My Dad: Blessings from a Surrendered Life

A picture often comes to mind of a man standing at the far corner of a large room. The room is actually what we call a tabernacle, a place where people gather to hear about God, and strive to align their lives with Him. In this picture I see my beloved father, gone now for over 30 years. He bears resemblance to me and my three beloved brothers for we, of course, are his heirs.

The picture always reminds me of the wonderful heritage I have and how it came to be. I was not there, of course, but I visited that place in Iowa a few years ago because I wanted to see where so many blessings began. Turns out the building and grounds – it was a church campground – was destroyed by a tornado in 1968. But some local folks pointed me in the approximate direction and I saw a field where the tabernacle had once been.

Why does it matter? My Dad's elder brother, Uncle Wayne, told me. He said my Dad, Larry, was talking in earnest to one of the preachers after the service up near the altar. Perhaps he had been praying. This preacher, as I remember the story, served at the Christian Academy in Miltonvale, Kansas where my Uncle Wayne attended. My Dad was considering joining him for his last year of High School. This would be life-changing, for our friends shape our future. This preacher knew this and he urged Larry Huff, about 18 at the time (illness as a child had delayed his schooling), to come to Miltonvale and be shaped by a Christian education.

As Wayne tells it my Dad was weeping as he weighed the decision, for it was a life-sized thing and was wrapped up in surrender to Christ. I can imagine the weight and I can imagine the relief when he resolved to serve God, to give His life to all that is good and right, to learn to love God with all his heart and others as himself. I imagine he returned to his home in Emily, Minnesota to get his things and drove the 1,000 miles to Miltonvale with some fear, but also a firm resolve to be all God would have him to be.

That move of God in his life made all the difference. It didn't solve all the problems, but settled the course for how he would approach every step. A few years later he and my Mom were married and one year after that they lost their first daughter, Ronda, at the tender age of 3 months. Their next daughter, my beloved elder sister, was born with “a hole in her heart” as we understood it to be. After care and surgery at age 2 she came through and became an excellent athlete, among other gifts and talents. Next was me, their first son who loved his Dad with all his heart.

Other beloved children came, a younger sister and brother who rounded out the family at four. Then we had a poem at breakfast one morning when the youngest of us was 10. Dad's rhyming verse told us another would be coming along, and then there was another after that – six children in all, with the first (actually making 7 total) in heaven and held deeply in the heart of our parents.

This is perhaps the greatest blessing. For as my Dad would say in later years, “My children are my investment.” But it was his choice in God's grace on that warm summer night in 1958 where it all was made possible. He entered in, dared to believe, and God was good to His word.

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places all because my dear father surrendered his life to Christ and let Him lead. I am forever grateful.

My Dad, 3rd from left with his brothers in 1969, Emily, Minnesota. From left David, Wayne,
Larry, and Gordon. He was eleven years into the journey of faith and I was about 4.