My Dad built the desk. Sometime in the '50's or '60's, I think. It took up half the wall in a basement bedroom in the house where I grew up. We never moved it, we just moved in around it. As one child grew up and left home, another would take their place in the bedroom with the desk. The room was never finished. It had cement walls around the outside, and the closet was “roughed in”. I think it was a reminder of just how unfinished our family was. You see, Dad left.
I moved into the bedroom when I was 14. My sister married, and it was my turn. After four teenagers and their friends, the desk was marked with scratches and pen marks, and even some gouges my brother left from an Exacto knife. The right cupboard had a shelf which held anything I didn't want to loose, while the left, with no shelf, was perfect to keep my collection of country music albums. Interestingly, the cupboards had no backs, which was perfect as far as cats were concerned. I would often find a cat curled up just behind my treasures, enjoying the privacy of his “cave”.
Dad left a lot of things unfinished. The basement was partially finished, with wallboard only on the family room side of the wall. The hallway studs were bare. The floor in the basement was cement, which got really cold in the Colorado winters. But most of all, my heart was left unfinished. I was left exposed, like the hallway studs. Empty and bare, with no protection or security. I wrote dozens of desperate, lonely, poems at that desk.
I floundered through my teen and young adult years, desperately seeking that “Daddy Love”. I moved to Cheyenne to escape a town that had outgrown my memories of the time when Dad was there. Then on to Laramie, with the idea that college would fix my life, and maybe that's where I would find love. But it wasn't. Just more rejection and loneliness. I moved home, back into the room with the desk. And I worked and took classes and got drunk almost every night and dated more jerks, and got more heartbroken. Until it was just too much. I quit. I decided to end it. So I took a bottle of pills. Obviously, that didn't work, because I'm here telling you this story.
Then, one night in depression, sleeplessness and agony, I cried out to the God I said I believed in, but wouldn't trust. “All I've ever wanted was someone to love me, to be COMMITTED to me. God, you know that if you give me a man to love me, someone who is committed to me for the rest of my life, I will be committed to him for the rest of my life!”
To my great surprise, He answered! “I died for you. Is that enough?”
Seven simple words that I had always said that I believed. But did I? I had never been willing to put my life, let alone my heart, in the hands of the One Who loves me most. There was only one answer.
And I melted into my Daddy's arms.
The desk became my haven. I sat at it for hours, devouring His Word like love letters to a distant heart. How I loved His Word! When I was at work, it was all I could think of, getting back to that desk and my study of His love for me! My love for Him grew as I began to understand all those Bible verses I learned in Sunday School. They had meaning, and HOPE!
Then, He called me onward, to a new place. I left the desk behind, in my mother's house, and ventured into the great unknown with my Jesus. I met Steve and we married, had four children, then were called to ranch ministry. From Washington to Kentucky to Wyoming. We visited my mom in Fort Collins over the years. Just about all of the kids slept in the room with the desk. It stayed there, never moving. Then a few years ago, Mom went Home. We were there to send her off. She was going to have to move out of the house due to her health, and she chose to go into Hospice instead of Assisted Living. I and my siblings and our spouses were cleaning out the house when Hospice called and said we needed to come quickly. She went home with her family surrounding her, remembering all that she had given us. Faith, hope, and love.
Dad had passed away several years before, alone. From pneumonia. Alcohol and tobacco and hard living had taken their toll. I don't know, to this day, if he ever surrendered to Jesus, although he knew the gospel and we had prayed for him through the years. Only God knew his heart.
The desk he had built came home to Wyoming with me. I sit here, now, writing from this desk. Tomorrow, it will go into the office of Open Hand Ranch, to be used for God's glory in the daily administrative tasks that go with running a ranch ministry. I am in awe of how God uses something so mundane as a desk. Built by my dad, who left me, but REDEEMED by my FATHER who loves me! It's just a desk, ink-stained and dented and flawed, but it will always remind me that what Satan had meant for evil, God will use for good.
All things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
Romans 8:28
“
I moved into the bedroom when I was 14. My sister married, and it was my turn. After four teenagers and their friends, the desk was marked with scratches and pen marks, and even some gouges my brother left from an Exacto knife. The right cupboard had a shelf which held anything I didn't want to loose, while the left, with no shelf, was perfect to keep my collection of country music albums. Interestingly, the cupboards had no backs, which was perfect as far as cats were concerned. I would often find a cat curled up just behind my treasures, enjoying the privacy of his “cave”.
Dad left a lot of things unfinished. The basement was partially finished, with wallboard only on the family room side of the wall. The hallway studs were bare. The floor in the basement was cement, which got really cold in the Colorado winters. But most of all, my heart was left unfinished. I was left exposed, like the hallway studs. Empty and bare, with no protection or security. I wrote dozens of desperate, lonely, poems at that desk.
I floundered through my teen and young adult years, desperately seeking that “Daddy Love”. I moved to Cheyenne to escape a town that had outgrown my memories of the time when Dad was there. Then on to Laramie, with the idea that college would fix my life, and maybe that's where I would find love. But it wasn't. Just more rejection and loneliness. I moved home, back into the room with the desk. And I worked and took classes and got drunk almost every night and dated more jerks, and got more heartbroken. Until it was just too much. I quit. I decided to end it. So I took a bottle of pills. Obviously, that didn't work, because I'm here telling you this story.
Then, one night in depression, sleeplessness and agony, I cried out to the God I said I believed in, but wouldn't trust. “All I've ever wanted was someone to love me, to be COMMITTED to me. God, you know that if you give me a man to love me, someone who is committed to me for the rest of my life, I will be committed to him for the rest of my life!”
To my great surprise, He answered! “I died for you. Is that enough?”
Seven simple words that I had always said that I believed. But did I? I had never been willing to put my life, let alone my heart, in the hands of the One Who loves me most. There was only one answer.
And I melted into my Daddy's arms.
The desk became my haven. I sat at it for hours, devouring His Word like love letters to a distant heart. How I loved His Word! When I was at work, it was all I could think of, getting back to that desk and my study of His love for me! My love for Him grew as I began to understand all those Bible verses I learned in Sunday School. They had meaning, and HOPE!
Then, He called me onward, to a new place. I left the desk behind, in my mother's house, and ventured into the great unknown with my Jesus. I met Steve and we married, had four children, then were called to ranch ministry. From Washington to Kentucky to Wyoming. We visited my mom in Fort Collins over the years. Just about all of the kids slept in the room with the desk. It stayed there, never moving. Then a few years ago, Mom went Home. We were there to send her off. She was going to have to move out of the house due to her health, and she chose to go into Hospice instead of Assisted Living. I and my siblings and our spouses were cleaning out the house when Hospice called and said we needed to come quickly. She went home with her family surrounding her, remembering all that she had given us. Faith, hope, and love.
Dad had passed away several years before, alone. From pneumonia. Alcohol and tobacco and hard living had taken their toll. I don't know, to this day, if he ever surrendered to Jesus, although he knew the gospel and we had prayed for him through the years. Only God knew his heart.
The desk he had built came home to Wyoming with me. I sit here, now, writing from this desk. Tomorrow, it will go into the office of Open Hand Ranch, to be used for God's glory in the daily administrative tasks that go with running a ranch ministry. I am in awe of how God uses something so mundane as a desk. Built by my dad, who left me, but REDEEMED by my FATHER who loves me! It's just a desk, ink-stained and dented and flawed, but it will always remind me that what Satan had meant for evil, God will use for good.
All things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
Romans 8:28
“
RSS Feed