A couple of stories about my Dad

When I was about 10 my life revolved around telling my dad that he needed to stop smoking. Ok, maybe it didn’t “revolve” around that, but it had a seriously large roll in it. Many times I would act like I was going to take his cigarettes and throw them in the garbage. He would let me know in words and actions that it wouldn’t end well for me if I did that. Well, the day of course arrived like a perfectly wrapped present. I was ready to test his will. The cigarettes were sitting out on the counter in the basement and he was upstairs. The bathroom was empty. It couldn’t have been a more professional wrapping job.

I grabbed the pack and went into the bathroom. Think!! Umm, what should I do with them. Oh I know, I will flush them down the toilet. One, Two, Three, Fou…NO, I will stop with three and see what happens. I watched as the toilet bowl filled with water and then calmly emptied. The cigarettes were like little mini warships shooting laughter right at my heart. The floated up with the water, and then down with the water, and then back to level with the water. They weren’t going down. Oh no! I thought. This was even worse than before. Now I have to deal with the cigarettes in the toilet and the pack in my hand. Think, THINK!!! The trash….NO, he will find them there. The sink….No, what if they clog it up. The shower….Hey, those aren’t normal sized drainholes in the shower….wait, yeah, they are Cigarette Sized Drainholes!!! VICTORY!! I turned on the shower and started pushing the cigarettes down the perfectly sized holes until they were all gone.

All was well, but wait. What about the three in the toilet, and what if I go upstairs and they heard the shower running. I immediately flushed the toilet again, and to my surprise the cigarettes went down this time like a bunch of defeated Nazi ships. Ok, good, now about the shower. I took my clothes off and hoped inside, then hoped right back out. I grabbed a towel and wiped myself off then put my clothes back on. When I got done I looked around and realized that I still had a huge problem. The packaging. I heard my dad’s voice and I thought my heart would climb out of my mouth and jump in the cold shower to cool it down and slow it from beating. “Time for Dinner boy!” He said. Well, that’s better than, “What the heck are you doing?” “Coming,” I managed to squeak out. I had no choice, I had to hide the packaging somewhere in the basement. I ran out of the bathroom and went to a deep cabinet and moved some glass vases and set the packaging down behind the vases. Then I looked at the stairs. Ok, breathe deeply and walk normally up the stairs.

When I got to the top I experienced rosacea in all it’s glory. Red is the color of lobsters, but I said nothing. Everything inside me hoped that dad had decided then and there to quit smoking cold turkey. The evening went on and dad began the long expected search for his cigarettes. He searched high and low looking for them but couldn’t find them. I remember that at one point he stopped and looked at me. I could feel my ears almost begin to whistle. Then Dad said, “Do you know where my cigarettes are?” I was literally in that moment in much of what I personally believe the fires of hell will be like. The pain and burning inside of me over lying to my dad were overwhelming, and yet my fear of him in that moment was greater, “I don’t know where they are dad. I haven’t seen them anywhere.” Quick lesson in lying…it is harder as a kid, and it gets easier as you grow, and that is a bad thing.

I have to end the story here, because the rest of the story isn’t for you to know. I am not concerned about your desire to hear the end, but rather your ability to understand my intensity about my dad not smoking.

I was hunting with my dad one weekend, and we decided that before we were going to go out, that we needed to go up the mountain and do some repairs to the stands. My dad borrowed a truck and we went up the mountain in Emmitsburg MD near where I grew up. The thorns, tree branches, and sticks on the ground all scratched up the sides of the truck to where my dad was in great stress that they would show to the owner. We purchased some high end car wash and wax and then began to scrub the truck and bathe it in the carnauba hoping that it would reverse our poor decision. Dad lit up a cigarette. Immediately I starting listing problems from smoking and the poor decision that it was to pump your lungs full of this stuff. I am sure that I told him how I wanted him to be around for a long time which means that he would need to change so that he could be. I remember there was a bit of a pause. I don’t remember the time, but of course now it feels like a good while before he spoke. “Can’t you accept me for who I am without trying to change me? Can you love me, right now, for me?”

A foolish person would immediate respond with something to defend their position and continue the division. Maybe they would say, “of course I accept you” or “I do love you now, that is why I am telling you this.” For maybe one of a few times in my life I wasn’t a foolish person. I let the words sink in. I thought about them and mulled over them. I breathed them in and out. I cherished them because my dad was trying to speak to me from his heart. Can you love me for me, right now, if nothing changed, if I smoked forever, if decided to destroy my body, if I get lung cancer and you want to say I told you so, if I go straight to hell because of this decision….could you love me? That question hit me hard and I had to wrestle with all the implications of it. Even now I continually am faced with new epiphanies from the depth of the question that I honestly believe that my dad was just asking because that is what he felt like he should say.

Shame. I put it behind me. You know what? I Was Wrong. My problem was that I wasn’t accepting my dad for who he was, a “smoker.” I decided that I wasn’t going to have that problem anymore. I was going to love him for who he was. That meant letting him live his life. If he wanted me to step in between him and cigarettes than by all means I would, but I was done pestering, fighting, nagging, quoting, and sneaking downstairs to put his cigarettes down the drain. I was done being divisive. I let love flood in where I had created a gulf of separation. I fully embraced him with his cigarettes and every other thing about him that may be different from me. I Love My Dad. It all began with Accepting him.

In retrospect I now realize that my inability to accept him for all of who he was had me go as far as lying which to me seems like a greater sin (one of the 10 commandments). I think what Jesus wanted me to learn from this experience is that I can stand up to the world and say I DO NOT SMOKE! But I can hang around and love people that do. Smoking isn’t for me, because God has revealed to ME that it is wrong and unhealthy. If that isn’t the case for you, I’m not trying to convince you of that, or pester you with that, or even hold it over your head. I love you for who you are with all of what you carry with you, and in spite of our differences. I accept you and I’ll let Jesus do the changing on you because ultimately isn’t it his job, not mine.