Kneel with my father

This article was birthed from a prompt I ran into in a community on hive, with the title as kneel and it cast my mind back to my childhood times and some of the best memories with my late dad. This gave me a nostalgic feeling as I had already had the same experience in church on Sunday evening during our music concert.

This happened when one of the guest artistes came on stage and started reeling out hymn after hymn during his ministration. These were hymns that my dad would sing every morning across the house in a bid to wake us up for morning devotion before he left for work.

I know it would've been much more appropriate if it came on fathers' day, but I always try to avoid anything that would make me relive his memories and it would only make me miss him, and start experiencing bouts of sadness. Today though I've finally mustered the courage to go down that route.

Just two days before then my sister had posted a video of a guy playing "count your blessings" hymn with a flute on her Whatsapp status. When I replied her that those kind of videos reminds me of dad, she simply replied "it is well".

I understood what she meant as she was the closest to dad and was the worst hit by his death. She was there with mom when dad gave up, and that wasn't easy for her to handle.

My dad might not have been the most perfect dad, he might not have been able to give us the best things in life. But then even as children, we could see that he tried. He'd offer his best without giving excuses just to make sure that we're comfortable and don't feel less amongst our peers.

But the greatest lesson he taught us (and me personally), was that whenever you kneel before God with a broken heart and sincerity of purpose, you will never kneel before men.

He drove the habit of handing everything over to God before we start our day hard into us at a very young age. Back then we used to see it as punishment, and many times we'd murmur. But we'll still attend the devotion irrespective of our protestations and that was the most important thing.

He never argued with us on that but constantly reminded us that everything we have is a gift from God, and even if we did not know what to pray for, we should just kneel and thank him for life.

As a kid I did not really see the need, but looking back over time, it has helped me enormously, and if there's anyone who has seen God's hands in his life, it's me. I remember when I was away from home, and anytime I called him or he called me to ask how I'm doing, I'd simply just say "I'm fine" (I told everyone the same thing).

But it was as if he was the only one who knew that there was something wrong behind my 'I'm fine' facade. And truly I was depressed, but no one seemed to notice except him and he'd always say

"don't forget to always keel before God in prayers, and if it seems too much, you can come back home".

Those words stuck with me, has continued to stick till this day and will continue to guide me forever. They helped me enormously back then, and time and time again, I survived one of the worst moments of my life. I've reaped the fruits of that habit that he instilled in us at such a tender age, and I know that the real deal is yet to come.

Nowadays everytime I hear these hymns, they remind me of him. I miss him so much, his wit, his wisdom, admonitions and impeccable vocabulary. But above all, his love and passion for God, which he constantly imparted into us. If there's just one thing I would wish for right now, it would be to get a chance to spend time again with my dad.

Lead image from unsplash.com

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