Remembering my father (2)
The highway was his home, and it was mid-winter, but his Damascus Road experience – or rather, South Carolina highway experience – served my Dad with clarity: he was in the USA illegally, and needed to get back to Canada.
Not easy to face, since he did not own so much as a winter coat. But determined to do what was right, he started his northward journey. By thumb, naturally. (It was a lot easier to hitch rides in the 1950s than it is today, of course.) And witnessing to everyone who would pick him up.
He managed to catch a good long ride that would put him on the verge of real cold. Just as the driver was letting him out, he reached in to the back seat and passed my Dad a heavy winter overcoat.
As would become a remarkable pattern for the rest of his life, the Lord was already providing for every need.
For some reason, when my father returned to Canada, he felt he ought to go west. As in Manitoba. Logically, that’s not the direction you go in midwinter, especially if you’ve accustomed yourself to becoming a “snowbird.” But that is in fact where he crossed back into his native country, and it is there that he made his first connection with a community of believers.
Being Pentecostals, they naturally prayed over him to “receive the Holy Spirit.” He didn’t speak in tongues (at least not then), but he did burst out in prayer, and someone commented, “I never heard anyone pray like that!” Apparently, they were satisfied.
Dad had a real hangup with smoking. He had been puffing since age eight, and he just couldn’t seem to quit. He craved it constantly, and would even pick up butts from the sidewalk if they had much life left. And in the circles he now moved (holiness-variety Pentecostals), it really was a big deal. At last he prayed desperately, “Lord, if you don’t take this away from me, I can’t serve you!”
A bit dramatic, perhaps, but God was merciful. The next day, he was walking along the sidewalk, and saw a barely-touched cigarette, and felt no desire for it. He stepped over it, he said, “and I felt like a giant.”
Amusing, yes, but know this: God remembers that we are dust.