Father's Day Tribute...

Born in Alabama near Robbins Crossings (now Partridge Crossing), lived in Arizona and California, drove truck, was a mule skinner in the US Army during WWII.  Fought in South Pacific, when mules were no longer used, became a Ranger--6th Ranger Battalion, was a Ranger in the Great Rescue.  Settled in Washington State, went to business school, worked for Federal Government, retired.  He was a bi-vocational pastor, serving a small congregation for most of his working life.

However, there was another side.  He was raised without the influence and nurture of a mother as his mother and sister died when he was young, His dad an Alabama coal miner and carpenter, was an workaholic and alcoholic in that order.  Dad was an Adult Child of An Alcoholic and yet he could not admit to the same for it would defame the father he sought to please and if he could not please him in life then he at least could hold him up as something of a hero in death.  Then to compound the challenge, Dad suffered the trauma of war and the taking of the life of another.  Were I to characterize him, I would say that he had a sensitive heart which had been deeply damaged.  

From the outside we presented as the typical family of the 1950s.  Were you to live in our home you would know that not to be so.  You would have seen him as having a volatile anger that could explode without warning.  He was a man I feared for to displease him would be to "enjoy" the sanction of silence and distance.  My mother, sister, and I knew to displease was to tempt the possibility of emotional response. 

He too, like his dad, was a workaholic and at times sacrificed relationship for the task at hand.  He was a man who could not acknowledge feelings--his or those of another. He would say often that he loved or was proud of me or my sister. Yet the off handed affirmations which validated such love were not there.

Young and inexperience, I thought we were normal but we were not.  He was a man given to behaviors that did not exist in other homes and among my friend's parents.  In simple terms we often cannot give what we have not received, and the blessings of a father's affirmation were absent in his life and in ours.

Then it happened, I bought and read a book, Gated Grief by Leila Levinson.  As I read I thought that she must have lived in our home, she understood the appearance, the emotional upheaval, the confusion, and much more of what I did not.  She opened my eyes.  She gave me understanding and most of all she gave to me an understanding that although he had achieved success in his world, there was much more that could have been if the difficulties of his life had been dealt with. 

Beneath all of the emotional turmoil, the good that he did, the various inconsistencies born of the struggles of life, many of which I suffer with to this day, beneath all of that he; was an Adult Child of an Alcoholic and suffered with the struggles to which he refused to admit.  More importantly he was a broken soldier.  I wondered how many would do as well with the struggles with which he struggled?  I often wonder how well have I done with many of those same struggles that were passed down to me?

Do I wish that he had been posessed of the strength of character to deal with such difficulties as he carried?  Yes of course I do but it was not within him for such would have required a trust that he did not possess.

Now for the gracious truth of the whole matter.  There was another Father present and that Father was the Heavenly Father.  While it may seem prudent to catalog the challenges and hurts of a past such as I have described and seek some licence for this behavior or that, there is another truth to be considered.  The ultimate effect in our family was negligible compared to what it might have been for there was always present in our home God, the Holy Spirit.  There was the stability of solid faith and its expression in service to others.

So it is for Father's Day 2012, I pay tribute to the man who gave life to me and who provided many examples of how life is to be lived.  I pay tribute to the Heavenly Father who brought Leila Levinson's book across my path to help me look past the difficulties of our home, understand why I was the way I was, and most of all accept my earthly father.  I look forward to the day when our relationship will be perfect for none of these earthly struggles will be there in the place were there is no night.