I Believe In You, Dad

Tonight was my dad’s last annual meeting as Director of Missions of the Little River Baptist Association. I was nervous for my dad all day.

For those of you who don’t know my dad, you need to know that he can be a funny man. He’s one of those people who can hear a joke or story, remember it, and then sense when it is appropriate to share it. He is a wonderful speaker. He doesn’t write sermon manuscripts. He reads, studies, prays, jots notes on scratch pads or the back of junk mail, discerns where the Spirit is leading him, and then speaks. He connects with his audience. He makes people laugh. He makes people cry. And he’s very natural in his speaking…

Unless he’s nervous.

When he’s nervous, or when he feels like he needs to give an “official” speech, my dad sometimes tries to be too formal. He practices his words or writes out full paragraphs and tries to stay on topic and therefore changes his speech pattern. He tries to sound important. He’s more serious than he usually is. And he forgets to cry.

My dad is a crier. There are many mornings when I find him in tears at the breakfast table because he is deeply moved by his morning devotion. God’s presence is just so real in my dad’s life that it comes out of his eyes. So for my dad to speak without crying is just not normal.

As I was leaving for work this morning, I told my dad that I’d be thinking about him today and encouraged him not to think too much about what he was going to say tonight. I challenged him to be himself, to speak from his heart, and not try to sound too fancy, and I reminded him that it wasn’t going to be the last time he ever spoke to a church in the association. He mumbled something in his morning grogginess, I patted him on the back, we said our daily “I love you’s,” and then I said, “I believe in you, Dad,” and went to my car.

In typical Deanna-morning-fashion, I quickly realized that I’d left my breakfast in the microwave and promptly returned to the house to get it. Before leaving again, I heard Dad say, through tears in his eyes, “Well, Dee. I believe in you, too.”

I’m pretty sure that my dad didn’t know what to say when I told him that I believed in him.

But I do.

And tonight as he spoke to the association as Director of Missions for the last time—thankfully fully himself: tangents, tears and all—I kept right on believing on him.
And I will keep believing in him tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next.
And I think maybe I should tell him more often.
In fact, I think maybe we should tell everyone more often: “I believe in you.”
Because God believes in us.
And God desires to be so present in our lives that God’s love flows out of our hearts and our eyes.
Like my dad,
Who “loves baby Jesus,” and
In whom I believe.