Honoring my father and all the memories 

Nearly four months ago, the day of my dad’s funeral, I stood in my kitchen listening to a song a friend had written, recorded and sent to me that morning. The words penetrated my heart, “All is not lost. There is a way.”

Since then, I have struggled at times with the feeling that, in fact, all I’ve known has been lost. And I’ve more than certainly struggled to find my way through such tremendous grief in the day to day.

Because of that, I didn’t want to write about Father’s Day this month. In the midst of my struggle and my loss, I would rather bury my head in the sand until Father’s Day passes and it is safe to come out again. I would rather ignore the Facebook posts and the stream of photos capturing happy fathers and daughters. I would prefer to ignore it all because of my own struggle.

“All is not lost. There is a way,” I remind myself.

The pain of knowing there are no new memories to come often tears through my heart, but the beautiful part of my story is that for 33 years, I had an incredible father.

My dad was capable where many men would have failed. He singlehandedly raised and provided for my brother and me.

He fixed hair. He took me shopping.

He did what moms do. The result wasn’t great. I was a girl dressed in knee-length Duck Head shorts and coordinating T-shirts with frizzy, untamed hair. It was the same outfit nearly every day just in a different color.

But the wonderful gift my dad gave me was that I never knew the difference. I never saw that I was any different from the girls with moms to fix their hair and take them shopping. He did what dads do best. He protected my heart. The focus was always on teaching me about being a good, kind person who worked hard. Not about how I looked.

My dad never stopped giving to me. He wanted me to have every opportunity at my fingertips. He wanted me to graduate from college and grew frustrated with me, like any parent would, when he could see that I wasn’t living up to my potential.

Following my sophomore year of college, my dad agreed to let me spend 10 weeks in New York doing mission work through a program at Louisiana

Tech University. I worked and slept in a soup kitchen in Binghamton, N.Y., during my first week there. There was a park that backed up to the soup kitchen where we worked.

The ground of the park was covered in used drug needles.

Now that I’m a parent, I’ve often thought back on that experience and what I would do if my daughter asked to take the same trip I took then as a 20-year-old. How would I let her go and let her have that experience?

I never thought about that then.

At 20 years old, you feel like nothing can touch you. But the reality was that I was his little girl, more than a thousand miles away, with people he didn’t know and staying in places he’d never seen or been.

He put his fears aside to afford me a life-changing opportunity. He did a remarkable thing that many of us as parents fail to do, he gave me room to experience life for all it had to offer. He never limited me and that changed me forever.

Years later in 2010, my dad stood at my wedding rehearsal dinner with tears in his eyes. He was nearly unable to speak because of the lump in his throat as a result of the overwhelming emotion he felt. He talked about the things I had accomplished, how my education and all of my writing had made him so proud. But he said that my marriage to Ty was the one thing that made him prouder of me than anything.

As he spoke that night, he didn’t credit himself for any of my accomplishments, but I have him to thank for all of it. For protecting my heart during difficult times. For putting himself aside and giving me space to experience life to the fullest. For making me into a woman deserving of a man like the one I married.

Just over nine months ago, my dad stood outside the door of my delivery room. He heard my son’s first cry. He was one of the first people to hold him, love him and welcome him into our family.

The circle of life reminds me that “all is not lost. There is a way.”

I am finding my way by choosing to live each day; by showing up for my life, my husband and my children. Rather than hiding out on Father’s Day, I will embrace the wonderful memories I have with my dad, and certainly give thanks to the man who gave so much for me. All is not lost because my father lives on in me.