Missin' My Daddy Ism

If we are maintaining that our definition of "ism" is something that challenges us, but God is helping us through, then I am suffering today from "missin' my daddyism." With your permission, we'd like to spend a few days remembering him and his gifts to us.

It was three years ago today that I sat on my daddy's bed, holding his hand, coaching him through the last moments of his life. At the exact moment daddy decided it was time to let go and be with the Lord, Blessed Assurance (the Third Day version) was playing in the background. Incredibly poignant timing - and incredibly hard to listen to - even now.

I've spent the last 24 hours in my first pilgrimage back to his grave since his funeral. I've never been much on staring at tombstones and talking to people who aren't really there. But this year, I felt the need to go touch it, see it, and be near it. In all honesty this is the first time in almost 2 years that I thought a trip like this was even possible. Grief held me back the first year. Our isms at home held me back the next. Finally grief is in its proper place and isms seem to be in their's.

From the year 2005-2008, our family experienced more than its share of grief - we lost my brother, my dad and a cousin, almost simultaneously - and I have found myself just sort of "done" with grief. Kinda tired of being so intimately familiar with it. But like everything else God allows in my life, I know, in my head at least, that grieving is part of living and part of trusting. And perhaps more importantly - temporary - eternally speaking. But on days like today, it certainly isn't about what I know in my head. It's about what I feel. I FEEL like I miss his sweetness, his kindness, his gentleness, his hidden humor. I FEEL like the world is an emptier place without him. I FEEL like I was better, truer, more centered when he was near. I FEEL like 79 years weren't enough years for such a man as my father.

But what I KNOW is that separation from him, like my grief, is only temporary. I KNOW that our days are numbered and his were perfectly completed. I KNOW that the inheritance my father gave me is greater than any I could have asked for. He left a legacy of James 1:19 - "be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry." I met a man today who knew my father for most of his life and his memories of him are like so many others.

"I don't think I ever knew Tom to be angry about anything."

I agreed.


I knew him to live through pain, sorrow, betrayal, near poverty, and sickness without the need for anger. That is not to say my daddy was a saint by any means. Daddy had his shortcomings, insecurities and I dare say "isms" like the rest of us, but I don't know of anyone who was quicker to listen, slower to speak and even slower to become angry no matter what life threw at him.


I am missing my daddy today. I cried big tears for him at his very modest grave. I told him how convicted I feel that I fall so short, so often, of his beautiful legacy. I confessed how I have strived to be slower to anger in these last few years, but it has been increasingly difficult as so much has been asked and so much has been taken away. I am missing my daddy today. And my sweet Abba Father comforts me in His grace with the blessing that the words that rang out on that day 3 years ago are just as true right now:

Blessed Assurance - Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God
born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

This is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight. Visions of rapture now burst on my sight; angels descending bring from above - echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

Perfect submission, all is at rest; I in my Savior am happy and blest, watching and waiting, looking above, filled with his goodness, lost in his love.