Ulog No. 11: "One Thing my Father Taught Me"

Today, when I opened my Facebook, this image on the left was the first on my news feed. My friend, Emma, asked us about one thing our dads taught us. Unfortunately for Emma, she did not have a good relationship with her father. She wished she had, but even on his last breath, her dad did not want to have anything to do with her.

I, on the other hand, was blessed to have a loving father that anyone (like Emma) could ever ask for. Yes, @dynamicshine and I were blessed to have had a great father. We only had him for a short time. I was only 18 years old when he passed away; @dynamicshine was 16 then. I asked God why He allowed it to happen, but I guess there is a purpose for everything that happened.

Even in that short period of time that we had our father, he had impacted my life in so many ways. I could enumerate a lot of things that he taught me. One of the things that I could never forget is the Scripture Proverbs 22:6

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

He made me memorise that when I was 7 years old. Then he explained to me what that verse practically meant, especially when he talked about discipline, about faith and learning about Jesus Christ and how much God loved us unconditionally. He brought us up in a Christian environment. I can still remember how every night, he would gather us all, his five children, so we could have a mini-Bible study. One of us would have to read a chapter from the Bible followed by a discussion with regard to what we learnt from what we just read or heard. He would explain what it meant, too, so all of us could actually understand, especially we were still too young to comprehend most of what's written on the Bible.

My favourite part of our Bible study was singing a worship song before the Bible reading. My father would play the guitar and we would sing a song, or sometimes he would teach us a new song. I also loved it when he would choose a parable as the main topic of the study and not just some random verses or chapters.

He also taught me to forgive. He was the most forgiving person I had ever known. He never taught us to hate our mother just because she left us. There was a point in my life that I really thought that we were abandoned by our own mother because we didn't see her for months, maybe over a year. Then all of a sudden she visited to drop off the toys she bought for us and left 15 minutes later. I missed her, but a part of me thought we were actually better off without her. There was more stability if she would not show up at all. Unlike when she would occasionally show up and we would never know when would be the next time we'd see her.

My father would still tell us not to be angry at her. "Forgive her and pray for her." My prayer, "Please Lord, change her heart and make her come home," was never answered. I don't know if I actually resented God or I felt more relieved that my prayer was never granted. All I know is that whatever the reason my mother had for leaving us, I still loved her and forgave her, because it was what my father taught me - the act of forgiving a person even though it can be a difficult thing to do sometimes.

How about you? What's one thing that your father taught you? Please leave a reply on the comment section below. Thank you for reading!

Happy Fathers' Day to all the dads out there, and to all your fathers and grandfathers! God bless you all!