Okay. I admit it. I was a Daddy’s girl. Oh, I loved both my mother and father, but my Daddy was special to me. In my childish eyes, he was perfect. And I was his “little princess”. My father was funny and fun. He sang silly songs like “There was a hole in the ground, the funniest hole you ever did see…” and he made us laugh with the stories he told about his childhood. He was the middle child in a family of 13 children (mostly boys) so he had plenty of stories to share!

My father attended a one room school. (This was another source of many of his stories–oh, the pranks the boys did in that school!) He didn’t go beyond eighth grade. Because of this, my father had great aspirations for me. His dream for me was that I go to law school and become, as he put it, a “woman judge”. This was an amazing thing considering his background and his ultra conservative upbringing, and that this was prior to the feminist movement. I didn’t fulfill that specific goal he had for me, but I did go to college and he cried the day he drove me there. I was the first one in the family to attend college and he was proud and pleased.

One day after I was grown and married and out of the house, my mother approached me with a concern. She shared with me that she often thought my father favored my older sister and she worried that I had been hurt by it. I was stunned!! I always thought I was the favorite!

It is not unusual for children to admire their fathers. Recently I was watching my great granddaughter crawling towards someone when her father happened to walk by. She promptly did an about face and crawled after him instead! I had to smile. What adoration she has for her daddy!

…the glory of children is their father. –Proverbs 17:6

There is so much more that I could say about my father. He was a good man who loved God, served in the church, and provided for his family. He worked hard as a salesman, but also maintained a small farm with a very large garden and a beautiful orchard. He took pride in his apples and grew the largest peaches I ever did see! I was happy to call him my Daddy.

As I got older, however, I began to realize that maybe my Daddy wasn’t so perfect after all. My father was a jokester, but sometimes he could joke too hard. My father loved playing games and it was serious business with him. He could be too competitive and at times the games would end with tension and arguments. I began to see that he could be too focused on himself and too demanding of others. He had a stubborn streak that could get him into trouble. I don’t share this to belittle him, but rather to point out that there is no perfect Daddy. Or is there?

We recently celebrated Father’s Day. In our Sunday morning worship service, one of the men expressed to the congregation that as hard as he tries to be a good father, he knows that he fails. But he went on to say that he was thankful for the “perfect heavenly Father who can stand in the gap” when he fails.

In the book, Ragman and other cries of faith, the author Walter Wangerin Jr shares this thought written in a letter to his son:

I had hurt you. I sat you down in a chair and left the room. I went out and I myself burst into tears. It was a terrible, thwarted thing–for me to cry. I said, “God, how can I know if I’m a good father to this child?” I said, “God, please you be father for him–“ And quietly I understood: in fact, God is your father, and a better one than I. –from “To Matthew, at His Confirmation

It was Jesus who encouraged His followers to view God as a father. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, He instructed them to address God as Our Father, making His Father their Father. He was introducing them to a closer, more intimate relationship with a holy God. But how close can we get to “Our Father, which art in heaven”? Do we dare call him Daddy?

Daddy is such a sweet, childish name for a father. When we get older, we shorten it to Dad. But I called my father Daddy, even as a teen. And sometimes as an adult I would slip and revert to that tender loving term of affection for my father. Daddy. Can our heavenly father be a daddy to us? In Galatians 4:6 we are told that because we are children of God, we can cry out, “Abba, Father!” That word ‘Abba’ is an Aramaic affectionate term for father, the equivalent of papa or daddy. It speaks of a close, intimate relationship between father and child. That is the kind of relationship we can have with God!

My earthly father was my Daddy, but it is God, my heavenly Father, who is my perfect Daddy!

My Daddy and Me

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