An odic essay for my Father

I will buy you shirts and cologne and ties and cuffs over the years, walk with you into the sunset days. But I know that the best gift of I can give, is this, I hope. My offering of love in the art that you so encouraged me to take up. You have covered me in your prayers each day, I know, since my first breaths in half-caste skin and baby hair. You have called to check up on me each week. And even as I pursue my dreams, the ones I am too scared to even mouth, I am surrounded with comfort, because there's the beauty to having a father like you, someone who runs alongside me and makes sure that all the doors are open, all the paths stripped bare for my feet to graze, who believes in my unending strength to give life to those dreams, who forgives. I have never known a love like yours, and in the silence of my days, I pray that I don’t, so that the taste of your love will hover over me all my life, and I will sing today and everyday like Miriam did when they crossed the Red Sea. And I will call myself blessed. Because I know you, and I am yours. The man who loves God so wholly, so perfectly. When I curl into sleep I pray that I grow into your kind of faith, your stillness in the turbulence of life, your assurance that no matter what, God will provide. I remember praying once that God would make me fifty-years-old, your age then, when I first realized that your kind of faith was something I did not have. And on that day, more than anything, I wanted to be you. I can't wait to see you again, to be swept up in the embrace of your arms, to know how I am always home in your presence. In the man who has given me a Father's love, and more. I often write how I live my life through Mum's eyes and love, but I do so, I know, because she chose well, because I have this great foundation in you. You have made it possible for me to be me. And I call myself blessed because I am your daughter.

Happy Father’s Day everyone!

My favorite songs about fathers: Luther Vandross, Dance with my father, and Steven Curtis Chapman, Cinderella

Want to read more about fathers? Click here :-)