Pseudo Father

So, I was sitting with the church this morning, and was gently reminded that there are others in my life that have acted as "father" in my life. One in particular came to mind, Randy Millwood. Now mind you, Adele, his lovely wife, has been an equal partner in all this, but today is Father's day, so it is Randy who comes most to mind. In fact, I got online tonight after Mercy was asleep to check my mail and blog about him and sure enough, he was online also. We spent nearly an hour chatting about so many things; good books, love of reading, love of learning, how to avoid bitterness from all that has incurred this past year. We encouraged one another and shared words from the Lord on eachother's behalf. I didn't get to really speak to my dad today. He was off enjoying a magnificent and much deserved Father's Day with some of his favored classmates from IWS. This filled in the gap. More than that, I was thrilled at the way God had orchestrated the interaction today, perfectly, as always.

Randy Millwood has been a spiritual dad to my husband and I. Jason met him first, but only after my pushing. I persuaded him to go to a meeting on house churches held at the home of a Dr. Millwood. I couldn't go for some reason. He came home mildly impressed, but I still didn't know much. Then Jason had spiritual formation with him and they held it at their house. He was hooked. I still didn't know what all the hype was about, but if my husband is impressed it must be good. I needed the second half of the spiritual formation class and so joined in on the second semester. We met each week at Randy and Adele's house. We always shared goodies. We talked frankly, honestly about our struggles spiritually that week. Sometimes we shared wisdom, sometimes we just gleened wisdom from God through Randy. Regardless, and most important, I always felt like I'd been with God.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think that Randy Millwood was God, but I can confidently say that he sought and often succeeded to be like Christ. Thus being with him and in his home, one came away refreshed, renewed, comforted...

He is further away now, but our connection through our church, through prayers, through our service of God, we are all still often together in a different sense. We have learned so much from him. We have learned more about how to build relationships (in general and spiritually specific). We have learned new verbage, more biblically correct verbage to express what it is that we do here as church, as Christ followers. We learned more about this thing we call church. What it should be, What it could be, What God intended. For all this and more we are thankful to our Father God for placing him in our path to grow us, to love us, and to be our fellow journeyman.

Even what I've said doesn't seem like enough.