By Randy LeBaron
Good morning! Grab your favorite cup, fill it up & let’s start this day right… TOGETHER!!!
Hey friends, thank you for all of the feedback since the first part of my article ran two weeks ago. I’m going to pick up right where I left off so feel free to go back and read that if you haven’t already done so. Click here to see “A father with his own hurts often wounded his own son.”
After being filled with anger, bitterness, and resentment toward my father because of how he had bullied and neglected me for most of my childhood I ignored my mother’s plea to say goodbye to him before getting on bus that would take me to Central Christian College in McPherson, KS. If you don’t know where that is just picture the middle of the middle of nowhere. The irony is that, in spite of how my trip had started, my choice to go to school halfway across the country sight unseen was not just to get away from those who had hurt me but also to seek God and find out what it really meant to be a Christian. I wasn’t alone either, some others from church also made the trek including my good friend Tom Rivers. Yes, that Tom Rivers.
We had both been part of the youth group and Sunday School at a local church back in Gerry, NY. During that time, I had certainly grown in my walk with God but, like many others I knew, I had also learned how to look like a Christian on Sunday morning while still living like the world the rest of the week. I knew that there had to be more and, ever since my praying grandmother had passed, I was determined to find out what it was. So, I left my comfort zone and came to Kansas to find God which, as I often joke, was easy because there wasn’t anything else there.
Through a series of events, I found what I was looking for. Late one night while alone in my dorm room I had a long talk with God where I admitted those things I felt guilty and ashamed about only to find a sense of freedom through His forgiveness. If you are familiar with the Parable of the Prodigal son from Luke Chapter 15, I was the son coming home to his father, expecting wrath but finding grace. And in that very moment I sensed God whispering to me, “What about your father?” What about my father I thought. He didn’t deserve my forgiveness. It wasn’t fair. And then it hit me that just a second after asking for mercy myself that I was acting like the bitter older brother in the parable who wasn’t willing to extend that same mercy to another. I broke down and through tears I prayed, “Jesus, help me to have a relationship with my father and help him to have a relationship with you.”
Tom Rivers and Randy LeBaron at a recent high school class reunion at Cassadaga Valley.
From that day on I prayed regularly for my father and also chose to forgive him daily—not because he asked for it or even deserved it but because I understood that to be forgiven I myself needed to be forgiving. (Quick caveat – I am not endorsing staying in a relationship where abuse is taking place. I actually helped my mother to move out of the house and away from my father at one point.) So, after that first year of college I transferred to Roberts Wesleyan which was closer to home, and I started developing a relationship with my dad again. It was never really father son per se but more of a friendship.
I think my father had at the very least realized I was making better choices than my brothers had and respected it. For years we hung out and played cards, I would talk about Jesus, and he would change the subject, I would give him Bibles and he would use them as doorstops.
Shortly after moving to Albion in 2004, I went back home to visit and found him there but without a vehicle. Since he lived out in the country on 88 acres of woods this seemed odd, so I asked what happened. Long story short I discovered that my father had been dealing with depression, as well as some early signs of dementia, and had his car had been impounded after a small fender bender. It was discovered that he had not renewed his registration or had insurance for over 3 years. I also found a box of unopened mail, mainly bills, and learned that his house was about to be foreclosed on. It seemed as if his world was collapsing around him.
I spent the next year paying his past due bills, working with the bank regarding his house, and bringing him to court since there were a lot of charges and fines involved with his driving uninsured. I would be asked by friends and family members why I was spending so much time, energy, and money to help him when he had not done those same things for me. My response was that it was my intention to treat him, not how he had treated me but, how I would have wanted him to treat me. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy, and I wrestled with it regularly, but ultimately, I wanted to be an example to my own kids of how to treat others.
Everything came to a head when at the final court hearing the judge told my father that he would drop all fines and charges if he would hand over his license and allow his son to move him to Albion so that he could care for him. I thought that, as the son in question, the judge could have given me a heads up, but I also figured it would never happen because it would mean my father letting go of the two things he prized most in this world—his home and his independence. And then he said yes.
I found an apartment for him at BoBak Estates not too far from us and I made a deal with him, knowing that this would be a stressful transition and that he had been a heavy smoker since he was 9 years old, that for the first year I would drive him down the The Rez to buy his cigarettes but that he had to come to my church. We both kept our ends of the deal and that next summer, after an outdoor service where I had preached a simple gospel message, I was driving my dad home when he said, “I heard every word that you said.”
This was the complete opposite of what I had heard throughout my childhood, when he would say he could never understand a thing I said, so I felt like it was prompt to continue the conversation. I spent the next 4 hours up in my father’s apartment listening to all the things that had happened to him that had kept him at an arm’s length from God. Things like being sexually abused by a nurse when he was hospitalized for the better part of 2 years as a child, and, while serving in the Army in Germany right after WWII, accidentally killing two of his close friends with a mortar blast after being forced to follow an order he didn’t agree with.
After he stopped speaking, I asked him if he wanted to be free from the weight of all he had been carrying around with him the past 70-plus years. He said yes and so we prayed together. He gave his life to Jesus and then he looked up and, probably for the first time since I was a toddler, told me he loved me. Thirteen years of prayers for me to have a relationship with my dad and for him to have a relationship with Jesus were answered that evening.
After that he became one of my biggest cheerleaders and a fantastic “Papa Fuzz” to my kids. I could have chosen bitterness all those years ago but, because I chose forgiveness instead, my relationship with my dad is not defined by our past but by our future. It has been over 12 years now since dad died but I know that I will have eternity to play catch up and I have no regrets.
See you in two weeks!
Pastor Randy
