A Letter to my Daughter
In a picture
box somewhere there is photograph of the two of us. Although it’s lost in
storage, it is burned into my memory. I am holding you. You fit neatly in my
two hands. My heart fits perfectly around your little finger – small as it was.
It is a long time ago. It is the example of that worn out metaphor we reach for
to describe fathers and daughters. “Tied around fingers” or something like
that. Clearly, I am tangled. I’ve always been. Quietly, I bend down and whisper
something to you. It’s hard to make out. But, I know exactly what I said. I’ve
been saying it for seventeen years. You have heard me say it every day since.
“You will always be this child here in my hands. I will never leave you nor abandon
you. I love you.” It is seventeen years, but it is easily today.
One
day, if God wills, you will know how deeply a parent loves a child. It is the
bottomless vein in a parent’s heart. But, you will never know how intensely a
father loves a daughter. It’s hard to put into words. It is a mixture of
strength and softness unique to this bond. A father’s love lingers like a fortress
over the untouched treasure of his daughter’s life. (This is why your dad acts
like a suspicious sniper around you.) A daughter thrives within its safe
barrier. A father’s love for his daughter is a protective against a thousand
ills seeking to infect the innocence of her life.
You do
not fully realize it now, but one day in the midst of life’s many hardships
you’ll see what I’ve been doing all these years. You’ll see what I whispered to
you many years ago. In the darkness of your pain, you’ll reach down and
suddenly feel a foundation beneath you. I know you love me. I know you respect
me more than any other man on this earth. But, I have not been turning your
heart to me all these years, as much as to My God. My leadership of your life
is intended to provide you the slightest glimpse of His awesome power over all
things, including you. I know My God will help you.
When
the time comes you will sense a loyalty you had not sensed before. There in
that moment, His love will be my greatest gift to you. A vision of a mighty
God, which I have conscientiously opened to you by conversation &
tenderness and by tenderness, he will come up and catch you. My own love,
incomplete and imperfect, will now make sense in the infinite shadow of His.
You will bend down quietly before your life and say, “Thank you, Daddy. God is
Great. He has neither left me nor forsaken me.” Your earthly father will be
content in being overshadowed by your Heavenly one. You are not mine. You are
His. I will rejoice as I watch my daughter worship from knees I once put
Band-Aids on.
I pray
that my care for you brings into sharp focus the love of Our Savior. I pray my
sincere affection is a contrast to the many deceptions that parade as love in
this world. I pray the sight of your father in broken worship of Christ gives
you the courage to raise your own heart up in praise before mankind. I pray my
transparent confession of sin and weakness will incline you to retreat into
Christ’s righteousness at the sight of your own. I pray most sincerely that you
will have not simply copied your father’s faith, but sincerely found the Lord
Jesus Christ as the supreme object of your own.
Dear
child, do not settle. Love a man who loves Christ more than you – and you more
than himself. Be attracted to tenderness, lowliness, self-restraint,
consistency and sacrifice. Seek that man who carries the imprint of our Lord’s
cross upon his life. Love that man who does not live in fear of your emotions,
but in fear of your Lord. Don’t marry a boy… no matter how old he may be.
Do not fall for the first young man who comes along and shows you attention.
Rather, follow that man whom comes along and resembles the unconditional grace
of your Lord Jesus.
I am so
sorry about the condition of the average young male. I regret that they confuse
lust with love. I apologize that they know better how to handle a gun (which is
completely respectable in one sense) than how to treat a lady. I know godliness
in a man is hard to find. But, find it. Otherwise, you will spend your life
raising the man you thought you married. The church and this culture are filled
with boys camouflaged as men. Let them pass.
The man
you are looking for is no boy. He is a servant. He cares for your needs above
his own. If I am at all the man I claim to be, you may look at your father’s
love for your mother and know what it is I’m describing. You should be able to
recognize it when you see it. That man who will lay down his life for yours is
the type of man you can easily give yours to. The man who sacrifices himself is
easy to serve sacrificially.
By
God’s grace, I have only intended my own love to serve as a high-water mark in
your soul. None except Christ’s love for you will rise above mine. This way,
when that man – whom I pray for everyday – comes along and exceeds your
father’s love, you will willingly give him your heart. And I (secretly desiring
to shoot him and bury his remains in an undisclosed location) will lovingly
pass on my treasure to that man who stormed the fortress of a father’s love
with a weapon as measly as a servant’s apron.
Your
Dad