I'm Your Daddy

“Trust in God.” My dad said many things, in many tones and in many moods. But I guess I’d be mistakin’ if I didn’t admit that these 3 words were the most meaningful. [Another that really sticks out was his bedside advice to not let the sun set on unresolved conflicts with others—this was just before he slipped into the black hole of Alzheimer’s last stage].

Lord knows dad had more than his share of trials and tribs. When I was 5 we were living in Whitesburg, deep in the heart of Eastern Kentucky. In 1960 dad drove my younger brother, Willie, to a doctor in Lexington, which back then was a 7-hour trip on those winding, narrow mountainous roads.

Willie was in the backseat and, while playing with the door, opened it, fell out and died. I can only imagine the torment my dad must have felt then—and throughout the rest of his life, and only hope that we never have to experience that for real. I suppose his faith got him through, though he never spoke of it—and I was never tempted to ask.

Mom, I recall being very serene on the front porch of our home on Hayes Street, tears streaming from her beautiful, but now most forlorn, eyes. I am sure I blocked out and can no longer remember the trauma in the household when we learned little Willie would never return. Years later I felt pangs of guilt for the jokes I’d play on my younger brother (he died at 3 when I was 5).

Both mom and dad both were of a similar mind regarding God. Neither were very dogmatic. While they instilled the values of Jesus, they didn’t view salvation as dependant on a specific set of rules. Essentially, they just taught us to be good to others and to trust God to lead us through our earthly tour.

For instance I’d ask, “Mom, we’re going to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving, right?” “God willing” she’d reply. God willing, this. God willing that. Jeez, I’d always think, I KNOW God’s willing because, by gawd, I want to do this thing!

For his part dad always credited God for the Dawahare family’s success in business. He felt God lead us every step. Additionally, one day as I was going out with the guys in high school dad put his hand on my shoulder and said kind of out of the blue, “Son, just trust in God.”

This brief heartfelt message, quietly delivered in the foyer of our Linstead Dr. home, has saved me over my life, giving me license for my faith. I do believe, but sometimes my belief is clouded by, what…appearances? Science? Association with fundamentalists? Doubt?

Yes, sometimes that too. No doubt, I doubt. Oft times it’s mental gymnastics as I struggle keeping God in sight through that nagging doubt: “Rich, there IS no God, depend on YOURSELF!” “Where’s the proof, show me PROOF!” “God was a construct to keep people in line—it’s bogus, man!”

Disasters galore—manmade war, nature’s storms, my own divorce—graphically prove their point. At these times it’s like mind control as I struggle to love God with all my heart, mind and soul as one of His sons, Jesus, directs. Nagging, nagging doubt—am I like Marx’s masses that use religion as an opiate??

But when I just relax … God finds ME. His/Her/Its reality is manifest…God just IS. I tell you, my friend, God is real…but He/She/It’s a mystery for sure. God does not micro-manage, but God is there to lift us up. Time and time and time again over my life has God carried me, most recently after my own personal tsunami.

In the eyes of some my complete reliance on God makes me crazy. But hey, I say that if one is not already crazy in this world, one will GO crazy in this world! And in any case I was destined to have this faith from my parents’ instruction. That is my license. It has saved me, and I am most grateful for it.

The question is inevitable: Is God’s reality such that He would have found His way to my consciousness regardless of parenting, or was that parenting the crucial factor in my belief?

The answer is found in the Golden Rule. Confucius, around 495 B.C. stated this maxim 500 years before Jesus did. Is there any doubt that this universal truth existed way before Confucius? Indeed, this is the Word that was with God and was God in the beginning.

It is. God is. For your peace and joy, for this one moment, I’m your daddy: Trust in God.


Rfd 2/1/05