A Father’s Love

I slid my feet into a pair of flats, preparing to leave the house. I checked my pockets for my cellphone and then leaned down to kiss my six-year-old snuggled and cozy in my bed under our fluffy blanket. Instead of saying goodbye, he looked up at me and asked, “Mommy, does Daddy love me more or does God?”

I was caught off guard and paused, my body mid lean and my face next to his. My brain flashed through memories of how much his father loves him. I thought of two nights earlier when this little boy had broken his collar bone. How John heard the cry and immediately knew based on the tone and timbre that something was wrong, and was the first one to reach our son. I thought of my husband’s intensity, the immediate appearance of a protective papa bear that he tempered with compassion and gentleness as he helped our son calm down and get ready to go to the hospital.

Then my mind jumped back to a lifetime ago when this little boy had chubby cheeks and was our only child. I remembered how he toddled after his daddy, following him around the house, and how my husband would pick up that baby with his chunky little belly and hold him and talk to him while flipping pancakes or eating dinner. I remembered him as an infant, my husband wearing our son in the baby carrier as he got ready for working, brushing his teeth with a tiny companion close to his chest.

My brain could have gone on forever with memories of his father’s love. Of my husband taking the morning off to watch our oldest ride the bus to the first day of Kindergarten, of John’s face beaming when we saw our son baptized, or the pride he showed at my son’s preschool Christmas performance. This little boy is loved by his daddy, more than he can comprehend until he has kids of his own.

But my son didn’t ask how much his daddy loves him, he asked who loves him more, and that’s not a competition, his daddy’s love is just a pale reflection of God’s love. So I put my hand on his cheek, and I looked in his eyes, deep brown, a mirror image of his dad’s, and answered, “Your daddy loves you very very much, but baby, God loves you so much more. He always will.”

“Okay,” he answered, with the simplicity of a child.

I remember being a child grappling with the idea that someone loved me more than my parents. It was confusing that I was supposed to love that intangible person more than I loved my very tangible parents. But just like my memories give me proof of my husband’s love for our son, how I can pick out specific instances in our lives, and see that love in action, I have the same experience with God. I can look over my life and see the way that God has fiercely loved me, starting at the cross and giving his son for my sins, and moving all the way forward to today. Today when I experience how God is providing for and protecting our family during a time of uncertainty. Remember how God has held me close and carried me as I cried through my depression. See how God has taken things away so that I could learn they weren’t best for me. Recognize how God pursued me during years when he was an afterthought in my life. I know that I have been a recipient of love via grace and mercy, and I’m grateful that God loves me too much to leave me to my own devices, but has changed my heart inch by inch to reflect his.

This love is what I pray my son grows up to know. I hope that he’s not as hardheaded as his mommy in learning his lessons. My desire is that he and I both have the eyes to see and the heart to know how great God’s love for us is. It’s a love that changes everything.

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3: 17b-19