Dad loved animals, children and God – but he often hated himself

(OPINION) My father wouldn’t look at old family photos. When the rest of us pulled out a photo album or a shoebox full of pictures, he would get up and leave the room.

“It’s too sad,” he said.

I was in my home office the other day, looking around the room, trying to avoid the effort of writing.

I noticed an unframed, jagged snapshot of Dad on an upper bookshelf, leaning against some books. In the picture he is sitting on the back steps of a frame house in Pulaski County, Kentucky, out in the country.

I took it down for a closer look. The black and white photo is faded, making some details difficult to see. It is dated 53 in my mother’s handwriting – 1953, the year they were married – and was apparently taken in the summer, because the yard looks busy and Dad’s casual shirt is short-sleeved.

He would have been 22 years old. His legs are stretched out on the grass in front of him and crossed at the ankles. From what I can tell, he’s wearing khakis, argyle socks, and what look like white bucks. He’s just a boy.

He grins broadly at the photographer, who is undoubtedly his bride, who will later become my mother.

Of course he has a puppy. I imagine him saying something to Mom like, “What’s wrong with that dog?” He loved dogs. Someone was always following him around the house or garden or snoring next to him on the couch while he slept.

He also loved children. When he taught school, the children loved him and stayed with him long after they grew up and had families of their own. They called. They sent him cards and letters thanking him for all the help and joy he gave them.

Having grown up in the poverty of Appalachia during the Great Depression, he had a particular soft spot for poor children and misfits of all kinds.

Dad loved my sister and me and he adored our mother, to whom he was married for 50 years.

But more than anyone I ever knew, Dad loved God. I mean, he really loved God, like God was as real and tangible as a puppy or my mother. Of course, as a preacher, he spoke about God from the pulpit.

But he also talked to God all day, weekdays and holidays, wherever he was. If he were driving down the highway, he would be in conversation with the Almighty. Whenever he had to make a big decision, or even a small one, he let the Lord make it first. Whenever something miraculous happened—like when he was instantly healed of terminal cancer—he gave God the glory. When something terrible happened, he fell to his knees and screamed for help.

God was not just the center of his life. God was his life.

When I was young, none of my friends had a father like that and I was sometimes embarrassed by him. Their fathers talked about normal things. Basketball. Tobacco cultivation. The factory. Pretty women. Their fathers did not speak in tongues, carry large Bibles, or evangelize strangers.

My personality was very different from my father’s, and this difference caused tension between us until his death in 2012. We worked together at times, including for several years when we served together as pastors of the same church. Above all, it wasn’t easy.

No one I’ve ever known could make me angry faster. I loved him. I admired him. And he drove me completely crazy. I think these feelings were mutual.

Even as a teenager, I knew he probably suffered from an emotional disorder. I don’t know what this disorder would have been called by a professional since he never sought outside help. He would have liked to, he said, but the stigma surrounding mental health problems was so great at the time that he feared it would cost him his job and the low social status we enjoyed.

So he fought it on his own, as best he could, without counseling and without medication, just him and the Holy Spirit waging war against his demons. At times he was paranoid. Sometimes he was full of energy and big dreams that never came true. Another time he cried uncontrollably for no apparent reason. I think he always struggled with self-doubt.

But over long periods of time, over years, he was perfectly sensible, as steady as a lawyer, funny, articulate and well-read – the wisest and most compassionate man I have ever met. He helped hundreds, probably thousands, of seekers on their spiritual journey. I am an eyewitness to the great deeds he accomplished.

I hold this jagged, fading snapshot in my hand, staring at the toothy child of 71 years ago, on the back steps of a forgotten country rectory on a sunny afternoon, a child who has no idea what glorious and devastating things will happen to him .

Where is he now? I ask for silence. What was it about? Did any of this matter? Was he a holy fool or a true saint – or is there a difference between the two?

“It’s too sad,” he always said.