There is no fiction here, this is a very true story.
My Dad and My Father
Even though my dad has been dead since 1949, he is still one of my favorite subjects. I never met him except through tales and stories. I was just a baby in Moms arms when he went away. I was raised and watched over by Father and his Name is God.
It’s just some kind of strange urge that makes me want to write about dad. When I write about him, it makes me get to know him and when I get to know him and know that he is in heaven waiting for me, that just triples my love for Father.
I like to think about God, my Father as eternal, never ending, who raised me, gave me food and shelter and watched over me from morning to night. We depended on him for everything. Mom prayed and Father listened. I often heard her pray, “Father in the name of Jesus, I ask you to watch over me and my children", and he did and he did it so well.
As a very small child, I thought, “gee, this Father of mine must have been something great”! He’s gone away to a new home upon the hill, and I will never see him again, but yet I hear all the church people praying to him.
My dad was already dead and gone before my brain got large enough to comprehend what death was all about. To me, death was just a hole in the ground where we left dad one winter afternoon, never to ever see him again, Mom cried endlessly and I was the baby on her knee who kissed her tears away and rested my head on her breast and listened for the sobs to subside.
The sunny days turned into weeks, the weeks turned into months the months turned into years and then all five of us were grown, raised totally by Father. My eternal Father loved us more than words can say, he watched over us while Mom prayed and there has never or ever will be a better combination.
In 1952 the hills of eastern Kentucky were deep and thick, gangsters with guns roamed around stealing this and stealing that. The only protection we had from all the evil, was a huge big nail on the doors that turned left and right in either direction.
One summer night two gangsters broke into our house and held us all at gunpoint. They set all the kitchen chairs in a row and sat us all down in them, I heard someone’s teeth chattering from fear and looked around and they were mine. We were all sitting in a row waiting for the guns to go off, because they said they were going to kill every one of us. They took all the blankets off the beds and put them over the windows so no one would see them when they shot us.
All night long, they kept us at gun point, but there was someone there who just kept on praying to her Father. Come daybreak, one gangster looked at mom and said, “I don’t see any food in this house”! “Just what are you going to feed all these children for breakfast”? While Mom was trying to answer, he pulled a crinkled 10 dollar bill out of his pocket and said, “Here this is for their breakfast". Just as quickly as they broke into our house they left with the morning light.
My God is always on duty and never sleeps or takes a nap. He is there through the good times and the bad. He will never leave or forsake us and go with us until the end. I praise him so very much for taking care of us and letting us grow up to be the people we are to this very day.
A true story by Mary Alice Bowles
12/27/05
I wrote a poem on this story and entered it in the challenge week:
http://faithwriters.com/wc-article-level3-previous.php?id=2425
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