I Miss Him Too

Even in the midst of these strange times, our days still carry the rhythm of the normal. We may be hiding behind masks, but the blossoms of Spring are still breaking out, naked and unashamed. Our days may be empty, but they nevertheless grow longer as darkness sneaks through the door just at its widening curfew. In addition, despite the shutout of March Madness, the closing down of the NBA and NHL and uncertainty over if and when the boys of Summer might come out to play, we still had what has always been the most significant Spring day in sports, the NFL draft.

There is, however, a discordant note this year. No, not the spectacle of having the draft spectacle come to us from the basements of sundry head coaches and football bureaucrats. The discordant note for me comes not in the draft picks being phoned in, but in the absence of the post draft phone call with my father. I have paid attention to the draft all along the way. I have my tentative opinions (positive ones as it turns out) about the players the Steeler brass chose. What I don’t have is my father insisting on hearing my tentative opinions and his even more earnest insistence that he be given a chance to share his opinions with me. It’s what we did, every, single, year.

If there was a great battle being fought in the evangelical world, a tussle over gender neutral Bibles, a schism brewing over how we see Roman Catholicism he would talk with me about it. He would in fact go over these issues with me first, whenever we would get together. Not because these issues were what was most pressing on him, but so we could get over it, and move on to the Steeler talk. Those theological issues were real and important, like eating your vegetables is real and important. The Steeler talk was the dessert, and he wasn’t a man given to missing dessert.

In my book, Growing Up (with) RC, one of my goals was to give those who knew my father as a man in a pulpit a glimpse of the man in his easy chair. Despite rumors to the contrary, no skeletons were released from any closet. In fact, the only jangling you’ll hear coming from that closet are just some misshapen hangers bumping into each other. I have, for decades now, been saying to all who would listen, all those who “loved” him and now miss him, “You don’t understand. He’s a dad. A good dad. A great dad. He’s my dad.”

Now He is a dad far off, distant, beyond. The good news, however, is the good news. The same news that he defended and proclaimed is, most important of all, the good news he rested in, the good news he preached to me all his days, the good news that will, one day, reunite us. I love the Steelers. So did my dad. Better still, we loved each other. But best of all, we are loved by our elder brother, Jesus the Messiah. Give thanks.