He stood outside the door in the middle
of a hot, summer day in the foothills of southern Appalachia, where
the hills rolled in endless waves and the trees grew green, tall and
proud. Stretching their limbs to the sky that casted blue, there was
a smell, a scent in the air that made you want to always stay and
never leave.
You could hear the sound of bleating
sheep and barking dogs as he stood with his hands shoved in his holed
pants with a tattered baseball cap on the top of his head. His eyes
still held that blue from way back when, but now his face holds
subtle lines, wrinkled brows, and a back that sometimes stiffened his
walk, especially when the cold, harsh winter months came. But he
smiled and his eyes had that glow as he spoke, “ Yep, from far back
as I can remember I've always wanted to make something grow. I was
always in that dirt.”
And I guess he somewhat was.
When he was a young, sixteen year old
boy he worked on a farm in southern Alabama picking watermelons for a
dollar an hour. He worked with the sun beating down on his back, his
knees bent to the good, brown earth for an amount that none today
would ever lift a leg or finger for. That kind of work for that price
isn't worth the sweat and achy back and cramped knees. He said a job
was a job and it was something and he was grateful just to have it.
For less than a dollar, for 50 cents an
hour, he plucked weeds with his bare hands from a peanut field,
because back then it was mostly hands and less machines that made
those crops grow. It was all will power and nothing grew unless you
tended it and he did.
From peanut fields to soda fountains,
he worked at a drugstore, serving milk shakes and ice cream where the
atmosphere rang a good, old fashioned laughter and there's something
to be missed by all from those days of long ago.
Shortly after that it was marriage and
my sister and me and yes, he was young and it's hard being a father
maybe more harder than being a mother, because father's don't come
with that nurturer hand. To provide is to work the hands and mind,
raw and hard. It all has to be learned and when your real mom ups and
leaves when your little, because she knows and she just has to, that
memory just sits there and makes you wonder.
After that it was all military and
service and packed bags and u-haul trucks every three years, but
somewhere in the back of his mind he held onto making that green
earth grow. Back then he pushed it away to make a family grow and he
did and we all grew up and older.
There was many a slam door and raised
tones and the mind can hold onto all those thoughts, but to really
live, to really be free, is just to let it go. He spoke from the good
book, for eighteen years and maybe not everything around was always
good and maybe a time or two I rolled my eyes, but those times I
remember him the most, because they were eternal words spoken.
Father's do wrong and Father's do good
and so do daughters and to hold onto the wrong only brings us down to
the dark, where we can't see the light of the good. It only festers
in our soul with the misery of what could have been or what should
have been, instead of that we made it through.
It's hard for a daughter to grow, but
even harder for a father years later to still carry a burden of what
if's and past mistakes. There are moments held by all of when they
wished they had tried or acted differently, but they can't change it
now and if you were to ask a father what he knows now he would speak
you those words of wisdom to save you tears of your own.
It wasn't all walks in the park and
sunny days for nothing ever is, yet I tried and remembered the good.
I still took that deep breath when I was a young girl and inhaled and
blew out those candles on my birthday cake and I wished and prayed
that he would one day have that green earth he longed for and he did.
Forgive father's as our heavenly
father has forgiven us and as father's forgive their children.
Forgiveness is not just a word it's an attitude, it's a
lifestyle, it's felt way down deep in the bones and it can't help but
radiate outward from within. Life is too short, too precious, to
waste on living forgiveness as a one time spoken word and not as a
visible act. We believe and expect God to forgive us of our sins, but
we may find it hard to forgive our neighbors and to live fully
forgiven and to act as if we've forgotten and forgiven. Where true
forgiveness rests there is joy and there we will find Him.
Our Heavenly
Father forgives us over and over again.
He loves us over and over again.
He tends us over and over again.
He waits for us over and over again.
Our Father does not leave us even when our hearts become dry and
cracked and cold and when it seems as if nothing good will ever
spring from within us. He tends our souls until we soar.
And we father within us His words and
we tend.
