I remember early mornings in the small fishing boat, a still mist settling over the lake. “Wait, wait. Don’t jerk your rod yet; give him time.” Waiting for the cork to go under, hands tense and trembling on the rod, shivering a little in the cool humidity, and then—a bream is flopping in the boat. He seems ten pounds at least to little me. Not even a pound, though, Daddy says. It doesn’t matter. “Those taste the best, anyway, Anna.”
I remember thick, calloused fingers forming chords on the guitar. “Push harder, like this.” My own guitar chord sounds muted, more like the thwack of a crossbow than music. No fair, I think. I don’t have permanently tough hands like his.
I remember family gatherings at 7 AM every day, everyone with Bibles
Somehow, all of us have a picture in our minds of the perfect father.
He shows up at every baseball game to cheer us on, is always ready to listen to us, and he buys us ice cream when we’re sad. Even as adults, we want that father our minds (and the books we’ve read) have constructed.
We look at our own fathers and wonder why they’re so hard on us, they don’t listen to us, and they don’t seem to care about our every achievement. And we forget about the many, many times our imperfect fathers have done their best for us. Tomorrow, though, it’s Father’s Day, and you’re remembering, too. The camping trips, the projects, the driving lessons (including the time he yelled at you because he thought you were going to kill him). As the memory reel plays through your mind, you see flashes of the child you were and the adult you became because of him.
During the last few days, I’ve reflected on my own father and the years of love and training he and my mom poured into my siblings and me. We didn’t have much money and never wore the latest fashions, but we always had food on the table. We weren’t enrolled in a bunch of extracurricular activities, but we knew our parents and they knew us.
My father isn’t perfect. He’d be the first to admit it. But, in so many ways, I see that even his imperfections played a role in shaping me. He pushed me too hard sometimes, but that gave me some much-needed humility and forced me to work always harder. “Hartleys aren’t lazy,” he used to say, quoting his own father. And he made sure that statement was a reality. One day when we were passing and stacking firewood, one of my younger brothers didn’t want to help. He leaned up against the shed and watched us work. After a couple minutes, my dad noticed.
“Why aren’t you over here?”
“Because I was born lazy.” His face broke out in a grin, but the rest of us looked at him bug-eyed. You didn’t say that around Daddy. After the storm clouds cleared we were able to snicker about it. But my brother never said that again, and never shirked work as openly again.
One of my earliest memories of Daddy is from when I was 4 or 5 years old and we were getting ready for church. Mama had her hands full with all the little ones and the baby, and I had on a dress with a long sash that needed to be tied in the back. I finally snuck up to Daddy. “Daddy, would you help me?” He saw the two ends of the sash trailing and nodded.
“OK.” He picked up the ends, frowned a little, and then tied a giant bow on my tummy. I stared down at it in dismay but didn’t say anything as he walked away. When we all got loaded into the van, I pointed it out to Mama. She burst out laughing and then quietly retied it without him ever noticing.
Thinking of that moment, I have to admire the single dads who have had to figure out how to raise daughters on their own. I spoke to one of those daughters not long ago. Her dad passed away a couple of weeks ago, and she was remembering all the things he’d had to figure out as a single dad, from tying bows to buying training bras. He was both her dad and her mom, and as she grew up, he became her best friend.
Fathers like that aren’t easy to find.
Our jails are full of criminals who grew up without fathers. As many as 1 in 4 girls have been abused, most by close relatives and some by the men who were supposed to be protecting them like a good father would.
My dad kept me from being one of the 1 in 4. He protected me instead of abusing me or allowing others that kind of access. (And I’m definitely not saying that abuse is always a father’s fault. Sometimes there is no way he could’ve stopped it.)
Right before my dad gave me away at my wedding.
My dad’s love for me and confidence in me gave me the strength to judge men on their characters, not their looks or my own neediness. Because my dad is a good man, I waited for and married a good man. Because my dad is trustworthy and faithful to my mom, I find it easier to trust my husband.
Fathers impact us in ways we will probably never understand. For good or for bad, they show their sons what it looks like to be a man. They teach their daughters what to look for in a husband. They give their children strength, or they crush them in their own weakness.
A good father is a beautiful thing. But there is only one father who is perfectly good. I’m reminded of a verse from that Bible that my dad first taught me to read.
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:7-11
God is the Good and Perfect Father. And even if you don’t have a good father on earth, you can trust your heavenly Father to give good gifts to His children.