The Best Dad Ever

June 1965

Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill. It’s been a while since I’ve had time to do any extra reporting. Oh, I’ve still been helping Dad with stories in the paper. Nothing too exciting. This is Hollyhill, you know. About the most exciting story for months was old Mrs. Jennings turning 100. One hundred years. That means she was born right at the end of the Civil War. Think about that. The Civil War was way back forever ago. Dad says to think about how much has changed in her life from horse and buggy days till now when we send people up in rockets.

Dad  interviewed her and I took pictures. She’s at the old folks home now. Says she feels like she’s been put on a shelf to wait until the Lord is ready for her to come on home. She likes Dad. He goes to see her every little bit and has interviewed her on her birthday for ten years straight. She laughed and told him that she bet he didn’t expect to have to keep coming back year after year. He said he hoped he would be around to come interview her for the next ten years because he was pretty sure she’d still be around.

I hope Dad is around a lot longer than ten more years. He is the best dad ever. The perfect dad for me. He’s always ready to tell me the best thing to do. I don’t always listen the way I should and sometimes have to pay the price for not knowing Dad knows more than I do. Dad does know best at least for me. I remember once when things were going really wrong for me that I got all worried about Dad and me and well, I was mixed up. But here’s a scene from that book somebody wrote about us here in Hollyhill that will let you see I have the best dad in the world.

Dad: “I changed your diapers. I walked the floor with you when you cried. I wrapped my heart around you and made you mine. You are the daughter of my heart. No one can ever take you out of my heart.” 

I had always believed him. There was no reason not to believe him now. “Wes told me that being your daughter that way was better than just being begatted.”

“Begatted?” Dad smiled.

“That’s not a word, is it? I told Wes it wasn’t.”

“I think it might be begotten.”

“That doesn’t sound much better. I was begatted. I was begotten,” I said.

“It sounds okay in John 3:16.” (Dad knows how to get Bible verses in most every conversation, but then he is a preacher.)

“Well, yeah, it fits there, doesn’t it? ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.’ ‘Only begatted son’ just wouldn’t work, would it?”

“You’re one of a kind, Jocie. And however you were begotten, you are truly my daughter and I am truly your father. Are we straight on that?”

I smiled at Dad and let him enfold me in his love. “Thank you for being my father. I guess the Lord was answering my prayers before I could even pray them, because if I’d ever said a daddy prayer, you would have been the best answer I  could have ever gotten.”

So here on Father’s Day I want to let everybody know that I have the very best Dad in the whole world. If you read those Heart of Hollyhill books, you’ll find out just how great he is. Now I’m going to give that best Dad in the world a hug. Hope you can hug your dad or if you’re like old Mrs. Jennings or even not that old but your dad has gone on up to heaven, I hope you know how much your Dad loved you and that you let him know how much you loved him.

Happy Father’s Day!