Do you know what kind of Daddy you’ve got?

I remember some years ago when Arlin and I were little (I might’ve been 7 or 8 years old), my mama took us out for a bike ride through our neighborhood one evening. On the way back home, I decided that I wanted to race her and Arlin back home by taking a different route. In my mind, my way was easier to navigate (a series of curves vs. two sharp 90 degree maneuvers) and would lead me home sooner than theirs, assuring me a huge “W” (win) in this super competitive family that I was born into. Normally, she didn’t allow us to separate from her while we were out anywhere in public, but this time she made an exception.

Powered by adrenaline and pedaling as fast as I could, I was certain I’d find myself sitting at the gate smiling, waiting for them to pull up in the coming minute or so. And everything was going so well until, somehow, my shoestring wound tightly around the pedal, causing me to fall off my bike in the middle of the road. There I sat, stranded in the road with a bloody, scraped up knee and no way to let my mama know that I was in distress. For what seemed to be the longest five minutes of my life (save that time I was locked in the bathroom in Guadeloupe), I sat there crying and hurting, wondering if she would know where to look for me (I didn’t doubt that she would come; I knew what kind of mama I had). The longer I sat there, the more I thought about kids being kidnapped in public; fear overtook me and I began panicking while trying to get out of this bind I had gotten myself into. No, I couldn’t take the shoe off; the shoestring was wound up too tightly around the pedal...my foot was literally connected to it.

Maybe a minute or so after the fear and alarm set in, mama and Arlin came cruising around the corner laughing and joking about how they’d beat me home. But as she pulled in closer and noticed that her baby was bawling, her demeanor shifted. Immediately, she jumped off her bike and began consoling me, letting me know everything was okay. She wiped my face (a cover for my bruised ego), cleaned my knee as best she could, untangled my shoestring, and made sure to keep my pace as the three of us road home together because she recognized that I had gotten hurt while trying to go my own way.

As this memory played in my head, these questions/revelations swelled in my heart...how many times have we thought that we were big enough to do life on our own and go our own path instead of staying with God on the path He’d already set us on, only to end up falling, hurting ourselves, stranded, and in danger because our way came with unexpected and incalculable circumstances? And just like mama, how many times has our Parent (the Father) had to come back to help us get out of the things we’d gotten ourselves into simply because we thought our way was best? Even more, how many times have we expected Him to come for us when it was our pride that led us a different way than the one He set us on? Further, how many times has He lovingly wiped our tears, cleaned our wounds, and loved us up in spite of it all?

Question: Do you know what kind of Daddy you’ve got? 💜