So often we struggle to find the words to articulate how we’re feeling or how we feel about someone else. Oftentimes, the issue is not that we don’t have the words. It is that we are afraid to say them, particularly out loud because we don’t know how they will be received. Or simply because saying how we feel out loud makes it real in a way that we are not yet prepared for. But then there are people and experiences that there truly are no words for – that the task of describing them is incredibly reductive because they are that extraordinary. Because they are that impactful and since today is Father’s Day, I believe you know where this is going.
Since I am limited in my capacity to convey all that he is, I will share with you some of his greatest hits by my measure:
You’re the best of us. That is the last thing before I love you that he whispers in my ear any time I leave home for an extended period of time.
Your voice is the pen. That is what he told me when I questioned my ability to be impactful as a writer – when I dismissed writing as a means of activism. And it is those same words I remind myself of every time a seed of doubt challenges what God has already confirmed to be true.
Love does not need to be reciprocated in order to exist. That is what he told me after my first heartbreak when I thought because I wasn’t loved back that that made me insufficient. He comforted me by illuminating to me a silver lining. That though I may not have been loved back, I still had the capacity to love and that is a gift unto itself – a gift everyone does not possess and it is a gift that makes us like God.
I loved you first. That is what he says every time I tell him I love him.
I could go on and on about the wisdom he has imparted to me but the proof is in my editorials. The proof is in me. If you have found any of my editorials insightful or uplifting, that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with my father and with God. It is God, my Heavenly father, that blessed me with my father because he knew my life would be inconceivable without him. It is my father’s wisdom that has informed my life experiences and thus given me something to write about – stories to tell. He has cultivated my understanding of myself, has illustrated, to me, the power of love in the presence of the greatest of adversaries and revealed the fruit one is able to bear when they wholly trust in God.
That’s MY DAD! That is the announcement I make every time my father enters a room, like a giddy toddler, because I am proud to call him my father. I am grateful to God that he has no off days – that every day, for him, is an opportunity to be a better man than he was the day before.
To my hero, my moral compass and my very best friend, thank you for your love, your support, your kindness, your grace and your immovable faith. They have made me all the better. I love you. I respect you. I aspire to be like you. You never limit yourself in any capacity and slowly but surely, I am learning to do the same. This world does not deserve you and neither do I but I thank God every day that He does not bless us according to what we deserve but provides us with what He knows we need.
Happy Father’s Day!
