Happy Birthday (belated), Dad!

This is a couple of days late, but I think Dad will understand.

I was reading a book recently that said every little girl wants to be the princess who is rescued. If she is lucky, she someday finds a man who will marry her, and be her knight in shining armor. If she is very, very lucky, she will grow up with a father who is also her hero. I guess that means I am a very, very, very lucky girl.

I suppose everyone finds, as they grow up, that their parents are only human, after all. I am not blind to the aspects of my father that are less than perfect. But I remember so many times in my life when he was my hero. Dad was not a pushover when it came to the difficult decisions in our lives, but I knew he would save me, help me, when something was too much.

When I cried all the way home from gymnastics class, Daddy was the one who said, "It's okay. You don't have to go back. It's just not that important." When I impulsively switched universities one summer, Dad was the first to walk in after I read that my financial aid wouldn't be enough. I thought my boyfriend would be going away to college without me after all. I know we didn't have much money, but Dad promised me that day that I would go, regardless. He would find a way. As it turns out, he never had to pay a cent, but Dad still rescued me that day.

When Dad stood at the front of the church as both my father and my pastor, he gave me away to my new hero, my husband, who I had followed across the state, and when Dad's voice broke as he pronounced us man and wife, Daddy was, as ever, my hero.