scared him was that he took me seriously.
Sometimes I wonder if part of what made him proud was that I wasn’t going to grow up to be like him in so many areas of life and yet so much like him in the areas that mattered.

I miss him.

4 comments:

katie said...

gene... that is the sweetest thing...i'm sorry your dad isn't around anymore, i can't imagine what that's like. thanks for sharing about your thoughts.

Anonymous said...

Bro I miss your dad too. I miss praying together for our dads. There were many similarities between them, maybe that is why we could understand each other pretty well, I don't know.
I remember the last time I talked with your dad, it was at your wedding. He was resting in the lobby as everyone was taking the pictures and we started talking. We talked about your ability to really get to the point and be a man of few words...no...wait...not really. We actually did talk about your ability to ramble...again maybe why we understood each other.
We talked about your respect for him and your relationship. I miss your dad because everytime I think of him I think of my dad and of course the fear I have that his eyes will never be opened to Gods grace...yep...I am good at rambling. Thanks for being so transparent Tbone

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing, Gene.

Angie Davis said...

this is a post that most would only share on paper, or just keep it inside, but I'm so glad you chose to share it here.