My Three Fathers (Originally written: October 23, 2008)
~ by Laura-Lee Rahn
On a quiet night on December 25th several years ago, I was sitting around thinking about how Christmas had come and gone again for another year. After weeks of increasing frenzy, Christmas is over after only a few hours. Suddenly my phone rang and I picked it up. I heard a man's voice say, "Little Girl? This is your Dad."
A mixture of shock and excitement swept through my body like an electrical current as I felt transformed from a middle-aged woman to a 7 year old little girl.
I responded, "Hey Dad! It's great to hear your voice."
Then the thought hit me that something must be very wrong for him to call after all these years of silence.
"Are you okay?" I asked hurriedly.
"Sure," he replied with joviality, " I just wanted to give you a call to wish you a Merry Christmas".
We made a couple more minutes of excited small talk, but when I asked him a specific question I got no response. After a few seconds pausing he said, " I'm sorry to say this, but I don't think you're my daughter."
He was right. We discovered that he had accidently dialled the wrong number!
I asked him, " When did you first realize that I wasn't your daughter?"
He said, " Actually, I immediately suspected something was different. My daughter is never this happy to hear from me. Usually the moment she realizes it's me, she hangs up."
I told him, "I should have realized immediately too. My father hasn't phoned me at Christmas or any other time for almost a decade."
We wished each other a Merry Christmas and before we hung up the man said,
" I hope you don't mind me getting personal, but your father is a fool if he doesn't want to talk to you."
I told him I thought the same about his daughter. He had grown quiet with the realization that he still had to phone his daughter and he knew she would probably hang up on him once again.
I got even more personal and said, "Let's make a pact. Every Christmas when my Dad doesn't call and your daughter hangs up on you, let's think of each other and remember that you have a "mystery daughter" who would never hang up on you and I have a "mystery father" who calls every Christmas to see how I'm doing".
Every year it seems that families become more fractured and the Christmas 'hurrah' gets more noisy and hectic. I suspect people make such a big commotion so they won't notice how lonely they are. I've puzzled long (and cried much) over people who ignore those in their lives who are desperately ready to love them unconditionally, but their family members treat them with indifference or sometimes even contempt.
Deep inside us God has placed a blue-print of family life that is repeatedly declaring to us, "this is not the way it is meant to be! " In Psalm 68:6 it says, "God sets the lonely in families". A family is suppose to be a haven, a shelter, a fortress in trouble and a place where you are loved independent of who you are or what you've done. Yet Christmas is a dreaded and lonely time for many people, because it seems to put a magnifying lens to our lives and amplifies the fact that things are not quite right.
Now, I'm not going to tell you to love only the people who love you back, but my "wrong number father" showed me that there are people who are waiting and wanting to love me. I just may not have met them yet.
Now each Christmas finds me with three fathers: 1) a biological father who can't be bothered to know me, 2) a "wrong-number-father" who wants to know me and 3) a Heavenly father who knows me intimately. But not only does He know me, He loves me enough to send his Son from Heaven, to be born in a lowly stable, to die an agonizing death on a cross to atone for my entire life of sins, to rise from the dead to give me hope for Eternity and, oh yeah, to give me a reason to celebrate all year through with wonder, humility and deep thankfulness.
"-rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him-" (1 Peter 2:4 NIV)
Addendum (December 28, 2011)
I wrote this article in 2008 and sent it to the Edmonton Journal newspaper during the last week of October, 2008. I got no response from the Journal. Not even an automated response. I had the opportunity for this article to be published elsewhere and wrote to the Journal several times to ask them for a decision as to whether they were going to use my story or not. If they didn't want it, I would pass it on to someone who did. I heard absolutely nothing from them. This response puzzled me because it is the first time in more than 20 years of writing that I have not had something I submitted published. Usually God is very clear as to what I should write and where to send it to. Now I realize it may have been the timing that was wrong.When I wrote this story in 2008, my father was still alive. He died less than a year later in the summer of 2009. Since that time I've thought a lot about what makes a father. I have come up with a very long list. It included such things as compassion, tenderness, protection, sympathy, strength of character, guidance, humour, humility but mostly unconditional love demonstrated through self-sacrifice.
My biological father is gone, my "mystery" father I may never meet, but my Heavenly Father remains.
As I grew up, people used to say to me, "It must be hard to be without a father." But even then, I didn't feel I was without one. Just because God is invisible doesn't make him unreal. He is called the "Living God" because He is. Living, warm, available, compassionate, tender, a refuge, a companion, someone to dry your tears, to protect you and to sacrifice whatever it takes so that you and He will never be apart. Even if the sacrifice is His only son, Jesus.
After my father and mother got divorced my father still had visitation rights every second weekend. I would sit with my little, green suitcase every Friday night and wait for him to show up. By about 10:00 PM I would take off my coat, take my suitcase back to my room, unpack and go to bed, feeling worthless.
I became a Christian for one simple reason, I discovered I had a Father who would "show up". He's been "showing up" every day of my life and has never left me for one moment. Christmas may be over, but the love of God goes on every moment, of every day of my life.
If you're feeling let down because Christmas didn't give you the "warm fuzzies" you thought it would, or that it was over too soon, why don't you give your Heavenly Father a chance to show up. To be a part of your life. To give you all that you've been living without. Quite simply, He will. And if that isn't a reason to celebrate , I don't know what is.
"Hark the Herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King
Peace on Earth and mercy mild.
God and sinners reconciled ... "
Peace on Earth and mercy mild.
God and sinners reconciled ... "
