God Being Real, Part 2

To read Part 1 of this God-story, go HERE.

So there we were, camping out in the middle of practically nowhere with my Dad acting weird.  He is a quiet guy anyway, and hard to read if one doesn’t know him well.  There have been many times when my Dad made a joke and it was obvious the person he was talking to wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.  Very dry.  Very quiet, but mostly with a smile to reassure us all that he was with us in spirit, if not verbally. 

Now there were no smiles and he was doing that thing he does when worried about something.  He puts his hands in his back pockets, slowly paces and looks down.  That was my Dad for the entire first week.

It all came to a head on Friday night.

In honor of it being Friday, my Mom, who was not big on junk food, pulled out the marshmallows.  We all got into our jammies, settled into our lawn chairs in front of the fire and gorged.  There’s nothing like the burnt, gooey goodness of a marshmallow.  Dad had helped us find some good roasting sticks and made sharp points on them for us with his pocket knife, but when offered his own stick with a marshmallow on it, he turned it down and just stood there watching all of us.

After listening to us argue over the merits of mildly toasted versus flaming, burnt marshmallows for about 10 minutes, Dad finally broke his silence.  Even though he is the quiet type, he can be very emotional.  So when he finally spoke, we could all feel the relief he was feeling at finally letting go and letting us know what was on his mind. His voice quavered, and without beating around the bush, he said, “We’ve got to go.”

Whaaaa?  Go?  Because we didn’t really understand where Dad was coming from, all we could think about were logistics.  We were in our jammies.  We were practically ready for bed.  We wanted to continue eating marshmallows. We were 14 hours away from Buffalo.  It was almost 10 o’clock.  We had friends that lived close by, but did we want to go disturb them that late? 

My Mom said no.  “We can pack up and leave in the morning if you have a wild hair, but not tonight.”  

All of this conversation took about two minutes.  When we finished saying our pieces, my Dad just picked back up where he left off. 

“We’ve got to go.  20 years ago, I had a dream that I was reading a newspaper and read an article about a pastor who was from Buffalo, NY.  He and his family had been murdered while camping.  In the article, it said a group of boys had broken into the local pharmacy…stolen some drugs.  They went out, away from the town and came across the pastor and his family sleeping.  They butchered every family member with knives.  They were high on the drugs they had stolen from the pharmacy.  I saw my picture in the paper, but never connected the story of the pastor with myself because at the time I wasn’t a pastor and never imagined that I would ever be from New York.

I have had that dream again for the last four nights.  I have been praying, and asking God what to do….where to go…for Him to help us, but all I see is His back, and I hear Him say, ‘I’ve done everything I can do for you.’” 

At this, my Dad totally broke down.  To think that God was turning His back on him was more than he could bear.  But I think it was what he needed to hear, cause Dad was pushing us all to the car so we could get out of there and go find a hotel room for the night.  

My two brothers, best friend, Mom and I were wide-eyed and dumbfounded.  Without much ado, we quickly went into the pop-up camper to grab our suitcases.  But it felt as if it was taking us way too long to get out of there and we kept listening for cars coming our way.  Dad put out the fire, Mom hurriedly put away the food, and as we all finally got into the car and started to drive away, my pal and I were hugging each other and crying.

More later.