Some years ago, I read a headline that made me smile: “Detroit Wins—America’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Named No. 1 in America.” It had been decades since a parade—or the thought of one—made me happy.
I remember riding the bus with my mother and five sisters to see Detroit’s Thanksgiving Parade downtown. It was a novelty that lasted only a few years after arriving in our new city. The parades made me sad and I would find myself fighting back tears to keep my mother from knowing that I didn’t want to be there.
I was about seven years old when our family of eight became seven. We left our father in Arkansas and moved to Michigan. I didn’t see it coming. What was divorce? It was like crossing the street and being told to look out for automobiles, having never seen one or knowing the damage one could do if it hit you. It would be about 30 years before any of us would see or talk to our father again.
I don’t remember missing him every day, but the times that I did were sad and embarrassing. In our neighborhood and in our school, fathers in the home were the norm. If you didn’t see someone’s father, you asked where he was because you were supposed to have one living with you. My answer to that question always depended on who was asking… but I never killed him off. The military, work, or travel were my go-to answers.
At the parades, it seemed everywhere I looked I saw fathers holding their daughters’ hands or hoisting them up on their shoulders to give them the best view. Once they were on his shoulders, a father would hold their ankles or clasp his big hands on their backs to protect them from falling. They looked so happy. I didn’t want to see a parade unless I saw it like that. I stopped seeing the floats or caring about the candy thrown to the crowd. After a couple years, my mother stopped taking us. There would be other opportunities to go with family members and friends, but my standard reply was “I don’t like parades.” I should have added “…without a father.” It’s so obvious now, but it would be several decades with many experiences of God as my Father before I realized the connection. I think knowing I had a father but not seeing him throughout my childhood made it natural for me to identify with the dimension of God as Father as I grew to adulthood.
I don’t live far from downtown, so the bleachers and traffic cones along a stretch of Woodward the day before the parade served as my reminder every year for me to avoid the area until well after the parade was over. For me, it was always a good day to stay home in pajamas while my husband braved the crowds and the cold with our three kids. After attending for a couple years, they all opted to watch the parade on television in their pajamas, and even that faded while they were still very young. I wanted them to like the parade. I wanted them to have the experience with their father that I hadn’t had with mine.
I don’t remember what I was busy doing on one particular parade day, but I kept feeling this nudge to go to the window, so I did. I heard something approaching from down the block… it was a parade float, then another, and another. It seemed like many minutes before I exhaled from my gasp, or even blinked, at the sight of it all. I had attended my last parade around age 9 or 10. I yelled through the house, “the parade is here!” I was so giddy that before I knew it, I had run downstairs and out the front door. I was on the porch jumping up and down in November, in Detroit, in my pajamas, and I had the best view.
What just happened!? I was elated and curious all day. A 10-minute parade of floats shouldn’t warrant so much joy and laughter and excitement from someone my age. Once I calmed down, the answer washed over me. The parade was a catalyst I had been avoiding. My childhood self had burst on the scene before I could stop her, and I was at the parade again, but this time I was watching it WITH my Father.
Over the years, I had created a few scenarios and narratives about my own father. Maybe he was looking for us, but the aunts who raised my mother were keeping him from us (not out of the question, considering why Mom had left him). Maybe he had died before he could find us and we didn’t know it, but one day we would find out that he had left us a fortune. Maybe he didn’t love us, didn’t care, and was enjoying his freedom. For years I traveled back and forth along the emotional spectrum, from anger to admiration, while carrying resentment for him. He should have been able to find us. Why hadn’t he tried harder?
In church I was learning that God had already forgiven all of us—the world—of everything and anything. Forgiveness is ours for the asking. The believing in asking is for our sakes, not His. Years of struggling through a cycle of obeying the rules, failing miserably, and asking God to forgive me prepared me to forgive my father. I now know that forgiveness of self and others is vital to growth and development. It’s freeing.
It was difficult and a long time before I could accept that everybody was forgiven, because “…God so loved the world….” And that the world included my father. Inevitably, I recognized that my willingness to forgive was wrapped up in the stories I told myself and that those stories were one dimensional, created in my mind. I could not know the heart of the man.
Forgiveness is a process and a choice. We have the power to forgive, just like our Father. It takes a hard heart to withhold forgiveness from someone while asking for it from another.
All of my life I have experienced beautifully orchestrated surprises; seemingly random, sprinkled along the way. Like this parade, my parade, the surprises always come with joy and healing. And the memory of them always makes me smile.
Comments