A 35-Year-Old Story Posted Reluctantly

I wrote and posted reluctantly this story about my father and me. Mother felt it showed a side of Dad that most people never saw. I only saw it once. Yet she also felt it illustrated why he successfully navigated fathering two daughters.
The Father’s Day Story My Mother Wanted Told

Bernadean, Edmund, Jr., and Angie Gates in the

'70s.

        My mother, Bernyce Smith Gates, recalled a Father’s Day sermon preached by Jon Ogle in the 1980s that succinctly described her husband and my father, Edmund Gates, Jr. Bro. Jon entitled the message, Man of Steel, Man of Velvet. Several times over the years, Mother commented that phrase aptly characterized the man she knew all her life. They were married and made a life together for 67 years.
         From my earliest memory, I could be classified as a bibliophile, a book lover. Usually, my grandfather or father would bring me, not a toy, but a little Golden Book, when they went to town, if they were in a store to purchase one. My parents and my maternal grandparents, who lived with us, all read to me.
         With eagerness, I anticipated the monthly book club order leaflets distributed by my teachers from first grade through high school. Unable to resist reading the library book I always had in my possession, I tolerated mild nausea on the long school bus ride so I could read.
          Occasionally, as a family, we would go for a shopping trip to Ponca City. During my fifteenth or sixteenth year, in the big box store of that day, Gibson's, I located a book about which it seemed everyone was raving. I used some of my limited funds for the purchase of  that best-seller in the book section.
           I devoured the book and experienced disappointment. Being accustomed to reading classics by authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Margaret Mitchell, and many others, this 20th century sensation failed to match the quality of a well-written masterpiece. I cast it aside.
           My sister, around 10-11 years old, picked up the paperback book. She flipped it open and discovered words that my father had always characterized as “stuff I wouldn’t want in my hand, let alone in my mouth.”
           She proceeded to share the book, that not only had vulgar words but profanity, with my grandmother. They set the wheels in motion with a red pen marking the egregious phrases.
           Upon Dad’s arrival at home after “pounding nails” all day, my sister met him with my questionable purchase. Dad looked at a couple of pages, turned the book sideways in his hand, and promptly ripped it completely in half.
           Dad and I never discussed the incident. Mother and he never conversed about his destruction of the best-seller. I only remember saying to Mother, “I really didn’t think it was very well-written.”
           The parental exercise of discipline vividly revealed why Mother called Dad “a man of steel and a man of velvet.” The velvet moments had been taking place for one and a half decades of my life. He had shown me what he believed by living it out for the betterment of our family and for each of us as individual family members. Dad sacrificed daily for us to have a life of interacting and engaging with each other for the express purpose of enabling us to be the best we could be. His utmost concern for my well-being remained ensconced in my conscience.
           For this reason, when the “hammer fell” and I experienced Dad’s “steel” side, without resentment, I knew with certainty he wanted the best for me and desired that wholesome experiences impact my life. He assaulted the negative influence in my life - undesirable book - not me, as a person. Ironically, Dad, the verbal parent, had let his action speak, refusing to diminish his mighty act with words.
           This account revealed my teenage fallacy of investing in what was popular and trendy. Yet, as an adult, I am aware how easily I can be affected by the world around me. Just as I skimmed over the vulgarities and profanities to get to a storyline lauded by the readers of that era, the temptation to ignore sin in our world can trap us and deceive us into thinking we have no sin. John wrote in I John 1:8 - 

              If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
           Those of us who have a relationship with God, through trust in and commitment to Jesus, must realize our heavenly Father also has velvet and steel sides. He is a God of love but is a God of justice and holiness, too. James, the half-brother of Jesus, stated in James 4:4 – 

         Unfaithful people! Don’t you know that love for this evil world is hatred toward God?  Whoever wants to be a friend of this world is an enemy of God.          Finally, I am reminded by some of the last words by Jesus before His crucifixion as recorded in John 14:15 –
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”

Lord, help us to obey you, in all honesty, not in word only, but truly from our hearts. We acknowledge that You know what is best for us for the present and the future, too.