Doubly Blessed

In my life, I have been doubly blessed.

Actually, I’ve been blessed many times, over. But in regards to my dad, I believe I’ve been uncommonly favored.

My dad passed away this past weekend and even though we may not have been bosom buddies, we had developed a different kind of relationship from the one we had when I was say…13…or 21. Or even 30.

But I digress.

Why do I say “doubly blessed”?

Because I’ve actually had two dads, in my life. Let me explain, for those of you who aren’t real familiar with my history…

One blessing for me is my biological father, whom I know fairly well, but we don’t “hang out” exactly. We share common features and habits and mannerisms and that’s cool. We’re both leftys. We both like the arts. We both like useless trivial stuff. We move our hands the same way when we talk. We have our differences and we’ve had our moments of clarity together. Actually right now, we rarely, if ever talk.

So considering all that, I am blessed to know him and to be able to see part of myself in him and to have had him as a part of my life…in whatever capacity. I am who I am, at least physically and some, emotionally, because of him

Secondly, my adoptive father, is the man I remember most as a child. He gave me his name. Made me a part of his entire family (who all embraced me like it was no big deal). He bought me my first go cart, signed me up for guitar lessons, taught me to shoot a gun and gave me my first car. He took me to see Star Wars, taught me to ride a bike, how to hook a worm, how to cut the grass and stood beside me during the best and the worst decisions of my life.

He worked, traveled, borrowed, and did whatever our family needed to have whatever we needed. To this day, I don’t know if we were moderately wealthy or forever on the verge of bankruptcy. But to his testament, we never had to worry about it. We never went without.

I am who I am, spiritually, emotionally, socially (and some would even say, physically), either directly or in indirectly, because of him. Whether I liked it or not…good, bad or ugly…right or wrong…he was the most formative figure for me as I grew from a young boy to a teenager to a stubborn young man all the way to a middle aged husband and father.

This is the dad I lost this past Sunday. This is the man I called “Daddy” for the majority of my life. Adoptive or not…legal or not…in agreement with him or not…he’s my dad.

He was my dad.

So I’ve been thinking a lot, over the last 24 hours, about families and death and loss and the most effective use of our time together. What does it mean? Why do I care? What can I learn from this? God, what are You wanting to show me?

As I mentioned earlier, my recent relationship with my dad was vastly different from what it was as a younger man. Both from my perspective and his. Over the last 4-5 years, each of us had moved into places we’d never been in before. We were evolving. Changing.

Life was taking its toll on both of us, in similar and in different ways. Life was expanding our view and giving us depth, again in both similar and different ways. And I think it made us both different people from what we were 10 years ago. Or 20 or 30.

I know that God has designed us both to evolve physically during our lifetimes and to grow spiritually, along with our bodies. For some, those processes are very much in sync with one another, maturing physically and spiritually at roughly the same pace. For others, this double-growth can be disjointed, bringing us to spiritual landmarks either early or later on than that of our peers.

For my dad and myself, I think we both arrived at our landmarks, later, rather than sooner. Why? I don’t know. That’s just the way God let it play out.

Although we disagreed bitterly the first 30-some odd years of my life, and although we continued to both be very opinionated about how we should do this or that…what I should do…what he should not do…I grew to understand him more as a man in many ways, these last few years.

I don’t understand everything about him, at least not yet. But at 41, a husband, father, homeowner, grass cutter, taxpayer and perpetual, obsessive answer seeker, I’m starting to see things from his point of view, more and more.

And that encourages me. Because as I go through my life, all the ups and downs and twists and turns, sometimes I just have to say “God, what are You thinking??? I don’t get it!” And I won't get it because I'm not at a place where He can give me answers that I'm ready to accept yet.

But I believe He will reveal those truths to each of us, all in time, all in order, when we’re able to understand and have perspective on them.

And that does give me peace with the things that I do not yet know, knowing that one day God will reveal His grand purpose to us and we will see Him as He really is and understand Him as He created us to.


“Lord, I do pray to You for wisdom and understanding. But even more than that, Father, please give me the mindset to accept the fact that I cannot comprehend everything with my human mind. Help me to accept the fact that You are the only holder of the answers that I cannot reach yet. And that You are the only place I can rest and confidently turn to when the unanswered questions of this life are too overwhelming for me to handle.”


I Corinthians 13:9-12 – “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”