I think most kids growing up tend to feel more understood by one parent than the other. Most kids go to one parent for sympathy, permission, and to share confidences. One parent’s way of saying, “I love you,” is easier to understand, so you feel closer to them. Growing up, I felt more understood by my mom. We had similar interests, similarities of personality, and since I was homeschooled she was home far more than my dad. I have always loved my dad, but I saw him as somewhat stern figure of justice. He was always working—not because he was caught up in his ‘wonderful’ job, but because he was providing for us. I didn’t understand him very well for many years—I couldn’t hear the subtext to all those hours of labor, and I couldn’t understand why he didn’t the energy for us that other kid’s dads seemed to.
As I got older, I was expected to help my dad with his cleaning job at the church we then attended. For the next few years I learned a lot of useful custodial skills from how to clean windows properly to how to extract carpets and strip floors. And as I worked beside my dad I saw some new sides of him—his attention to details, his leadership by example not commands, and how he was trying to pass on responsibility to us. I hating having to work every Friday night, but I was beginning to understand better what my dad was trying to teach us with the way he was raising us.
A few years later I spent a terrible summer working two retail jobs while I waited for the on-line education course I was doing to start up. I opened and worked mornings at the one place, and worked evenings and closing at the other. This was a very dark time for me for many reasons, and I did not handle the stress and emotional exhaustion very well. After spending all day being pleasant to rude, demanding, and sometimes stupid people, I had a hard time being nice to my family once I got home. I began to understand why my father was so tired by the time he got home, and why he sometimes seemed withdrawn. Goodness, I wasn’t doing a better job in easier circumstances!
Now that I am older, my perspective has shifted yet more, and I can now see things that I never understood when I was a child. My dad’s love language is deeds of service, and my whole life has been one long symphony of the theme, “I love you.” All those hours of lawn mowing, cleaning jobs, and fighting a loosing battle against a tough job (yet never giving in), was my dad saying, “I love you so much that I’m giving you the chance to be home educated and always be provided for.” All those times he made me do things I didn’t want to or was afraid to was my dad saying, “I love you and want you to be a functioning adult.” All those times when I thought was being unreasonable, he was saying, “I love you and want you to be able to stand up in the face of the enormous pressures of the adult world.” My father is one of the last selfish people that I know, a real life George Baily, and I couldn’t be more proud of him or more glad to call him Daddy. The older I get, the more of my father I discover in myself, for good and ill. Thank you God for giving me such a wonderful earthly father who has deepened my appreciation for Your love for me. I don’t know what I’d do without him, and I am fiercely proud to be his daughter.
