2/24/08 Legacy

A great deal has happen in my life since we were last together.

As most of you know,

I wasn’t here last week

because Sandee and I took an unexpected trip to Southern California.

My sister, Becky, and her husband, John, live in Southern California,

and for most of the past year

my parents have lived there as well

in a retirement community just a few minutes from my sister’s home.

For most of their lives my parents have enjoyed excellent health,

but three years ago my dad suffered a major stroke

that left him paralyzed on his right side

and significantly impaired his speech.

For several years following the stroke

he fought his way back to the place where he could walk with a cane

and made significant progress with his speech,

although it was still difficult to understand what he was saying much of the time.

During those three years my mom has been his primary care-giver.

For several years following the stroke they lived in a retirement community outside of Seattle

until this past summer when they made the move to Southern California.

Three weeks ago Sandee and I received a phone call from John and Becky’s son and daughter

telling us that my dad was complaining of severe back pain.

There was some concern that he may have suffered a second stroke

so they took him to the hospital.

After examining him, though, the doctor said that it appeared to be simply a muscle problem

and he was taken to a skilled nursing home to recover for a few days.

The back pain did diminish,

but his over-all strength did not return,

and in fact he rapidly grew dramatically weaker.

Two weeks ago the family took most of the furniture out of the livingroom in dad and mom’s small apartment,

moved in a hospital bed,

and brought dad back home.

In our phone conversations with John and Becky

it was clear that dad’s strength was failing fast

and they thought it might be a good time for us come on down.

At that time there was every indication that he could live for a number of months yet,

but there were no guarantees.

On Wednesday of that week Sandee and I flew down

and when we arrived that evening

we found my dad alert and talking and waiting for our arrival.

We spent the evening with him,

and then all of the following day.

Even though dad was confined to his hospital bed

he insisted on wearing his wristwatch

which he keep looking at frequently,

repeatedly asking us when the rest of the family was coming.

Then, on Friday my brother and his wife and their two sons flew in from Seattle.

When they arrived dad was sitting up in bed,

listening to the conversations

and making comments of his own,

few of which we could actually understand.

We stayed with him through the evening.

When we left he was sleeping,

and when we returned Saturday morning he was still sleeping.

He was breathing very hard,

but his pulse was still strong.

He did not wake up at all on Saturday

and passed away in his sleep about 4:00 a.m. last Sunday morning.

My dad’s departure has been a fascinating experience for me

in some ways I did not expect.

I know that your assumption would be

that his death has most certainly been a painful loss for me,

but the truth is it has not.

I have spent a good deal of time this past week

wondering about what would be of value for me to share with you this morning

and what would not be of value.

I’m not promising you that I’ve reached all of the right conclusions in this,

but at the same time I wouldn’t be comfortable in saying nothing.

You see, in a rather remarkable way

my dad has left a tremendous legacy for me, his son.

But it is not the kind of legacy that you might expect.

And for me to explain this correctly

I think I need to begin

by sharing with you a little of my dad’s own personal history.

My dad was born in 1920 in northern Minnesota.

His parents were farmers

on a rather pathetic piece of farm land

not far from the Canadian border.

My dad was the fourth of seven children,

and when he was born

his parents were already so far over their heads with farming and family responsibilities

that, for the first few years of my dad’s life,

his was given to some other family members to take care of.

After his father died a number of years ago

my dad came across a journal that his dad had kept for most of his life.

When he found it

he wanted to see what his dad had written in the journal

on the day he was born.

When he turned to that day and read the entry

he discovered that his dad hadn’t even mentioned his son’s birth.

My dad had little access to formal education.

By the time he was nine years old the Great Depression was starting,

and when he was thirteen he was put into the Civilian Conservation Corps,

a government program to help deal with economic turmoil in the nation.

He never really went home again.

When the Second World War broke out and the draft was started

he had a draft number of 2 or 3

and went down and enlisted.

He was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed,

came back to the mainland after about two years

and he and my mom were married at that time.

He spent the rest of the war helping with training at different army bases in the U.S.

After the war he got into restaurant work and then insurance sales in Kansas for a few years,

and then moved the family to Seattle.

I was three years old at the time, my brother was four.

I share this history with you

because it has helped me to better understand

what happened between me and my dad throughout my childhood,

or more correctly, what did not happen.

Though I wasn’t really aware of it until well into my adult years,

my dad’s childhood left him utterly unprepared for parenting.

I believe he went through his entire childhood

without any adult ever emotionally connecting with him.

Certainly neither his own father or mother ever did.

At the two most critical phases of childhood -

the first two years, and then during the years of early adolescence -

there were no adults emotionally tied to him

or that he felt emotionally tied to.

And when it came to his relationship with his own children,

he simply had no idea how to enter our world,

or how to connect with us at any emotional level whatsoever.

Though as a child I didn’t realize it was abnormal,

I went through my entire childhood

knowing that my dad had no emotional connection with me whatsoever.

I have no memory of him ever touching me,

no memory of him ever initiating a conversation with me,

no memory of him ever coming up to my room or making any attempt to enter my world at any level.

He was a very nice man

who provided my physical needs

but who appeared to feel nothing whatsoever for me,

and who was emotionally disconnected from me to the extreme.

He wasn’t in any way mean or angry or dictatorial or abusive.

He just lived in some other world,

a world to which I had no access.

On the few occasions when I would attempt to initiate communicate with him in the evenings

my mom would say, “Don’t bother your dad...he’s reading the paper.”

Throughout most of my adult life

I have known and frequently taught that our concept of God

is a direct result of our concept of our dad.

Initially we just naturally assume

that God is pretty much just like dad only a whole lot bigger.

I’ve known this was true for all of you,

but it has taken me years to realize

that it was also true for me.

My dad was a very nice man

who was completely emotionally unconnected to me.

And, wouldn’t you know it!

My God was a very nice God

who took very good care of my physical needs,

but who certainly had no real emotional tie to me.

He didn’t dislike me,

but He certainly didn’t feel anything for me.

He had far too many important things going on

to even notice my existence.

He lived in some other world,

a world to which I had no access.

And it took my Lord all of thirty years

before He could finally put in place the pieces

that have forced me into the discovery of the truth -

the truth that He has felt every loneliness, every wound, every fear, every pain I’ve ever felt,

and that He loves me and delights in me

at a level I could never even begin to comprehend.

My dad’s passing has been a fascinating experience for me

because of the way in which it has so powerfully confirmed

some of the most basic assumptions and truths of my life.

One of those assumptions

is that there are no love entitlements in the parenting process.

By that I mean that

whatever love bond exists between a parent and a child

will exist only because the parent has chosen to approach his or her role as parent

in a way that has created the bond.

Now, it is certainly true that God has stacked the deck in the parents’ favor.

Every child is preprogrammed by God

with a deep emotional hunger for the love of both father and mother.

In fact it is that love and the affirmation of worth that it brings

that provides the child with his or her doorway into the entire male world through the father

and female world through the mother.

But the truth is that a strong love relationship between parent child

never ever just happens.

Either it is built by the parent

or it will not exist.

And the responsibility for building that relationship

rests 100% upon the parent, not the child.

It is the parent’s high calling from God

to establish and maintain access into the child’s life.

And if the parent does not accept and fulfill this calling

there is no reason to expect the child to build emotional ties to the parent

simply because they hold the position of father or mother.

And there is only about a 13 year window in which the parent can accomplish this.

If that emotional bond between parent and child is not built by early adolescence

it is unlikely that it will ever exist.

There is simply no way to rebuild in the adult years

what was not built in childhood.

During our adult years

my dad and I developed a mutual respect for one another.

The more I learned about his past and the massive hurtles he faced in life

the more I grew to respect him

for his tremendous determination simply to survive

in the face of powerful voices from his past

telling him he had no right even to exist.

And I believe he had a genuine respect for me

for the choices I’ve made in life

and the man I’ve become.

But that adult respect

could never recreate what we both lost in my childhood.

When my dad passed away

the truth is that his departure left no void in my life

because, from the day of my birth,

he has never been in my life at an emotional level.

A second huge confirmation of truth that I have received through my dad

is the realization that with our Lord Jesus Christ

it is always, only about redemption,

and His ability to take our wounds,

and the evil that has touched our lives

and turn it into good

is limited only by our willingness to let go of our anger,

or our bitterness,

or our desire for revenge,

and allow Him to lead us through His redemptive process of turning evil into good.

When I came out of my childhood

and entered my early adult years

I brought with me huge holes inside,

holes created within me in part

by the absolute emotional absence of my father in my life.

The one voice that, in the normal pattern established by God,

could have told me who I was,

and why I had value,

and where I fit in this world was silent,

and that silence produced tremendous doubt, and fear, and confusion, inside of me.

At first it drove me to seek proof of my identity

through achieving positions of recognition,

believing that if I just achieved enough

I could find peace with myself

and perhaps even gain the validation of my father.

But you simply can’t get there that way.

There is no external voice

that can replace what happens within the spirit of a child

when he or she looks into the eyes of his or her daddy

and sees that this man who knows me better than any one else

loves me, and delights in me,

and tells me with absolute clarity that it was very good that I was born.

But if that kind of communication does not take place between father and child,

apart from the redemptive work of God in a person’s life,

we will spend the rest of our lives

in a desperate pursuit for some alternate voice

that we hope can tell us that it is good that we were born.

And certainly there was a time as I moved into my adult years

when I began to understand what I had lost in my childhood,

and I became angry at my dad for what he’d failed to give me.

But as I began to let go of that anger

something remarkable started happening in my life.

First, and most of all through my beloved daughter, Joni,

and then in His grace,

through other young people that God brought into my life,

my Lord began to show me the most remarkable thing.

As I began to learn how to give to others

the very things I so desperately wished I would have received in my own childhood,

I discovered that it not only brought healing into their lives,

but it brought healing into my own life as well.

I can remember a time in my life

when I grieved deeply over what I perceived as the great losses of my own childhood.

But now, after more than 40 years of the redemptive work of God in my life,

and especially after seeing the depth of healing,

and the wealth of good He has brought from His teaching me

how to give to others what I failed to receive from my own dad in childhood,

when my dad passed away last Sunday

I realized an amazing thing.

If I could now choose for myself

any childhood possible,

I would choose exactly the one that I had

because so many of the richest blessings in my life

have come to me as a direct result

of the healing process God has brought about within me

as He has dealt with the wounds I brought with me out of my childhood.

Given the incredible richness of life that I now possess,

I would never ever exchange what I now have

for the most perfect childhood and the most loving daddy in the world.

And let me just say that

if right now you are at a point in your own life

when you are looking back at your own childhood,

and you find yourself filled with anger

at what you had every right as a child

to expect from your parents and yet did not receive,

please listen carefully to what I say next.

There is a great redemptive work that God wants to accomplish in your life as well,

a redemptive work that can only take place

if you are willing to let go of the anger

and allow your God to take the evil that has touched your life

and turn it into good.

It’s the business He’s in, you know -

turning evil into good.

He is the ultimate Master at doing it,

and He both can and will do it in your life if you’ll choose to forgive.

And then, just one more thing before I close.

I want to share with you

what will forever be the greatest gift I ever received from my dad.

It was totally unexpected,

given to me by him the night before he died.

Throughout much of his last two days before he died

my dad kept dozing off to sleep.

In fact he slept more than he was awake.

But frequently during those times of sleep

we would see him lift his hand and reach out

very much as if he was trying to take hold of something.

When he would wake up we’d ask him about it

and he would have no memory of it.

Sandee and I stayed until late in the evening Friday,

and then my sister and her husband came to relieve us and we went home for the night.

But shortly after we left

John, Becky, and my mom were all in the bedroom

and they suddenly heard my dad speak out with a bold, clear voice, “Oh My Savior!”

It was spoken with a clarity far beyond anything he had said for months.

And it was the last clear words he ever spoke.

After that outburst

he went to sleep

and never woke up again.

I am convinced that in that instant

he really was aware of the presence of his Lord with him

and that he knew with absolute certainty

that his Savior truly had forever removed all of his sins from his account forever.

He didn’t just say, “Oh my God!”, or “Oh my Lord!”.

He said, “Oh my Savior!”

And there is nothing he could ever have said

that could have come to me as a greater gift

than those three words

because it gave me the most powerful confirmation

of the most crucial truth of my life.

If we were to take the population of the world

and line them all up on the basis of how great their load of sin was

I don’t suppose my dad would be considered to be extremely high on the list.

But if we were to take the world population

and line them up on the basis of whose sins and failures

have most deeply impacted me personally,

my dad would be at or near the top of the list.

Certainly he didn’t intend for that to happen.

And yet it did.

But here is the truly wonderful thing -

when I realized that this man who had so deeply wounded me

knew that his Savior’s death was more than adequate for his sins,

it confirmed to me

that He is also more than adequate

for the wounds I have inflicted on others.

Do you have someone in your life

that, when you think about them,

you take a secret pleasure in the thought that they will face the judgement of God when they die

for the sins they have committed against you?

If so, then I think you have not even begun to understand the truth.

What you really want

is not a Savior who holds them accountable for their sins against you,

but a Savior whose blood paid their debt in full forever

because if their sins are covered in full

then yours are too.

And if they’re not,

then there is no hope for either of you.