Friday, Lynne and I did a Father's Day open phones show, so listeners could call in and honor their dads on the air. Love hearing their stories!! (And some of them made me cry!) Lynne asked me to share a story about my Dad, and this is the one I picked. I thought I'd share it here in honor of Father's Day yesterday.
(And yes, I'm about to sound VERY OLD here. But I'm not. No, really!)
Okay, so remember these??
Well, back in the day, I had one. And I was no different from the tweens/teens of today in that this thing was ALWAYS attached to me. (Well, I guess the one difference was that I didn't wear it out in public. But at home, it was always on. ALWAYS.) I was rockin' OUT to Sandi Patty and Steve Green.
So this one particular day, I had the Walkman clipped to my belt, and I was wildly displeased about something I'd been asked to do. (Imagine that. A wildly displeased teenage girl.) I'd probably been asked to set the table or some other TERRIBLY inconvenient chore. How in the world my parents ever survived those years with me is truly beyond me and mine.
I brisked, in a huff, through the house, still plugged in, and as I made my way from the hallway into the kitchen, not observing the speed limit in any way, the headphone cord caught on the oven door handle. You know - that little edge that sticks out? Because of my pace, the Walkman snapped off my belt, fell to the floor and shattered into an irreparable number of pieces.
I'd gotten exactly what I deserved. It was the classic let-this-be-a-lesson-to-you-young-lady moment. You-just-live-without-your-music-until-you-save-up-your-babysitting-money-and-buy-a-new-Walkman teachable event. I mean really. They couldn't have PLANNED a life lesson any better. And I knew it.
And the next day when I came home from school, there was a Wal-Mart bag on my bed. Inside? A new Walkman. My Dad had made a special trip to town (we lived in the country, so there was no such thing as "running to the store real quick" in our world) and purchased a new Walkman for me.
This is the man who didn't so much care for my choice in music. This is the man who probably didn't care to have his kid disconnect from life in favor of being plugged in to said music. And this is the man whose kid deserved to be without for a while.
And yet he made a special trip to buy a Walkman for a bratty tweenager who did a stupid thing.
Grace.
For a long, LONG time, I kept that broken Walkman on the shelf of my closet, to remind me to SLOW DOWN - and to remind me that sometimes, we DON'T get what we deserve.
And it's all grace.
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