My wife Julie read my blog last night and agreed with me that from a style standpoint, it was not one of my better efforts. Yet the content in the blog was the most personal and the time it took to write was the greatest in length. That being said, this is the very reason why I am writing and is the reason why we need to look more deeply into our own belief in God as the Father Almighty. This is what the message at Rooftop is on this week and why I am writing about it. I along with everyone else has to overcome to varying degrees the impact our own father's have had on our ability and desire to know God as our ultimate Father. So here goes part 2...
At age 17 during my senior year, my dad was diagnosed with this disease I had mentioned previously. At first the seriousness of it was shocking. In the months to follow, it was major component in me recommitting my life to Jesus. This was the day as an adult where I surrendered all of myself and my life to Him. In retrospect, it was the greatest day of my life surpassing even my wedding day and the births of my five wonderful children. For had I not had that day, I would not have my incredible wife and amazing children. In the months following my recommitment, my dad's condition stabilized and God began leading me to enlist in the Marine Corps. As the time for my departure to Boot Camp drew near the seminal moment in our relationship took place.
During a conversation about me going to Boot Camp my dad expressed his doubts in me being able to graduate. He cited different character and personality flaws along with personal quirks which he thought would be problems. This was hurtful to an 18 year old young man about to venture into the most dangerous endeavor of my life. If anything, I needed and wanted my family, and especially my father, to bless me and believe in me. My response was all too familiar as well and I began to criticize dad for being a failure for not supporting me and breathing life into me for my upcoming adventure. As I finished, my dad to my shock raised his hand and slapped me across the mouth. I was stunned and then filled with rage. My father, who normally could have stood down his 18 year old son in a physical confrontation was now weakened by the disease and I knew it. I also knew I was stronger as I had been training to go off to Boot Camp and believed I could finally best my dad should I need to. Subsequently, I told him with the most defiant sneer, "don't ever touch me again". Dad, not backing down from my challenge raised his hand to hit me again, but this time I was ready.
I blocked his hand with my own and shoved him against the back door. I put my hand around his neck and held my other hand cocked in a fist ready to hit back. Now he was stunned, and there I stayed, staring into his eyes but I choosing not to follow through. My older sister and future brother-in-law were in the house and came running in and separated us. In the hours and days that followed, as was my dad's normal response, he acted as if nothing had ever happened and never said a word about it. I on the other hand remember struggling with the unresolved anger for several days before putting it aside myself. That was the last personal interaction I had with my dad before leaving for Boot Camp a couple months later.
A couple months into Boot Camp I got a letter saying dad had gone into the hospital with a worsened condition. I told my Drill Instructor and was able to get a couple phone calls home (which is not normally allowed) to see how he was doing. He bounced back and after several days came home from the hospital. When I came home from Boot Camp after graduation he seemed fine and back to normal. I left again after 10 days at home for my next duty station and did not return home for 5 more months, the weekend of my 19th birthday. I was in between two duty stations, Boston and Pensacola and went home to see my high school buddies for the weekend.
Before flying back on Sunday, I had to run some errands Saturday afternoon and my dad, out of character, asked to come along with me. Puzzled, I said sure and we spent a couple hours in the car together. We talked about all sorts of surface stuff but didn't argue for which I was thankful. We didn't talk about anything meaningful either, but I guess being with me in peace for that afternoon was meaningful to him.
The next morning I got up to catch my flight back and I went in to say good-bye. Mornings were especially tough on my dad in his sickness as it took him a while to get going. I stuck my head into his room and waved goodbye. Instead of waving, he called me over, which again was something abnormal from him. As I came over to his side of the bed he struggled to sit up and then for the first time in my conscious memory, he said " I love you" and he kissed me on the cheek. I remember feeling weird and not knowing how to respond. I think I said "I love you" back and then went on my way. Three weeks later, in the middle of the night, I received the phone call from my mom telling me dad had died.
I still to this day wonder if he knew. Did he know he was going to die? Was the kiss and the "I love you" his one final olive branch to me his only son? Did he realize all the holes left and mistakes made with me over the years? Or was he just wanting to not let our last memorable encounter together be the fight in the kitchen a year earlier? Either way, that kiss and those words have helped me deal with his passing and my search for peace in my relationship with my father. Over the next few months I had nothing but time to think about the lost relationship with my dad. Those months honestly were the hardest months of my life since graduating high school.
Most people entering into adulthood with father issues have their father present or at least alive. If they choose, and if the father obliges, often there can be peace made and restoration brought to the relationship. Sometimes there isn't such peace and the relationship only gets worse. For me, my dad was gone. I have no doubt he was and is in heaven for his faith in and love for Jesus. But he was gone for my lifetime, and I was left to chase the ghost of my absent father. I had much childishness and immaturity yet to grow through and no help or direction in doing it...no earthly help that is...
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The Narrow Path
Friday, September 25, 2009
My Dad - Part 1
This weekend, Rooftop continues our series on The Apostles' Creed. We are teaching through the creed as a means of covering the important foundational components of the Christian faith, and this week I am speaking on "God the Father Almighty". This will be interesting because I am living what I am teaching, and I am going to share the unabridged version here for the record and a more fuller understanding of my own search for my Father.
None of us first learns what "Father" is supposed to mean from a textbook nor from any other objective source. Rather from our earliest memories, we learned about "Father" from our own experiences with or without a father or father figure. So here you have a biblical truth "God as Father" and yet all of us come to this idea with our own misconceptions and presuppositions...all dependent on the nature of our relationship with our own fathers. This ranges from great to horrible and touches every possible reality in between as well.
For me personally, I have been on a father journey since my own dad died on December 1st, 1993. In the middle of the night, I received a call from my mom that my dad had died. He had been battling a rare heart disease he had contracted a couple years earlier. I was in the Marines at the time and would be promoted from Private First Class to Lance Corporal the following morning. I received my promotion and then got a plane ticket home from my duty station in Pensacola.
The almost 16 years since has been some kind of journey for me chasing the ghost of my father. You see, my father was a good man and he was a simple man. He did not want much from this life: God, his family, his workshops, his church, his hobbies; and that is what he had. I am his only son, and I am about as different from my dad as someone can be. As good a man as my dad was, willing to serve and help anyone who needed it, I had little to no relationship with my dad because he did not know how to relate to me beyond doing things for me which was his language of love.
This blog is difficult because my relationship with my dad was so erratic. I want to and need to honor him, and yet I also want to be honest about my journey, and as my father, he played a big role therein.
My dad had a very rough childhood. He was a very small boy who did not get his growth spurt until he was 20 years old...growing one foot in one year. He also suffered from a variation of dyslexia. And this was before there was good training in schools to deal with it appropriately. He never talked about it, but I can imagine being the smallest boy in 8th grade (being one of the smallest boys in 8th grade myself) and also having reading problems for no apparent reason and probably being called "stupid" by his classmates. Consequently, my father had to repeat both the 3rd and the 8th grades in order to graduate. From what I understand, 8th grade gym was the worst and oh...8th grade boys can be so brutal when they want to.
Ironically, my dad lost his dad when he was 25. Grandpa Zilkie had a massive heart attack while getting his hair cut at the barber shop in 1967. From what I was told, he, like my father, was not much of a communicator either, and so my dad very much was a product of his environment.
I share this because it is important to know the path my dad came from. And yet, that knowledge did little to help me in my adolescence when I found myself in the same or similar position as my father had found himself 32 years earlier. More on that later...
My dad coached my first soccer teams. He always drove me around on my paper route on Sunday mornings when the papers were too heavy to put on my bike. He spanked my butt for lying to him when I was in 3rd grade and was right in doing it. He did a lot of things for me and tried in many areas to support me. And yet though he was physically present in my life, he never talked with me about life...ever. And so I was a lonely, depressed, and confused young man who was destined to face the dangers of adolescence on my own, going without what I needed most...a loving father's wisdom, support, and help.
To this day, I love my dad, naming our oldest child after him, David Lawrence Zilkie II. And yet, I get so frustrated when I see the missed opportunities in his life and the consequences I and our family endured as a result. Beyond the age of 10, the only kind of communication I remember having with my dad was arguing and fighting. Constantly arguing about nothing, and boy, I could get him riled up some of the time. I also lost respect for my father and in some ways grew to be ashamed of him. This is a terrible thing and would break my heart if my children ever felt this way about me. I wonder how he felt? He never let us know...
(Part 2 tomorrow)
None of us first learns what "Father" is supposed to mean from a textbook nor from any other objective source. Rather from our earliest memories, we learned about "Father" from our own experiences with or without a father or father figure. So here you have a biblical truth "God as Father" and yet all of us come to this idea with our own misconceptions and presuppositions...all dependent on the nature of our relationship with our own fathers. This ranges from great to horrible and touches every possible reality in between as well.
For me personally, I have been on a father journey since my own dad died on December 1st, 1993. In the middle of the night, I received a call from my mom that my dad had died. He had been battling a rare heart disease he had contracted a couple years earlier. I was in the Marines at the time and would be promoted from Private First Class to Lance Corporal the following morning. I received my promotion and then got a plane ticket home from my duty station in Pensacola.
The almost 16 years since has been some kind of journey for me chasing the ghost of my father. You see, my father was a good man and he was a simple man. He did not want much from this life: God, his family, his workshops, his church, his hobbies; and that is what he had. I am his only son, and I am about as different from my dad as someone can be. As good a man as my dad was, willing to serve and help anyone who needed it, I had little to no relationship with my dad because he did not know how to relate to me beyond doing things for me which was his language of love.
This blog is difficult because my relationship with my dad was so erratic. I want to and need to honor him, and yet I also want to be honest about my journey, and as my father, he played a big role therein.
My dad had a very rough childhood. He was a very small boy who did not get his growth spurt until he was 20 years old...growing one foot in one year. He also suffered from a variation of dyslexia. And this was before there was good training in schools to deal with it appropriately. He never talked about it, but I can imagine being the smallest boy in 8th grade (being one of the smallest boys in 8th grade myself) and also having reading problems for no apparent reason and probably being called "stupid" by his classmates. Consequently, my father had to repeat both the 3rd and the 8th grades in order to graduate. From what I understand, 8th grade gym was the worst and oh...8th grade boys can be so brutal when they want to.
Ironically, my dad lost his dad when he was 25. Grandpa Zilkie had a massive heart attack while getting his hair cut at the barber shop in 1967. From what I was told, he, like my father, was not much of a communicator either, and so my dad very much was a product of his environment.
I share this because it is important to know the path my dad came from. And yet, that knowledge did little to help me in my adolescence when I found myself in the same or similar position as my father had found himself 32 years earlier. More on that later...
My dad coached my first soccer teams. He always drove me around on my paper route on Sunday mornings when the papers were too heavy to put on my bike. He spanked my butt for lying to him when I was in 3rd grade and was right in doing it. He did a lot of things for me and tried in many areas to support me. And yet though he was physically present in my life, he never talked with me about life...ever. And so I was a lonely, depressed, and confused young man who was destined to face the dangers of adolescence on my own, going without what I needed most...a loving father's wisdom, support, and help.
To this day, I love my dad, naming our oldest child after him, David Lawrence Zilkie II. And yet, I get so frustrated when I see the missed opportunities in his life and the consequences I and our family endured as a result. Beyond the age of 10, the only kind of communication I remember having with my dad was arguing and fighting. Constantly arguing about nothing, and boy, I could get him riled up some of the time. I also lost respect for my father and in some ways grew to be ashamed of him. This is a terrible thing and would break my heart if my children ever felt this way about me. I wonder how he felt? He never let us know...
(Part 2 tomorrow)
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