The story of my dad || Personal

It’s taken me a long time to write this. I would type a sentence, erase it, type another, erase it. It seemed nothing I wrote could do justice to how amazing of a person my dad was and how gaping of a hole he left in my heart. I’ve had so many people tell me Amanda, you’re handling this so beautifully. You are so strong. I can’t believe how well you have taken this tragedy. To all of you out there looking in on my handling of this horrific event and think that I’m strong, you’re so wrong. The ONLY thing keeping me together is Jesus. He is the strong one. I am so weak and in all of my weakness He is picking me up, dusting me off, and teaching my heart how to live without a dad. He is filling the role even more as my Father. He is telling me that He loves me, that He’s proud of me, that my baby is beautifully symmetrical (just as my dad did the first and only time he held Grayson), and most importantly, that He has my dad with Him, pain free, in Heaven right now. That is the strength that you’re seeing and I want you to know that it most definitely is not me.

I know so many of you have questions. I’ve thought and rethought and rethought my rethought about how much I should share. How much is too much? What amount will help lead unbelievers to know Christ and what amount will look like I’m just begging for pity? There are no rules to grief. There are no rules to tragedy. Everyone is different. Some people share everything, some people share nothing, some people break down in public while others only in private. Some people cling to God while other’s blame God. So with so much consideration, I want to share with you what happened, then I want to share my eulogy.

My dad suffered from depression. I’m not talking about sadness. I’m talking severe, deep in the pits, black hole kind of depression. The first time that I ever saw it was in 2004. Then it happened again in 2008, 2012 and one final time in 2017. But what you should also know is that in 2013, he got into a paraplane crash and had a traumatic brain injury that should have taken his life. So in this last depression, that started at the end of 2016 and went to March 17, 2017, my dad succumbed to this depression and committed suicide. It’s so very hard for me to type those words. There is such a stigma with suicide. But before you start judging him… can I tell you how strong my dad was. He was the strongest person I knew. He was the reason why my family made it out of poverty. He took literally NOTHING, not even a high school diploma, and made himself SO successful. He took care of EVERYONE… even strangers. He had the biggest heart, he was the hardest worker, and he was. so. strong. Depression is a disease just like cancer. It was a cancer that affected his brain. Historically, his brain was healthy enough to fight off this disease, but with the traumatic brain injury, he just wasn’t able to climb out of his black hole like he usually could. It was the morning of March 17th that he chose to pull a trigger. And only because I don’t want you picturing a barrel in his mouth, I will tell you it was to his chest. We don’t think it was planned any more than a week in advance, and maybe as little as a few hours. There was a letter he left to my stepmom apologizing over and over again for doing it and begging God for forgiveness. But that’s all the letter was. No explanation. No justification. Just apologies. Suicide is so hard because the mystery of why someone would do that to themselves is forever unsolved. You make guesses, you try to piece it all together as things start to unfold, but you never really know. I catch myself frequently wondering if I had text him that week, would it have changed his mind. If I had called him, would he have thought twice. If he had a little more time with Grayson in his arms, would that have brought enough joy to help him fight through the urge. But when I start thinking of all the if’s, I pray that God bind me to the truth. I pray that He pull me out of the infinite hole of if’s and handcuff me to the facts. If’s are dangerous and pointless and a complete waste of worry. But they’re also so luring and easy to sink into. Prayer is so vital when you are drowning in a bucket of if’s.

Now something else that I want to address. There are some teachings in certain denominations that people who commit suicide go straight to hell. I want to challenge this teaching. I had been taught this growing up. I experienced such misery in the first few hours of finding out about my dad’s death because of this teaching. It took me an entire 24 hours before I actually started digging into the Word myself to find this. I dug and dug and dug and you know what? I couldn’t find it anywhere. Because it’s not there. This is such false teaching. Please, if you’ve been taught this, I urge you to do some research yourself. Usually this teaching is coupled with Christians believing that you HAVE to repent in the last seconds before you die in order to get into Heaven. If this were true, that means that all people who die suddenly go to hell (unless they have not sinned at all between their last repentance and their sudden death… how unrealistic that is!), not just suicides. I whole-heartedly have peace and comfort from Jesus that my dad is in Heaven. Jesus came and gave his life to cover all of ours sins. Yes, we should repent because we believe, but it is not the action of repentance that gets us into heaven. Just as we should love our father and mother but it is not that love that gets us into heaven. Our salvation is not resting in our acts, it is resting in our belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and died for us on a cross so that we could be saved. So please do not feel sorry for my dad. He is and will always be in a better place than we could possibly dream of.

If you’ve read this far you’re a trooper. I can’t believe how long this has gotten. I’m not sure if this is more for you or me at this point. Dustin said that this is a way of healing for me… I’m starting to think he might be right.

At my dad’s funeral, there were 6 people who stood up to talk about him, me being one of them. When I was choosing what to write, it was similar to this post. I just couldn’t find the words. I prayed and prayed and I would attempt and fall short every time. The day before the funeral I sat down to type and the words just started flowing. It’s like my heart was finally letting the Holy Spirit guide my fingers. In case you weren’t able to stay for the service or attend at all, here is my eulogy:

“Saturday morning, the day after dad passed away, I turned Pandora on while I was feeding my 2 week old. The very first song that came on was Good Good Father. How appropriate right? Although I didn’t spend a ton of personal time just hanging out with my dad, he was indeed an earthly Good Good Father.

He taught me so much about what it means to be a hard worker. He taught me how to take risks. He taught me how to be generous. He taught me how to correct my steering in a hydroplaning situation by drifting my car around a curvy back road in the rain. He taught me how to worship. He taught me persistence. He taught me how to play volleyball. He taught me and everyone else I know, how to kneeboard. He taught me the value of a quarter when he paid me to pick up rocks out of the yard… or maybe I taught him the value of a quarter $500 later. But most importantly, he taught me how to pray passionately. I mean really TALK to God one on one. One of my favorite things about my dad was how he prayed. Just like his mom, my mammaw kate, he prayed in tongues and when he did you could see mountains move. This type of prayer is not as common and if we are being honest, it usually freaks people out. But dad didn’t care. He did not care for one second what anyone thought, all he cared about was talking to Jesus. So he prayed and he prayed in tongues. Out loud. For the world to hear. Completely unembarrassed and unashamed. Exactly how it’s suppose to be. And he moved mountains. There have been two times that my dad laid hands on me and prayed specifically in my life. One was when I was passing my first kidney stone. I was in excruciating pain and of course we had no idea what it was. Laurie went to get dressed to take me to the hospital and dad came over, laid his strong, worker hands on my kidneys and started praying in tongues. It was not INSTANT relief, but 5 minutes later, on our way to the hospital, the pain had subsided. We went anyway just to find out what it was, and the doctor took a scan that showed it was, in fact, a kidney stone. When I told him how long I was in pain he said that he had never seen one pass so quickly… how lucky I was. But he didn’t know it was because my dad prayed over me. The second time was just a couple weeks ago at church. I was fortunate enough to have him join Dustin and I for a service right before Grayson was born. We stood in the sanctuary worshipping Jesus together when he leaned over, put his hand on my pregnant belly and prayed over Grayson and I. I’ve never felt such a peace come over me. We clung to each other as we wept. It was, and will always be, one of the best moments I’ve ever had with my dad.

He was so smart. He knew so much about business. He knew the answer to ANY car question I ever asked him. I’m so going to miss the random phone calls we would have to talk about some stupid problem I was having with my car. He knew how to look at situations objectively. He knew how to give advice, even if you didn’t want to hear it. He knew how to tell a story… that you would take with a grain of salt because he also knew how to exaggerate. He knew how to make the women in his life keep their hair long. He knew how to make his son-n-law feel guilty about not painting the brick on his house dove gray. He knew how to make a girl feel good when he bragged to the whole county about her. He knew how to make awkward smiles for almost every picture. He knew how to spoil all of his kids and he knew how to live life to the absolute fullest.

From the beginning, my dad set out to change the direction of this family. He was determined to take what little he had and turn it into success. And he did. I am so proud to be his daughter and have his drive. That drive that is fueled by a love and passion to help others. Many people, including myself, saw this drive as an addiction to working, and believe me, there are many times I could have smacked him for putting work first. But really, what it all boiled down too, is he just wanted to be successful enough to help everyone around him. So all those times that I was mad at him for putting work first, I can look back on now and say that I am one proud daughter. Without that, he would have never been able to help the amount of people that he did in such a short life.

If there is one thing I know about my dad it’s that he loved to talk. He loved telling stories and gosh, was he so good at it. He would often bounce from car story to car story, but the one that never changed was his testimony. And when he had his plane crash, his testimony grew and he started retelling it to everyone. He would get so excited to share what God did and was continuing to do for him. When he wasn’t talking about God, he was loving on people like Christ. I never realized the extent of that love until now. And all of the messages, comments, texts, phone calls, and sweet conversations have shown me just how much and how well he has loved all of you and more. I’m truly blown away. How did I not know what all he did for so many? I want to thank each of you so much for sharing all of these moments and stories, please keep doing that. All of this is how I know that he is worshipping at the thrown of God right now. I truly believe and have peace over the fact that my dad is no longer suffering from this disease called depression and is celebrating in heaven. Although he ultimately lost the fight, he fought hard until the end. He fought hard through prayer and time with Jesus to find as much joy as he possibly could. When I start to feel sad, I think about him walking up to the gates of Heaven, Jesus stretching out his arms and dad running to him with joyful tears completely free of all his pain. That’s how I want to think of my dad… that’s how he would want all of us to think of him. I love you dad.”

Thank you for your time, your ears (or really eyes), and your support. This was not an easy post to write, but I’m sitting here proofreading it and I’m so glad that I did it. I’m so thankful for each of you.