My Father’s Kiss

I saw the car just before it hit me. I seemed to float. Then darkness smashed my senses, and I came to in an ambulance.

Opening my eyes, I could make out only shreds of light through the blackness. My face was bandaged because the impact of the car had ejected me into the air and then dropped me facedown unto the gravel.

I didn’t know it then, but small particles of rock, dirt, and debris had embedded in my 16-year-old face. As I tried to touch my cheek someone tenderly pressed my arm down and whispered, “Stay still.”

A wailing siren trailed distantly somewhere, and I slipped into silent unconsciousness. My last thoughts were a desperate prayer – “Dear God, not my face please…..”

I don’t think it’s unusual for a teenage girl to find a good deal of her identity in her appearance. Everything about adolescence seems to revolve around the image presented on the outside.

The way others related to me was different from the way they related to less-attractive girls. That had been true since childhood, and like most cute children, J learned that lesson early. J go~ out of more than one jam by batting my eyes and tilting my head just right so the light caught my red hair and set it ablaze.

My father loved me. He had four sons, but only one daughter. I remember one week as we got out of the car at church, Mom had stayed home with the sick baby. My brothers ran ahead. I was gathering my small purse and Bible when Dad opened .the door. I looked up at him, convinced in my 7-year-old heart that he was more handsome than any daddy anywhere.

He extended his hand to me and with a twinkle in his eye said, “A hand, my lady?” Then he swept me into his arms and told me how pretty I was and that “no father has ever loved a little girl more than I love you.”

My father wasn’t given to outbursts of emotion. He worked from morning until night on the farm and also as a welder at a small shop in town. The Irish clan he came from showed strong devotion to their families, but it was a practical devotion, not an emotional kind. He loved us by putting fresh fruit and bread on our table.

I don’t know what it was about that spring morning in the church parking lot – I just don’t know. In the heart of a child, one who didn’t understand what a father’s love is really about, I thought it must have been the pretty dress – and most of all, my prettiness – that Father loved.

As I grew I was often asked to enter pageants, join the student council, become a part of the honour society, all because of my beautiful looks. My father seemed proud of me, and I thought he was proud of his pretty daughter. I was also learning to know about Christ and shaping a friendship with Him. A few weeks before the accident I had made a personal commitment to Christ.

In the hours immediately after my accident, I drifted in and out of consciousness. Whenever my mind cleared even slightly, I wondered about my face. I was bleeding internally and had a severe concussion, but I wondered most about my face. In the midst of shots and doctors probing me, it never occurred to me that my concern with appearance was disproportionate and unhealthy. I knew only that I had been able to depend on my looks. Pretty meant a wide circle of friends for me.

I couldn’t open my eyes more than a slit when I asked a nurse for a mirror. She didn’t look at my face as she took my blood pressure. Instead, she gazed at my arm and said, “You just concern yourself with getting well, young lady.”

Her refusal to give me a mirror only fuelled my determination. It must be worse than I imagined, I reasoned.

My face felt tight and itchy. It burned sometimes~ and just ached other times. I didn’t touch it, because my doctor told me that might cause infection.

My parents kept watch at my bedside continually. They also battled me to keep mirrors away. As my body healed internally and my strength returned, I became increasingly difficult.

At one point, for the fourth time in less than an hour, I had asked, pleaded, and demanded that Dad give me a mirror. Five days had passed since the accident.

Angry and beaten down, he snapped, “Don’t ask me again! I said no, and that’s it!”

I wish I could offer an excuse for what I said. 1 propped myself on my elbows, and through lips that could barely move I hissed, “You don’t love me. Now that I’m not pretty anymore, you just don’t love me!”

Dad looked like someone had knocked the life out of him. H~ sat in a chair and put his head in his hands. His shoulders heaved. My mother walked over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. I collapsed against the pillows and the room was quiet, filled with the soft sound of my father trying to control his tears.

I didn’t ask my parents for a mirror again. Instead I waited until someone was straightening my room the next morning. I figured a worker from the housekeeping division wouldn’t know about the “no mirror” order.

My curtain was drawn as if 1 were taking a sponge bath. From behind it 1 asked for a mirror, explaining, “I must have mislaid it.” After a little searching, the woman found one and handed it to me around the curtain.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. Instead of the familiar glowing complexion and pretty features, I stared at an image resembling a giant scraped knee, oozing and bright pink. My eyes and lips were crusted and swollen. Hardly a patch of skin, ear to ear, had escaped trauma.

A little while later, my father arrived with magazines and homework tucked under his arm.

He found me staring into the mirror. Over and over my mind cried, My life is over,. everyone will be repulsed by me…

He pried my fingers from the mirror, saying with each finger he loosened, “It isn’t important… this doesn’t change anything that matters… no one will love you less…”

He tossed the mirror onto a chair, and then sat on the edge of my bed, taking me in his arms. He held me a long time before making me lie down.

“I know what you think,” he said,

“You couldn’t,” I mumbled, turning and staring out the window.

“You’re wrong, though,” he continued, ignoring my self-pity. “This will not change anything.” Re put his hand on my arm, running it over an IV needle. “The people who love you have seen you at your worst, you know.”

“Right. Seen me with rollers or with cold cream – not with my face ripped off”

“Let’s talk about me, then. I love you. Nothing will ever change that, because it’s you 1 love, not your outside. I’ve changed your diapers and watched your skin change to a cluster of blisters with chicken pox. I’ve wiped up your bloody noses and held your head while you threw up in the toilet. I’ve loved you when you weren’t pretty.” He hesitated then continued. “Yesterday you were ugly – not because of your skin, but because you behaved ugly. But I’m here today, and I’ll be here tomorrow. Fathers don’t stop loving their children no matter what lire takes – you will be blessed if life only takes your face.”

I turned to my father, feeling that these were all words, the right words, spoken out of duty – polite lies. I looked at him through swollen eyes and spoke through bloody lips. “Look at me then, Daddy. Look at me and tell me you love me!” My tone of voice defied and accused him.

I will never forget what happened next. As he looked into my battered face, his eyes filled with tears. Slowly, Father leaned towards me, and with his eyes open he gently kissed my scabbed, oozing lips.

It was the kiss that tucked me in every night of my young life, the kiss that warmed each morning. A kiss echoing eternity. A kiss that works on twisted lips. Even tips that curse more often than bless:

My only scar, years later, is one tiny indentation just above my eyebrow. But my father’s kiss and what it taught me about love remain with me.

Although we may not be physically scarred, we are all scarred by sin. Some have deeper wounds and scars, but this does not change the way our Heavenly Father feels towards us. He still loves us with an everlasting love – a love that is so strong that He sent His only Son to pay the penalty for our sin. No matter how terrible a life we have led in the past or how much we have disappointed our Heavenly Father, He is still there for us and will put His arms around our scarred and broken body, and kiss our bruised .lips. He will heal out backslidings and will be with us every step of our journey here on earth. How can we refuse such love?