Happy Birthday, Dad!

Dad has been gone almost 23 years but I still miss him.   He would have been 96 this week.  I still carry those precious memories of him.  I suppose my first memory was when I was about 4 or 5 and I had seen someone curling their hair.  I remember being on the dresser looking in the mirror, with bobby pins all around me trying my best to get a bobby pin to stay.  Dad saw me and said "Daddy's girl trying to make her some curls?"  He picked me up and said he like my hair just like it was. 

He worked at a saw mill and Mom cooked his lunch and we brought it down the road to him.  He always let me get a salt tablet.  I don't know why I wanted a salt tablet.  Except that's what Daddy  used when he worked.  That salt tablet was like an  M&M today.  We watched the men make boards from logs.  I thought 
my Dad was something with that ruler in his hand measuring the width of the trees.  Dad was a Math whiz.
He did not have a lot of education but he really did not need any in Math of any kind.                             
In high school the whole class was stuck on an Algebra problem.  The teacher would give anyone that got the answer correct an A.  Even the smartest kid could not get it.  I gave the problem to Dad.  He looked at it awhile and gave me the answer.  "Dad, how did you get it?"   "I just did and it is right."  The next day I ask the teacher if that was the right answer.  She said "Yes."   I told her my Dad gave me the answer but could not tell me how he figured it out.  I did not get an A, but I found out what a smart Dad I had.  


I remember at about 14 I wanted to learn to drive.  He took me out a few times and showed me. This was with a  stick shift.   We lived just a few blocks from town.  One day we were sitting on the porch and I ask him if I could drive around the block.  He pulled out the keys and told me to go for it.  I made it around the block.  Mom was on the porch asking him why he let me do that.  I would wind up wrecking the car.  He looked at her and said,"She made it, didn't she.?"  

We would sit in the swing in the evening together.  Sometimes we  sat in silence,  sometimes we would talk.  He was always petting his dog.  But those silent conversations  meant a lot to me.  Just to know I was sitting by my Dad.  He gave me some valuable advise.  One time especially!  That advise saved me a lot of 
heartache down the road.  I am so thankful that I listened.

 Why kids don't listen to their parents this day and time is beyond me.  I am speaking of kids raised in the church with  Godly parents.  They seem to want to go their own way and do their own thing.  But down the road they have a lot of heartaches.  Had they only listened!   I learned early in life that my Dad was the boss, not me.  That has made it so much easier for me to obey my Heavenly Father.  

I love the conversations I have with my Heavenly Father.  Just like my Dad, I know that my Heavenly Father has my interest at heart and if I listen I am so much better off.   I still have to be chastised by my Heavenly Father at times, but it is for my good. 


Tomorrow is the day we all go and worship the Lord.  I hope you have a blessed week end with God's blessings flowing down from above.  Go with your cup right side up.  Blessings!