When Dad became human (and God became faceless)

The Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

– Romans 8:15

He used to carry me. My father with the scratchy beard and the loud laugh, the kind that threw his head way back. He would carry me as he walked barefoot in Africa. I would feel his heartbeat through his sweaty t-shirt. Soon I toddled after him on short legs in a bunchy diaper. I learned to walk in my father’s footsteps. 

We would visit the blind together. I chewed on sugar cane and watched him dig up the red soil. Then my little hands would help him plant the seeds. We gardened in the mornings and rested in the afternoons. 

But when we moved back to Canada Dad became a distant thing, a man lost in becoming a pastor. Gone was the rugged missionary in bare feet. He spent months getting his doctorate and working in a skim milk factory to pay our bills. And then, when he finally donned the ministerial collar, we lost him to sermon-writing or to board meetings or to visiting people in the hospital.

I longed for the days of mango juice dripping down my chin and toddling happily after my dad in the warm clay dirt. I longed for my father’s head to throw back again in a great laugh. 

Sometimes, after I’d had my bath, I would wait for Dad to come home. I would sit on the stairs of the manse, in my nightgown, waiting.

He would come, but he wouldn’t see me, resting on the stairs. And he would slip into his office and I would cry myself to sleep.

Thirteen and dying 

Eventually I stopped waiting, and I stopped eating. I didn’t know whose footsteps to follow anymore. I’d lost my way. For years God had looked like my dad to me and now, my dad was human, and God was faceless. 

Yet into this loneliness stepped Abba. 

I was thirteen and dying from anorexia nervosa. Nurses said I was a miracle at sixty pounds and five foot nine and when I heard that, I finally heard the voice of my heavenly father wooing me in the desert-place. 

Abba had been waiting for me, this whole time. I just hadn’t seen Him. He began to spoon-feed me a love I’d been starving for. And He carried me so close I could feel His heartbeat.

Soon I began to toddle slowly after Him, following in my Father’s footsteps. I was barefoot on holy ground. He taught me about good soil, taught me how to plant the seeds of the gospel. Together we visited the blind and helped them to see. Then we rested on the seventh day. A divine siesta. 

His is the loudest laugh and it fills me so full, I’ll never go hungry again.