for Dad {and dads who love lavishly}
lav·ish
[lav-ish]–adjective1.expended, bestowed, or occurring in profusion: lavish spending.2.using or giving in great amounts; prodigalHow great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!~1 John 3:1
I came into this world on Easter Sunday, the same year my dad started his business. My dad is a Certified Public Accountant, and I drew my first breath, swathed in irony, the day before the federal deadline for personal tax returns. And for as long as I’ve known him, there have been a few things about my daddy about which I am absolutely certain:
- He loves his family lavishly, and that doesn’t mean the same thing as opulently.
- Taking care of his family has always been number three in his life, just below loving and serving God and loving my mom well. And he will want you to know that he has pursued this effort as hard as a man can, sometimes imperfectly, but always by the grace of God.
- He has always had enough time for me.
I’ve always known that my dad wants to give me everything that will be good for me, and that he loves me enough to warn me against anything that will hurt me. When I was growing up, he loved me enough to lead our household even though being the leader meant sacrificing himself. And dying to self hurts. My dad loved me enough to insist on my respect, enough to be firm, and enough to discipline me, even though the training was painful to him. And all the while, he poured out his attention and time on me lavishly, no matter how great the cost in hours spent working long after his children lay sleeping.
One of the greatest blessings in my life is that my husband loves lavishly too. And I know he will want me to say that it’s God’s Spirit that accomplishes this, and that he is an imperfect man trying his hardest to be yielded to the Spirit’s work.
My brothers and I have often said that we need to write a book of Dad-isms. Our dad raised us with wisdom, humor, and one-line nuggets we often find ourselves saying to our own children, just before we feel very amused that we are repeating them. The foundation upon which he built our character includes scripture~which bears the weight and all the structural integrity, education, and a wealth of wisdom, with a flourish of eccentric opinion and wit added for color.
I have vivid memories of my dad, tired from a day of work, laying on the floor in our living room, his head propped up on a square pillow he’d leaned against the front of the couch. He’d rest his eyes, feigning sleep, and we’d run circles around him, our feet thumping over the shag carpet. Round and round we went, giggling, one at a time climbing onto the sofa above his head, where he’d reach up suddenly and flip us over on top of him, tickling us until we couldn’t breathe.
After supper, he’d spend hours putting us to bed, giving my mom a break. We heard entire sagas of stories about fictitious characters he made up. Bobby and Joey got into the worst fixes, and he always left us at a cliff hanger, which sometimes he couldn’t remember the following evening. It wasn’t a problem. We always remembered, and we always reminded him. Each of us had a book sitting beside our beds that Dad was reading with us, a chapter a night. My dad and I read the entire Little House on the Prairie series that way, along with Nancy Drew, Pippy Longstocking, and Little Women. I went to bed thinking about strong, smart, adventurous, brave, little girls and young women, their colorful lives, and all they’d learned.
Every morning, even when I became a teen and didn’t think I remembered how to talk at the breakfast table, Dad started the day with scripture. “So, how exactly is this passage going to change your life?” He’d ask us, along with a thousand other questions about how the details of our lives looked when set against the backdrop of what he’d read to us. He challenged us to think and be different, if indeed different seemed to be what God asked of us.
And all this talking always came with smiles and humor, after he’d just come in my room and played John Phillips Sousa marches to wake me up. In fact, Dad filled our lives with music, stacking everything from classical music to Elvis and Tom T. Hall on the turn table in the living room. That record player spun through entire Saturday afternoons, background to the time he spent with us.
My dad never let us sit down until my mom could also sit down in the evenings, which, if you know my mom, is saying something. I remember him standing there, folding clothes, his eyes warning me against dissension. “Nobody rests until your mom can also rest.”
He never let us know how busy he was or how frustrated or how strapped. My dad loves lavishly—and so he taught us to be responsible without putting his burdens on our shoulders, and he always, always has time for us.
This morning, after sharing a lavish hour or more with me over coffee and breakfast and talking about the things God is doing in our lives, Kevin felt rushed to get to work. He knew that the sooner he got there, the sooner he’d come home to us. And yet he flipped Zoe up in his arms and tickled her, pouring kisses over her face. He stopped Adam in the doorway and made our son talk to him, with a hand gently on Adam’s chin turning his face up. Every day, Kevin asks Adam for a hug and gets one, both arms wrapped around his neck. Riley could not find her ipod and she teetered on the edge of tears, desperately hoping her dad would add a new game to it for her. Kevin put down his things, found the ipod, and uploaded a new game before he left.
At night, when we’re both too tired to see straight and desperate for moments alone to rest and catch up on the day, Kevin always has time for our kids. He discusses scripture with Zoe while I am doing a Bible lesson with Adam and Riley, asks to hear memory verses, reads stories, hugs, kisses, tickles, and talks. I am so thankful that he’s a dad who loves lavishly.
I think my dad knows that his lavish love made it easier for me to understand that God truly is the most loving and wonderful father any of us will ever know. I’ve never struggled with just how God could love us so much and yet mete out punishment for sin, expect us to live above the dictates of human nature, and all the while provide the way. My Dad poured out His love (and I do mean God’s)—and still does—a lavish love that is both just and full of grace. When scripture says things like this:
But Zion said, ‘The LORD has forsaken me, the LORD has forgotten me.” Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion for the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands…” ~Isaiah 49: 14-16
Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Deuteronomy 31:6
What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~Romans 8: 31-39
I get it, and I think a lot of the reason why it makes so much sense to me has to do with my dad and the way he loves.
I know that for some of my dear friends out there, Father’s Day is a painful day. It rips at scars on your hearts, cutting into wounds left by dads who did not know how to love well and who hurt you deeply, sometimes emotionally, sometimes physically, sometimes both ways. I know, because some of you have told me, that it hasn’t always been easy for you to see God as your father, because fatherhood never meant anything good where you came from. In the midst of feeling so thankful for my dad and the dad that Kevin is to our children, I want you, especially, to know that my heart aches over your pain. I do not dismiss it. It is significant, and I’m sorry. But be blessed by these true words, written by James Bryan Smith, words with which I know my own dad would agree:
The problem is that we begin our understanding of what father means and then project that onto God. That is not how it ought to work. When Jesus describes God as his Father, we have to let him define what fatherhood means. …Fatherhood is first defined by God and Jesus, not by Adam and his children (The Good and Beautiful God, 59).
Your father may have failed you miserably, but God, The Father, will never fail you. Let him show you everything a dad was meant to be.
And the thing I have to say, to my dad, to Kevin, and to all the dads out there who love lavishly, is that you inspire me to love not just with words but with actions and in truth (1 John 3:18). Time for each other is perhaps one of the most precious gifts we can bestow in a world where busyness is a rampant sickness. I pray that my children grow up knowing that I always have time for them.
