Life, Dirt, Dust, Jesus Part 7 – Ken Williams

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Now I’m considering lessons our daughter Heather Anne, our 2nd born, has taught me for the past 44 years. I know her answer to, “What did my children think of me as their father?” She has also answered, “What can I learn from my children?”

I know that I gave most of my time and my energy to pastoring congregations. I was too busy, too selfish really, to give my children the attention they needed. They stopped taking it personally and could see that “the church came first for me.” At age four, Heather requested my presence by giving me a drawing of a rainbow, a smiling sun beaming in the blue sky, flowers, butterflies, and birds. She wrote a caption for her beautiful picture, “I miss my daddy when he is gone.” I convinced myself that the variety of color was “proof” she was o.k. but the caption…I was speechless. I didn’t want to add a vain promise to my planned absence. I deluded myself with, “I’m doing God’s Work. He will compensate for my neglect.” Now I ask, “what kind of god was I actually worshipping?”

In time, Heather Anne’s requests vaporized and drifted away like an extinguished candle. Although she shared her astute perspective following a house fire that nearly killed the family. We lived in Concord, NH and planned a trip, ironically on Father’s Day, to visit Quincy Market and the Boston Science Museum. Sunday, at 5:16 a.m. Heather came into our bedroom terrified and screamed that her bed and pillow were on fire. Nancy sat up, attempted to calm her, and suggested she had a bad dream. Still lying on my back, I could see grey smoke drifting from her room across our ceiling to our open window. I said, “No! She’s right!” I led the way to get David and Michael up. We scrambled downstairs to the kitchen where I called 911. I joined my family now gathered in our minivan. I could hear the crackling fire inside my office walls located beneath Heather’s room. I drove us to safety across the street. It was 5:20 a.m. Black smoke, no longer grey, was billowing through our open bedroom window. The wail of approaching fire trucks filled the air. Heather saved our family four minutes before we would have died of asphyxiation. The 2nd story of our home was destroyed by fire. The first floor was destroyed by the water needed for putting the fire out.

Now homeless, with only night clothing we were wearing, we thanked God that the whole family was safe, but what now? A beloved church member directed us to his friend who owned an apartment building. He gave us shelter. Our first night we sat in a circle in our barren apartment where 12-year-old Heather shared her dream where her bed and pillow were on fire. When she awakened, she saw the smoke seeping through her bedroom wall and woke us all up. That evening she concluded, “Well, I guess God isn’t done with us yet.”

A year later our denomination transferred me to a new assignment in Rochester, NY. Five years later, our 18-year-old daughter left our church. She had enough. Of our three children she is most like me. My neglect and her departure from our church stirred up troubling memories of what I was like at her age. By this time, and by God’s grace, He was teaching me how to love my children. I had learned that obedience is not enough for any relationship, let alone a father and daughter. Moses brought law but endless grace and truth flow through God, Jesus.

Heather’s prediction was coming true. God wasn’t done with us yet. I started asking Heather out for a father, daughter date. She agreed to join me when she was available. It was after she turned twenty, during lunch, she shared she was fearful. Like King David, I demanded to know who was threatening her, righteously intending to protect her. She could have said, like Nathan, “You’re the man!” But instead, she said, “No one is threatening me, but what is going to happen to me when you and mom are ‘taken to a place of safety’ during ‘the great tribulation?’” Grief, regret, shock pierced my softening heart, and I replied, “Oh sweetheart. Don’t you know that that was part of the (Four letter word warning!) bullshit we repented of? And besides, do you think we would deliberately leave you if you were in danger!?” I had stopped sharing “religious stuff” with her and she revealed she hadn’t heard that.

Our beautiful daughter taught me yet another lesson among the many before this, “You know, I always wondered why the church would take off when it was most needed. How could the church help people while hiding in fear?” I stuttered, “That is the most brilliant conclusion I have heard to deflate the noxious gas of religion.”

Ken and Nancy Williams served for some 25 years in pastoral ministry, and then almost another 20 years serving and mentoring other pastors.  With the heart of a pastor Ken continues to write and blog from upstate New York where he and Nancy live close to their grandchildren.