Tucked away in the back of my childhood room’s closet, in an old purple photo box stuffed with my sentimental hoards of mail, you will find two long white envelopes inscribed: “Mary Elizabeth Sweetheart McCulley.” To be completely honest, I couldn’t tell you the contents of the envelopes, but I remember vividly the very moments I opened each of them.
Something had gone wrong. Someone had yelled at someone. Someone had misunderstood someone else. I can’t remember how I got caught in the crossfire, but what pained another family member often pained me. In the evening, when everyone had gone to their rooms and shut their doors, I’d still be choking back tears. It was in those moments I’d find one of those white envelopes sitting on my desk.
Like I said, I don’t remember the exact contents, but they were long letters, written on two sides of two sheets of college-ruled notebook paper. I can tell you at least three sentences you’d find in those letters.
Forgive me. I love you. Love, Dad.
My dad claims he’s not much of a writer, but when he writes, he does so with purpose and conviction, never letting a careless word drop from his pen. I don’t think it could have been easy to write what he did. He could have just hugged me or said he was sorry, but he allowed the words to bleed onto paper in blue ink, granting me a permanent reminder.
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When I was in fourth grade, my dad coached our co-ed softball team after school. His over-eager training and competitiveness betrayed the sportsman he was in his youth. He also possessed a mathematical mind that could memorize seemingly infinite baseball stats. He’d argue any day that the best poetry was found in the physics of force created by the collision of bat and ball that sent the spherical object flying smoothly with increasing speed in parabolic motion across a diamond-shaped field.
I thought most certainly he must have felt disappointment in his second born, who could only clumsily articulate the language of sports. One afternoon, instead of storming off the makeshift practice field, dramatically announcing I would finally quit the team, I simply didn’t show up to practice. I stole away to my friend, the baby grand, in the dark, quiet solitude of the school’s chapel and fiddled around with some of my practice exercises until I felt the dark shadow of a presence behind me putting his arm around my shoulder. Again, I don’t remember his words to me, but I remember I was crying. He didn’t ask me to come back to the softball field; instead, he paid for nine more years of piano lessons and my stacks upon stacks of piano books.
I learned that he wanted me to create poetry in the ways I knew best rather than through the forms he had always found most comfortable. Once, as an adult, after returning to my home in Texas after a far too long extended stay in Ohio, I serenaded him with an improvised rendition of “More Love to Thee,” the song I had plucked out for him a long time ago with my little untrained six-year-old fingers. He remarked that my piano has gotten lonely without me home—his reworking of the phrase, “I love you.”
After I recently defended my dissertation, my dad reminded me that this milestone merely affirms what he has been saying all his life. I now have a degree that proves I can argue with someone. Besides being his “Sweetheart,” he affectionately calls me either “Dr. Mary” or “Snake-in-the-grass.” He jokes that my studies in rhetoric stem back his own tutelage in fiery dialogue and debate and our family’s rousingly competitive board game nights. This is true.
But he may have forgotten that he helped spur my literary pursuits as well because it was he who purchased almost any book, journal, or notecard set he could afford if I only mentioned I liked it. Once, without my saying a word, he brought home for me, a blue tin can containing folded white stationery embossed with blue and gold flowers. “For writing your thoughts and letters,” he said. I remember him apologetically saying that he probably got the colors wrong and if he did, he could take it back to the store. I used every piece.
I probably have enough stories for quite a lengthy narrative, but let me end with the one most dear. When all five of us children were young, we would sit around our tiny living room for family time, reading the Bible and singing songs. We had been singing that simple song of declaration that–“Yes, the Bible’s true; it is God’s own word.”
Suddenly, my dad turned to his little seven-year-old daughter and asked how I knew that the Bible was true. I replied dutifully with the second half of the song’s catechism—“Because it is God’s own word.” But he would not accept that as a final answer. He continued, “But how do you know it is God’s word?” I thought for a moment and responded, “Well, the Bible says so.” Never to leave a little one in a pattern of circular reasoning, my dad challenged me once more, “But how do you know that what the Bible says about itself is true?” I was stumped. Who was this man, challenging the core of what he had been teaching me from the moment I was an infant?
It was then he explained the profound idea of faith to me–the assurance God gives that what He says is true. It is a concept that extended far beyond the mere reasoning of a seven- year-old or even a thirty-three-year-old. “But how do I know if I have faith?” I asked back, now unsure of everything. He unzipped his big black Bible and turned to Romans 8:16 which read, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.”
I’m not sure how many days followed that conversation, but my internal conversations with another Father began. It was a precious introduction of one to Another. One great to Another far greater. The first, humble and asking forgiveness; the second, glorious and granting forgiveness. The first, inspiring me to pursue my passions; the second, passionately pursuing me. The first, giving me good gifts; the second, giving me all good gifts. Both call me theirs.
This Valentine’s Day, I celebrate my love for the man who has helped me grow into the woman I am becoming. And I love him for leading me to the Heavenly Father I love today.
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