FATHER

Today I write about the most challenging subject for me: Fathers. Since high school, my prayer life has consisted of praying the “Lord’s Prayer.” I tend to meditate through the passage. Every day I get hung up on the second word: “Our Father…” Trying to connect with God using the word “Father” is a struggle. Maybe you don’t have a problem with it if you have a good or decent father. My birth father deserted our family growing up. So, I don’t fully get “father.” When you don’t have one, you don’t understand what one was meant to be. My father left. Does God leave? My theology says no, but following my stroke, I wondered, “God, where are you?”

I’m named after my birth father. This complicated things even more for me. I’m not a Jr. I have a “II” at the end of my name. Growing up, I knew what “II” meant: Superman II was like the first Superman, just a continuation of it. Would I be destined to continue my father’s legacy? Would I be Israel Cruz, part II? I hoped not. Around a year before my stroke, out of nowhere, two different people approached me with this message: “Don’t believe the bad things people are saying about your father. He was a good man.” The truth is, my impression of my father was made by my own experiences with him. He left us. I lived it. I’ve learned to accept that my father had struggles, as we all do. It just so happens that this man who had struggles fathered me. That wouldn’t define me. I wouldn’t allow it. Grandpa was my father figure. That defined me. I was my Grandpa’s grandson. My picture of God in my mind’s eye is a version of Grandpa, a great man.

Following my stroke, I remember long days in the rehab hospital, desperately wishing I could go home. One long Saturday, I sat in my wheelchair in my hospital room. I vividly remember the room a lot differently than it actually was. The room seems darker in my memory than it ever was. The room is taller in my memory than it really was. And the room was empty in my memory, even though it wasn’t. I sat in the middle of this dark, vast, empty room, alone in my wheelchair, when Ken, my stepfather, walked in, hugged me, and kissed me on the side of my head. This has become my new picture of Father God, the One who walks into dark lonely places to comfort you when your world has fallen apart.