Thankful Thursday: My dad

We heard the siren outside - but instead of zooming past on the highway, it sounded like it was stopping just out front. Curious, we went outside in time to see the ambulance going west on the dead-end dirt road. That's strange, we thought, because hardly anyone lives down that road. We wandered back inside to continue our meeting - only to be interrupted a few minutes later by a knock on the door.  My sister-in-law was looking for me with the news that my dad was gone. That's who the ambulance was coming for. Too late.

My dad was in the big John Deere tractor and had been planting beans in a field at the end of that road. He was doing what he loved - driving a John Deere tractor and planting seeds. And suddenly he was gone.

That was nineteen years ago today.

So many memories. So many things to be thankful for.

My dad did not have the chance to attend high school because he was needed on the farm, but he did not let that stop him. Somehow he found ways to keep learning. As a young man he ended up preaching in our little country church. I'm not sure how or why he was chosen, but he was the one in charge on those Sundays when the official pastor assigned to our "circuit" was preaching at one of the bigger churches. He did have a way with words for sure. I sometimes wonder what career paths he may have traveled given the opportunity.

My dad also organized and directed the Sunday School program for who knows how many years. As I look back on those years and the things he pulled off, I'm amazed by his innovation and creativity and ministry skill - despite having only an eighth-grade education.

He also single-handedly ran "the bus ministry" - but without a bus. Instead he made "extra" trips with our car filling it up with kids (and oldsters) who had no other way to get to church. To this day I am still bumping into people whose lives were changed by his effort and by those many miles he drove every Sunday.

As I listened to the stories that people told me in the days after my dad died, I happened to think of a phrase I had heard, a warning actually, about how easy it can be to love things and use people. As visitors gathered and talked about how they felt loved by him, it seemed like my dad had it right: he used things and loved people. In fact he used things until there was no use left in them. You couldn't get him to throw something away until it was totally and completely worn out and useless!!!

Yah, I might have picked up that habit from him.

Portrait of my dad was painted by his grand-daughter, 

Wendi Lee,

pictured here with him and wearing his hat.