Des here!  Here to write on kind of a hard topic but in a light way.  Stick around to learn a bit of my ramblings on the topic of God being a Father as well as see an embarrassing timehop pic. 🙂  Here’s how I knew it was time to write this blog:

A few weeks ago I was lounging in bed on a Saturday morning, crust still all up in my eyes, and I got a notification for fb messenger.  

Like any good millennial, I popped my eyes open to check it out ASAP, and it was from my dear friend Ed Earnest.

Ed had gotten a lil timehop notification of a pic we had taken 7 years ago when I was in Junior College, and he was the co-director of the campus ministry I was involved in.

In this pic was baby Des (and baby Ed relative to today haha)!  We accidentally matched so we felt it was the proper thing to do to document it with a pic.  I mean our outfit decisions were not grand… but I’m still glad we captured the occurrence. 🙂

He sent the timehop pic with the message “7 years ago!  I sure am proud of you!  Hope you and Dan have a great weekend.”

We messaged back and forth a few times, and I promptly closed my eyes and attempted to go back to sleep.

But as I was lying there the words kept ringing in my ear, “I sure am proud of you!”

I kept questioning, “How could he still be proud of me?  So much has changed in 7 years!  If only he knew how my faith has wavered or the doubts I have, surely he wouldn’t have said that.”  I mulled over so many faith weaknesses and (downright) failures in my last 7 years and became overwhelmed.

I kept thinking, “If he only knew…”

I started thinking about how Ed was like a father figure to me… ya know how Fathers are supposed to be.  Present.  Loving.  Caring.  Unconditionally kind.  And I finally started thinking about God.  How does he fit into this whole doubtful scenario?

See, I’ve always had a difficult time with the whole idea of God the Father, our Father… because mine was pretty crappy.  So when Ed said he was still so proud of me, it sent me in a tizzy.  A lot has happened he doesn’t know about… how can he say with confidence that he’s proud?

Then it clicked.  God DOES know all things.  God HAS been there the past 7 years.  He has watched every failure and moment of weakness.  He’s seen all my sin.

Yet, Scripture tells me He is still proud.  He is still delighted to know me, even when I’m less than delighted to know Him.

So while I’m still wrestling through this concept of God as a Father, here’s some encouragement:

God is not like your earthly Father.  No matter how amazing or crappy your dad may be, he doesn’t hold a candle to God as our Father.  He’s ever-present.  Ever-watching.  Ever-loving.  So let’s learn alongside one another how God is good even when we are not.

Let’s learn alongside one another to not give God a bad rap as a Father, because our earthly Fathers weren’t perfect.  And let’s look forward to the day we’ll know Him fully with no marred representation.

Oh, and Ed.  Thanks for being a great representation of God the Father on earth. 🙂  I’ll never be able to thank you enough for the years you spent discipling a lil bibi college student who would grow up to realize just how much she still doesn’t have figured out.