Delightful

 

Yesterday wasn't one of the good days. I sat with my dad for about two hours and he only had energy for a handful of words. But do you know what three of them were?

"You. Are. Delightful."

I'm not kidding. You can ask my mom.

This from someone who really, really knows me. This is from the man who saved my first thick lensed pair of little eye glasses. Something that for so long symbolized less than...ugly...not pretty like the other girls to me. He saved them in a cigar box in his closet. He treasured them. Even at my worst, he saw beauty.

For a million other reasons I was struggling yesterday. Lack of sleep was probably the biggest one. But, in my head I was struggling against being pulled back into a belief that God is angry. That his defining attribute was not love but something else. That he was waiting for me to mess up, to not get it right. 

And yet. I heard my father's voice.

"You. Are. Delightful."

And I knew I'd heard that somewhere else before...

Psalm 18:19, "He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me because he delighted in me."

Psalm 147:11, "But the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear (respect, revere, worship) him, in those who hope in his steadfast love."

Zephaniah 3:17, "he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will quiet you by his love, he will exult over you with loud singing."

I have been trying to resurrect the habit of the Daily Examen questions at the end of the day. It's going...just ok. Doesn't it seem like the things that would help us the most when we are in a pit are the ones we're sometimes least likely to reach for? But last night I forced myself to pull out that journal and look at those questions. And the first one was this: Where have I seen God at work today? 

And I knew exactly where I'd seen God at work today. It was in my daddy's eyes, and in his shaky voice, and the message I am confident he delivered straight from the heart of our Father in a moment I needed it most.