Read
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
1 John 3:18 (NLT)
Reflect
It’s been a little more than a year since one of the worst days in recent memory – the day that my stepfather had a massive heart attack and died suddenly.
The day was December 12, 2022, and it started normally enough. I was standing in my second-period class when I got a call from my sister, Cheryl, who told me that Dad was in critical condition. He had been at his home near Cumming, Ga., when he suffered the heart attack, and he was now fighting for his life. During the next hour or so, I started scouting flights from my home in Jacksonville, Fla., to Atlanta, expecting to get there the next day.
But then the second call came. It was Cheryl again, and she was frantic. The situation was much worse than we initially thought. The heart attack had not only been unexpected but also definitive. After 84 years, the Lord had called Dad home.
In the days that followed I was in somewhat of a haze. The only thing I wrote was his obituary, and that was surprisingly easy. The words flowed out of the memories that came from 52 years of knowing him. But while I was writing, I was also in a funk that I had trouble understanding. But it eventually hit me. You see, I’ve been blessed to have two Dads. My birth father is a really good man, and I’ve learned a lot from him over the years.
But between ages 7 and 14, and then again in my senior year, I was raised by Charles Fulton. So much of what he tried to teach me didn’t take back then. We lived on a nine-acre farm, but I didn’t like the farm life. I really just wanted to read books, play baseball and watch television. And CBF (we’ll stick with that to avoid the confusion between Dad and Dad) wasn’t a big fan of the latter two. So I spent a lot of time outside, picking up pine cones, mucking horse stalls, picking weeds and mowing the lawn. It was good, honest work, but that was lost on me in my immaturity.
It wasn’t until years later that his lessons really began to sink in. After college, I went to work at a newspaper for a year as a copy editor, and I hated working on the copy desk. I quit that job and moved to Atlanta and ended up working for my stepdad for most of the next 20 years. For eight years I worked with him at ACTS 29 Ministries, which was at that time a significant ministry to the Episcopal Church. In 2008, I rejoined him as the administrator at St. Jude’s Episcopal Church, where he was the priest-in-charge. He mentored me in both situations and taught me so much about what it means to be successful. I learned leadership, management, vision casting, marketing, strategic planning, communications – all at a ministry that maybe brought in about $1 million a year.
But the greatest lessons I learned were in my private time with CBF. Meetings in his office. Lunches at a local Greek restaurant or, more often, at a nearby Waffle House where he was the unofficial chaplain. Regulars there seemed very unlikely to be attending church anywhere, but when he entered, everyone knew him. And he knew everyone, including their stories. One salty gentleman always called him “Padre,” and would share a problem he was having at the moment. And Dad would always encourage him and tell him that he’d be praying for him. A lot of people will tell you they’re praying for you but never do it. But I believe CBF actually did follow through on those prayers.
There are so many other things I learned from him, and I keep saying that I’ll sit down one day and set myself to writing about them. One day I’ll actually do that, and I’ll post them here. But what I know now is that what I’m missing is the man who invested himself in me professionally and who spent the time to teach me invaluable truths about business, ministry, family and life. In recent years, our phone conversations had become shorter and more infrequent. He used to call me to check on me, and as his memory faded, those check-ins started to disappear. I would call him, but we tended to talk about the same things every time, and even several times within the same phone call. It became a bit monotonous. But what I wouldn’t give for just one more phone call to hear him say, “Jesus likes your style, and so do I.”
I’m still growing and maturing, and I’m not a priest (yet), but I am a teacher, and I’m hoping to invest myself in my students in a similar way as he invested himself in me. I do know that we are each here to touch the lives of others and to bring glory to the One who made us as we go through our lives. I can only hope that as I reach out with the love of Christ I can have even a fraction of an impact on others as my stepfather had on me and on countless others.
Rest in peace, Dad. And thank you for taking the time to mentor me. You’ll never know what a difference it’s made.
Reflection copyright © 2024 Doug DeBolt.
