Dad

My father would be 98 today. I am not sure why, but I miss him. Dad and I were not close - no outright hostility but not close. He was a quiet man, passive, married to a woman who was neither.

Although quiet, some could ask just the right question at just the right time and Dad would open up. His last birthday with us in 1999 was one of those times. My wife asked Dad what was his favorite birthday. At first he spoke of his 80th. Mom and Dad were "full-timing" in their fifth wheel and had planted themselves in Port Orford, Oregon. My younger sister and I surprised Dad by driving with his three grandchildren to spend the weekend with them; she from Seattle, me from Sacramento. Then his eyes lit up and he recalled his 21st. birthday back in 1934. It was a wonderful story of a barn dance, and angel food cake and the dawn breaking up the party. Not even my mother had heard him speak that story.

I think that is where my melancholy stems from today; I simply didn't know my father, nor did he know me. I hear other stories of fathers and sons who have healthy relationships and the void becomes amplified a bit by knowing them. I simply have no idea what Dad thought of me.

That's what the hole looks like for me, the desire to be known by Dad and in turn to know Dad as well. I believe its a common desire that some have filled by their earthly fathers, but all too often it is not. Passivity, neglect and, at times, outright abuse has crushed this desire for good fathering.

In this melancholy that arises from time to time I am reminded of a word used by Jesus, Abba. One simple four letter word that must have sounded revolutionary to those that heard Him speak it. Abba, Daddy is what it means, a term of intimacy and endearment foreign to those who walked with Jesus during His earthly days. The God of the patriarchs was not a distant, remote deity who kept Himself at arms length but a Dad.

A Dad who invites, desires deeply for me to step closer to Him and allow Him to father me. He knows me and wants me to know Him, INTIMATELY. Its a huge step of faith but one that has paid deep dividends in healing my shattered places. "Abba, I am yours. Father me", is my prayer on this day of remembrance of my dad, Charles Elwood Bowers.