Finding Forgiveness

Every son longs to be close to his Father when he is growing up.  But even more, he longs for his approval.  My own particular longings for intimacy and approval with my Dad can only be understood in the context of my parent’s divorce when I was just seven years old.  His general absence in the years that followed would only serve to intensify those longings which more often than not, would go unfulfilled for most of my adult life.

In those early years following the divorce, my brother and I didn’t see Dad much.  We never understood why Dad did not come around more often, but I suppose we just assumed that this was the norm when your parents get divorced.  Dad would later come to regret those lost years and missed opportunities to spend more time with his sons.  He never hesitated to accept responsibility for his absence, but he never really shared with us why he was not more involved.

This led me to develop my own theories for Dad’s apparent lack of interest in his son’s lives.  Early on, I attributed his absence to the long hours of work that he put in every week at the Post Office, and other odd jobs that he held down.  Later on, I adopted the “Dad was a product of his times” excuse.  It sounded something like this:  Divorced Father’s in the 1970’s typically had minimal custody rights and were not expected to be significantly involved in the day-to-day lives of their kids.  Therefore, Dad was just following the culturally accepted norms of the time and did not know any better.  When I experienced the pain of being separated from my own son following the breakup of my first marriage, I adopted yet another theory for why Dad stayed away so much– seeing my brother and me was a constant reminder of what he had lost.  So as men typically do, Dad chose to avoid the pain and move onto the next chapter of his life.  All of these theories and excuses were my desperate attempts to make some sense of why Dad had essentially abandoned me and my brother in our formative years, but all of them failed to provide the peace of mind that I longed for.

Those early years were tough for me, and I’m sure for my brother as well.  There were many times when I felt very alone and longed to have a closer relationship with Dad.  Those years were also characterized by a healthy dose of self-pity on my part.  I often wondered why me?  Why did my parents get divorced?  Why couldn’t I be with my Dad all the time?  Comparing myself to all my friends, and cousins, whose families were still intact made my predicament seem even worse.  At the time, it seemed as though me and my brother were the only kid’s I knew who didn’t live with their Dad.

Visits with Dad in those early years usually amounted to one, or maybe two Sunday afternoons a month.  Usually, he would take us to one of the grandparent’s house for a visit, which I would later be grateful for as we would maintain a close relationship with them throughout our lives.  Occasionally, he would take us to the roller-skating rink which I really enjoyed.  I can even remember Dad giving me my very own pair of roller skates one year for my birthday.  Boy was I excited!  I thought for sure this would mean even more trips to the roller-skating rink, and even more time with Dad!

But, if we were really lucky, Dad would take us to the park to play some catch or maybe even throw the football around.  As I recall, those were some of the most hilarious times my brother and I spent with Dad.  For you see, Dad really did not enjoy playing sports.  In fact, you could say that he detested it.  And when we got out on the field, it didn’t take long to figure out why – HE HAD NO GAME!  But I must give him credit.  On a few occasions, he managed to swallow his pride for the sake of his sons and pretend that he enjoyed it.  He even went to Sears and purchased his very own baseball glove with the official Baltimore Orioles logo on the front.  In fact, he never took that glove out of the trunk of his car, always hoping to have one more game of catch with his sons.  One of my most treasured memories with Dad occurred about 30 years later when he took that glove out of his car to play catch with me and my son Wade.  Regrettably, these precious times with Dad during the early years were far too few.

As Mom struggled to make ends meet, we moved around quite a bit.  As a result, I became increasingly isolated and insecure, and found it very difficult to make friends.  Much of the time I felt like an outcast.  Eventually, we settled down in Lansdowne and I began to make a few close friends.  One Spring, one of those friends asked me to try-out for his little league team, and despite my lack of self-confidence, I reluctantly agreed.  Until that point, I had never played organized sports and I was certain that I would embarrass myself once I stepped onto the field.  But to my complete shock and amazement, I discovered that I was actually pretty good.  Apparently, all those games of catch with Dad had paid off!  Before long, I was the star pitcher in the Lansdowne Youth Little League and thought that I had finally found my calling and purpose in life.  I was going to be a professional baseball player!

At last, I had found something that I excelled at, and someplace where I belonged. On game days, I could hardly wait for school to end, so I could run home, change into my uniform, and hurry to the field to begin warm-ups.  But what excited me the most was the possibility that my Dad might come to the game that night to watch me play.  And when he saw how good I was, he would be so proud of me that he would start coming to more games, and we would be able to spend more time together.  I continued to hold out that hope through four years of little league, and then four years of high school where I lettered in 3 varsity sports.  Even up until the very last game of my senior year, I believed that would be the day that Dad might show up.  But he never did.  However, I remained undeterred in my determination to draw close to Dad and was able to find other ways to connect with him.  Dad may not have shared my passion and enthusiasm for sports, but I could share in his passion – WORK!

If you knew Dad, then you knew he was a hustler.  And I mean that in the very best possible use of the word.  Dad knew what it was like to do without.  He was the son of working-class parents who had lived through the Great Depression and struggled to make ends meet in the post-war era.  Divorce soon followed and Dad eventually decided to drop out of school so he could help support his family.  It was during these formative years that Dad developed an inexhaustible work ethic that would remain with him for the rest of his life.  It was common for Dad to hold down two or three jobs so that he could provide a better quality of life for his family than the one he had experienced as a child.

Through the years, Dad managed to hone his skill in the contracting and construction fields.  He was the original Bob Vila and he could fix almost anything.  By the time he entered his late thirties, he had a thriving business as a self-employed part-time contractor, in addition to his full-time job as a letter carrier with the US Postal Service.  Dad would eventually partner with his brother-in-law to build brand-new, custom homes.  As they were just starting out, they needed to find a couple of cheap laborers.  It just so happened that Dad had two good prospects in mind.  They were a little green, but they were more than willing.  And they needed the money!  So, me and my brother embarked on our short-lived construction careers.

While my brother proved to be a natural, I on the other hand was an unmitigated disaster.  It did not take long to discover that I had not inherited Dad’s handy man gene.   Fortunately, the law of nepotism prevailed, and Dad kept me on the job despite my complete incompetence.   It was my job to provide the comic relief.  If Dad was the original Bob Vila, then I was the original Tim the Tool Man Taylor.

Years later, Dad loved to recount my many follies on the job, including the time I knocked him off the side of a house we were building when I handed him a piece of lumber.  Unfortunately, he was not looking at the time!  After disappearing from our view, I was certain that I killed him.   As I peeked around the side of the house with my eyes half closed, I expected to find him unconscious and bloodied on the ground.  After discovering that he had landed on a soft mound of dirt, I breathed a huge sigh of relief!  Then we all erupted in uncontrollable laughter once we realized that Dad had survived the fall largely unscathed – that is except for Dad!  He failed to find the humor in it.  Although not seriously injured, Dad would be sore for several weeks and you can be sure that he never let me forget it!

Another favorite story Dad loved to tell was the time he and I were installing a roof and I unwittingly stepped onto a piece of plywood that had not been nailed down.  As the board flipped up, I began a rapid descent down toward the floor below, and a certain premature death.  Fortunately, I had the “presence of mind” to extend my arms to catch myself between the roof trusses, which left me dangling in mid-air and holding on for dear life.  This time turnabout was fair play.  After Dad pulled me to safety, he enjoyed a rollicking laugh at my expense that would continue for the next 40 years!  More episodes like these convinced me that I was not destined for a career in the construction field.  But while I hated every minute of the work, I loved spending time with Dad and our relationship certainly deepened during those wild and crazy days.

After turning sixteen and getting my own car, I decided it was finally time to retire from construction so I could seek employment that was more suited to my natural abilities – filling catalog orders at Montgomery Ward.  It was with mixed emotions that I made this decision as I knew that would mean spending less time with Dad.  However, getting my own set of wheels opened up another opportunity for me to share in one of Dad’s favorite passions – CARS! 

Dad came of age during the classic car era of the 1950’s and 60’s.  He could tell you the make and model of every car he owned, what color it was, and what size engine it had.  Just like the film American Graffiti, I always pictured Dad cruising down the streets of South Baltimore with a pompadour haircut, a girl by his side, and engaging in an occasional drag race or two.  His love affair with cars would stay with him for the remainder of his life.  And while Dad would eventually trade his 56’ Ford Fairlane for something more practical, like a Lincoln Towncar, he would always take great pride in his ride.

For Dad, the weekends meant two things most of all: manicuring his lawn and detailing his car.  After he would meticulously trim every blade of grass and edge every inch of sidewalk, he would polish every fender and scrub every whitewall until his car sparkled.   After acquiring my first car, I discovered that I too had the same affliction.  For several years, Dad and I spent many Sunday’s together, detailing our cars and just hanging out.  I have to say that these were my favorite times with Dad.  Just he and I together, talking about life and hearing stories of his past.  These were the days that Dad and I really connected, and they are the memories that I will never forget.

But unfortunately, life began to intrude on that time together with Dad.  The demands of work, school, family, and career all conspired to limit my time with Dad as I grew older.  Moving to Pennsylvania also did not help.  But Dad made it a point to keep close.  He loved to come up for visits on the weekends, and occasionally, he would stay with us for several days.  My wife Pam was quick to take advantage of this and would always give Dad my much-neglected honey-do-list to keep him busy.  Dad loved it, and so did Pam!

After a somewhat rocky beginning, our relationship seemed to be on solid ground and I was grateful that Dad was now involved in my life.  I loved him with all my heart and I never doubted for a minute that he loved me.  But there was still something keeping us, or I should say keeping me, from entirely moving beyond our past.  It was always there lurking in the background threatening to come between us, but I always managed to suppress it before it permanently separated us.  I battled this thing in my mind for more than three decades.  There were times when it was barely perceptible, and other’s when it almost overtook me.  But this thing was persistent, and for years, I was never able to completely eradicate it from my consciousness.

That is until, February of 2004, when a friend invited me and my wife to attend his church one Sunday morning.  Now it is important to keep in mind that we were not a religious family, and we never attended church, outside of a handful of Easter or Christmas services, while I was growing up.  This trend continued for me well into adulthood, so by this time it was highly unlikely that I would have accepted my friend’s invitation.  But obviously, God had another plan in mind that day.

Over the course of the next several months, I began to become acquainted with a man named Jesus Christ, and my life would never be the same again.  As I began reading the New Testament, Jesus awakened me to the reality that I had another Father.  A Heavenly Father who had created me, who intimately knew everything about me, and who loved me with an everlasting love despite my not loving him or even acknowledging him.  Jesus taught me that my Heavenly Father is a God of love, of mercy, of grace, and most of all, of FORGIVENESS.

He removed the facade of my own self-righteousness and showed me just how far I had fallen short of the glory of God.  For the first time in my life, I was able to see who I truly was apart from Him.  And I was completely broken by what I saw and devastated by how horribly I had hurt my Father in Heaven.  But that was when Jesus revealed the extent of my Father’s love for me.  I discovered that His love for me is so extravagant that He sent His one and only Son Jesus into the world to bear my sin on the cross and remove the barrier that had long separated us, so that I could be reconciled to Him now and for eternity.

This divine love that Jesus made known to me, and that I received as a gracious gift from my Heavenly Father, is what ultimately changed my heart, and finally allowed me to conquer that thing that stood between me and my Dad for so long – UNFORGIVENESS.  How could I possibly continue to withhold forgiveness from Dad when God had so graciously and lovingly forgiven me for my own transgressions?  I now understood why I held onto that unforgiveness in my heart for so many long years.  Because, I was blind to my own shortcomings and never saw my own desperate need for God’s grace and forgiveness.  For years, I had been trying to produce that forgiveness on my own.  But ultimately that effort was doomed for failure from the start. Because only God can produce a forgiving spirit within us as He pours out his grace into our hearts through the working of the Holy Spirit.  It is not a work we can accomplish in our own strength no matter how hard we try.

From that point forward, my relationship with Dad grew stronger and our bond became unbreakable.  That root of bitterness that had taken hold in my heart so many years ago had been ripped out by Jesus.  I was now free to love Dad as God loves me, unconditionally, and with no judgement for my faults and past failures.  We now shared a common bond – we were both flawed and imperfect men who were loved by our Father in Heaven and in constant need of his grace.  And we had both received the gracious gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So today, while I will most certainly shed a few tears, I will not grieve like those who have no hope.  For I know that Dad is now safely home.  And when my work here on earth is completed, my Heavenly Father will gently call me home.  And oh, the rapture of that meeting, and oh, the joy we will experience when Dad sees me come!  And the quest for intimacy with Dad that I so longed for here on earth, will at long last become a heavenly reality.