Dads

I have never really had a dad. Growing up, I saw my father mostly on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  When he divorced my mom when I was an infant, he pretty much divorced me too.  I don’t say this to sound pitiful.  Truth be told, I had a much better childhood than most of the people I know with a mom and a dad.  God knew what He was doing.  He gave me an awesome Mom and put several Godly men in my life to be great stand in fathers.

In middle school, I met Jenilee and when we joined at the hip, I got a new set of parents.  A dad came built in.  Darol was a great dad.  He took his family to church every time the doors were open and when my cat Boss died, he came over to my house and buried it for my grief stricken mother and me.  He cooked breakfast all the time and went to all of Jenilee’s (boring) track meets.  When we went out to dinner, he paid for mine too.

The summer of my freshman year in college, I started working with the youth at Phaniels Baptist Church.  Since I was pretty much a kid myself, I got “adopted” by a lot of the parents of my youth.  That’s when I got Ronald Taylor.  Many know Ronald as “the fish man.”  He’s Brett and Andrea’s dad.  They know they are two lucky kids.  I got lucky when Ronald came into my life too.  For the past five years, he’s cooked for my Relay for Life team after he got off work, on a Friday, for FREE.  Before we got married, he gave Skip some words of wisdom.  I didn’t have a Dad to do that, so he it for me.  A week or so after we got  married, he called and asked if Skip was treating me right.  He’s an awesome dad.

Dan Talley was another father I got from my time at Phaniels.  Since he had three kids of his own, he knew a little bit of how to deal with a 19 year old kid.    I had so much to learn, I’m amazed I made it a summer, much less 7 years working with their youth.  My first year, I did everything wrong, so I was pretty surprised the following spring when Dan called me at school to ask if I wanted to come back for the summer.  He was one of the deacons who hired me the first time.  He saw how much I loved the kids and he liked me.  He spent the next several years defending my honor every time I did something wrong or the preacher called me in for “a talking to.”  He went to camp with us one sweltering summer and forced us to wash cars to raise money for mission trips.  He cared about every kid in the youth group with his own daughter Michelle, and he cared about me.  He was a great dad.

Dan got to meet The Father this weekend.  Dan loved to hunt.  Apparently, he was hunting Saturday morning and God called him home.  What an amazing way to go.   I think maybe that was the beginning of his reward for a life well spent.  He was a devoted man of God.  He was a deacon; he was a Gideon.  He was on the youth council for years after his own children graduated.  He was one of the many men God put in my life to show me what Godly men look like.  Even though I haven’t seen him as often lately as I once did, I’m going to miss him.  He was a great dad.