At the start of the year, I wrote about wanting to show more compassion to others in 2018. It is no coincidence, then, that on this birthday morning, God led me to a key verse for my new birth year.

In Luke 6, Jesus teaches, “Be merciful, just as your Heavenly Father is merciful.”

In honor of the Father who is merciful and who has given me both birth and rebirth plus a million second chances, I now pen this short poem-prayer as His gift on my birthday:

Kindly lead me in the paths of goodness

And show me more of Your ways

So that I may kindly be

Example after example, Day after day,

Though never perfect on my own,

A fingerprint-reflection of Your grace

In a world that needs more truth-filled mercy

Like the night

Needs daybreak.

Note: In order to focus on other projects, I am taking a break from blogging for the next several weeks. I plan to return with weekly posts in early August. Happy Summer!

I stand on the threshold of my thirty-ninth year, but my earliest memory still remains clear in my mind. Daddy scoops me up in his arms and takes a seat in his worn living room chair. He drapes me on my tummy across the soft cotton of his shirt, my little arms and legs relaxing over his then-smaller belly, my cheek and ear pressed just so over his heart. And I fade to sleep while that beat resounds through the deepest parts of me.

My dad is a saint because he is redeemed, but he is not perfect. Yet, through the course of my life, from birth until now, he has stood by me or held me through a hundred sorrows and smiled with me through a thousand joys.

Funny, how both of us are creative introverts. This is a strange combination, because we are always seeking and appreciating good words, and trying our best to aptly describe what we are thinking. And yet, in our quietness, there are things we have never said to each other, other things we rarely talk about, and still other things we can never repeat often enough.

This weekend, I find myself at a point of frustration. I know that the small gifts and card I’ve prepared are a pathetic shadow of how I proud I am to be his daughter and how blessed we are to have each other. And even in writing those words, I know they are not enough to fully express my feelings.

So, I will tell my dad how I feel about him in another language – the language of music.

When I think of all the ways Dad blessed me in my early childhood, this is what my heart says: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a20VuIecgM

And when I think of how dear his love and support have been to me through all the additional years of my life, this is how deep and sweet my echoing gratitude sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lS7iU8vXWc

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. This weekend and every day: thank you for cherishing me.