My father was a complicated man.
A surgeon, pilot, seminary grad,
he used the opportunities he had
to overcome the life where he began.
(Depression-era broken home; my gran
divorced his cheating, alcoholic dad).
Conversion, war, then Harvard, marriage glad,
five children—much he did in short a span.
But middle-age provoked a darker turn.
He left his wife though teaching Sunday school
(his father’s lessons he forgot to learn),
for years wrought pain, lascivious and cruel.
But grace abounded; guilt began to burn,
till Twilight Mercy Found a Grateful Fool.

—David Jackson Lohnes
2022

Notes:

My father passed in 2012. I was born late in his life (he was fifty-four), a product of his second marriage. It was only as I gained the awareness that comes with maturity that I began to understand my father’s story before I was born was different than I had known. My relationship with him was always tender, but he could be a hard man, and though there was much restoration, some wounds he caused have never healed. For the last two decades of his life before his mind left him he clung fiercely to Psalm 32:1-2, “How blessed is He whose transgression is forgiven . . .” (NASB).