Tomorrow is Father’s Day. As the day approaches, I think of my father, Charlie Elkins. He passed away 34 years ago. He was born in 1908 in a sod hut in the panhandle of Oklahoma near the town of Guymon. Outside the front door of their home was a horse hooked to a buggy waiting just in case my grandmother had difficulties during birth. My father was born during the last remnants of the Old West. He learned to roll Bull Durham cigarettes one-handed while riding in the saddle and working as a cowboy.

My father was not a churchman, even though he honored our pastor and Calvary Baptist Church in Los Gatos, California where our family worshipped. On Sunday mornings, mom and dad made sure our family made it to church. Dad didn’t feel comfortable going to Sunday School. It was a bit too intimate and vulnerable for him. He sent mom and his two boys off to class while dad waited in our family car in the church parking lot. While we were in Sunday School, dad would read Outdoor Life magazine and smoke a Camel cigarette or two. When Sunday School was over, dad joined his family to sit in the pews and listen to Pastor Bishop preach.

My father didn’t teach me much about what happens within the walls of a church on Sunday morning. What he did teach me were the lessons of life that happened during the week that expressed the heart of God more clearly than any Sunday School lesson I learned or any sermon I sat through while fidgeting waiting to escape my “church clothes” to get home to my BB gun and my mental reenactments of the Old West that took place in the orchards surrounding our home.

Not all my father taught me was considered right or proper by church standards. What he did teach me was about truth, honor, and how to love my neighbor as myself. No father is perfect. We all have our flaws. It’s the prayer of all fathers I know that our children would remember the goodness we tried to impart through our imperfect attempts at fatherhood. Tomorrow, celebrate those memories. It’s part of what makes the day special.