by Stacy Monson
“Okay, listen up.” Dawson had pulled his guitar onto his lap. “There’s one last thing I’d like us to talk about before we head back tomorrow. It’s something that comes up a lot, so I want to be sure we get a chance to share our ideas.
“The other night I talked about how I came to Outlook, and I mentioned that my dad was a mean, angry man. When I first started hearing about God here at camp, Walt called Him ‘Abba’. Maybe you’ve heard someone use that word for God—Abba. It basically means ‘Daddy’.”
He strummed a few times, shaking his head. “I couldn’t relate to that at all. The last thing I wanted was another so-called daddy waiting for me to mess up so he could slap me around. And that’s what I told Walt. I’d rather have no dad than someone like that.”
Mikayla rested her folded arms on her knees. How lucky she’d been to be raised by such a wonderful man. Would Kenny have been like Dawson’s dad or hers? She shivered.
“Walt didn’t lecture me or try to convince me that God wasn’t like that. He just lived his faith in a way that helped me see who God was. When I compared God to my dad, God came up short in my expectations because the bar was so low.” He strummed again. “But when I compared my dad to who the real Father is, it was my dad who came up short. Way short. All of us do. We can’t expect perfection because no one except Jesus is perfect. However, that doesn’t mean we accept abuse, neglect, anger, or any of that stuff as normal or okay. It’s not. It’s sin and it’s wrong.”
The chords and notes came together in a gentle melody. “God isn’t like us. He’s not mean, vindictive, neglectful. The Bible says He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. He won’t change His mind—decide He doesn’t like you and just leave one day.” He shook his head, smiling. “He never goes back on His word. And God doesn’t lie. Ever.”
Unbidden tears filled Mikayla’s eyes, and she looked up at the star-covered black sky, blinking rapidly. She’d never thought her mother would either.
“How do we know He doesn’t?” Justin asked from his usual spot next to Dawson. “I mean, people who aren’t ’sposed to lie to us do anyway.”
So true.
“We know because He says so.” Dawson reached for his tattered Bible on the log beside him. “In here. And He proved it over and over. He’s made good on every promise throughout history. Because of that, we know we can approach Him without fear.”
“How do we do that?” Joy asked.
“Through prayer. We can talk directly to Him like we’re talking now.”
Mikayla gnawed her bottom lip. She’d prayed with the girls after the bear-scare and hadn’t been struck down. She hadn’t heard a big voice booming a response, but they’d certainly all felt better afterwards. It’d be nice if God sounded a bit like Dad—comfortable, encouraging, with some laughter thrown in.
“My dad left when I was ten.” Justin tossed bits of bark into the flames. “Got himself a girlfriend and started a new family. Guess we weren’t good enough.”
“That’s rough,” Dawson said. “The good thing with God is that you are good enough for Him. That doesn’t mean we don’t sin every day and make a mess of our lives, but because He made each of us, He will never leave us. Never give up on us. Never stop forgiving us and helping us be the best we can be. And He’ll never stop wanting the best for us, and that ‘best’ is Him in our hearts.”
“I don’t even know who my dad is,” Joy said, eyes down. “Just some…guy my mom slept with. She doesn’t know who it is because there were so many.”
Mikayla’s eyes went wide. What if she’d found out about her mom at Joy’s age? How would she have handled it? Her heart squeezed. Maybe she wouldn’t be sitting here living her dream.
“I had a great dad,” she said, surprised she’d spoken aloud. “Then I found out recently, accidentally, that he’s not actually my dad.” She met Joy’s gaze. “I came out here to track down my bio dad.”
“Did you find him?”
“Still looking.” She’d give it a few more weeks and then head back to Old Joe’s.
Joy sighed and leaned her head against Mikayla’s shoulder. Mikayla looked toward Dawson, who looked back at her with a sympathetic lift to his brow.
“But you already have a dad,” Heather said. “What about him? Isn’t he your real dad?”
“He is,” Mikayla said, forcing a normal tone over the lump in her throat. “But he didn’t know I wasn’t his either, so…it’s a mess. We’ll have to figure out a new normal when I go back.”
The gentle sounds of the guitar continued behind their conversation, draping peace over the pain being shared.
“God knows how hard it is on us when our earthly dads don’t do the right thing, when we’re left hurting and angry,” Dawson said. “That’s why His promise to never leave us means so much.”
“But God’s in heaven. What good does that do us here? I need a dad with skin on,” Joy said.
“That’s where people like Walt come in. I knew he wasn’t my dad, of course, but he became a good friend, someone who taught me stuff, listened to me.” His eyes sparkled in the firelight. “He saw my potential to be a better person and helped me see it too. But most importantly, he taught me to rely on God more than any person.”
He looked around the circle. “He puts people in our lives to fill some of the hole left by our earthly dads—people we can lean into, learn from, share life with. Who do you already have in your life like that? Might be a teacher, youth director, coach, boss.”
The hissing and snapping of the fire grew louder as they pondered his question.
“My soccer coach is pretty cool,” Justin said. “We’ve met for lunch and dinner a few times. He’s easy to talk to.”
“Great! Who else has someone like that in their life?”
One by one, each spoke up. Several had intact families and dads they enjoyed. Others mentioned a choir teacher, youth director, coworker. The shadow that the earlier conversation had brought now swirled upward with the smoke as their young faces lit with understanding.
“I guess I never thought about those people like that,” Justin said, his spine straightening. “My mom’s pretty cool too, so my dad’s missing out.”
“That’s a great way to look at it,” Dawson said.
“But…why doesn’t God stop people from doing stuff like that in the first place?” Joy asked, chin quivering. “He could stop dads from leaving, or moms from, you know…”
Mikayla held her breath.
“He could,” Dawson nodded, “but then we wouldn’t have free will, would we? We’d all be like puppets He controlled, and He doesn’t want that. He wants a real relationship with us, so He allows us to make our own choices even when He knows it will hurt us or someone else. Sometimes we learn from those mistakes and change our behavior. Sometimes we don’t. Making choices gives us ownership over our lives, but it also makes us responsible.”
He looked at Justin. “For whatever reason, your dad made the choice to walk away from his responsibility and promise to his family. That really hurt you guys, and it hurt him, whether he’d admit it or not. Your choice now is how to respond. Stay angry and keep acting out, or decide you want something better. Live a life of anger and resentment or find a way to move past it. They’re choices we never asked for but ended up with anyway.”
Mikayla stared at the flames, family images dancing among the colors. She had a choice. Forgive or not. Work at patching severed relationships…or not.
Dawson strummed louder and said, “Listen to the words of this song in the context of what we’ve talked about tonight. Take it in; make it your song. This is what’s true about you right this minute, and every day for the rest of your life. You are loved unconditionally by God. The word used in the Bible is ‘beloved’. Each of us is the beloved of God.”
Mikayla closed her eyes as he sang, questions mixing with the lyrics. Beloved? The illegitimate daughter of an ex-con? The words proclaimed she wasn’t an accident. Wait—she wasn’t? But that
would mean God planned things to go the way they did. Or He’d allowed it anyway.
Now she had a choice—figure out how to live with the new truth about herself and move forward or continue to be angry. The lyrics described the heaviness in her heart but assured her again she was beloved. Her fingers curled as if to grasp the words and hold them close. Dad loved her. Lindy and Maggie did too. Even Mom. The song encouraged her to rise above the hurt. Could she? The deception, the cover-up, and even the truth had split her life in two—life before and after.
The final notes faded into the stillness she’d grown accustomed to on the mountain. No one moved; gazes fastened on the flames dancing quietly.
“It’s been really great sharing this week with you,” Dawson said. His gaze moved across the fire and locked on Mikayla. A corner of his mouth quirked before he looked around the circle. “Thanks, all of you, for being here.”
Her toes curled in her hiking boots.
“The schedule for the morning,” he continued, “will be early breakfast followed by breaking camp. Joy and Britt are on for breakfast, Justin and Brent for clean-up. Your assignments for set-up are the same for tear-down, in reverse obviously. We’ll start the descent at 10:00 sharp. If you don’t have your stuff in your backpack when we head out, you’ll have to carry it, which makes hiking difficult. Got it?”
“Got it,” came the muted response as they got to their feet.
Hugs were exchanged, comments and quiet laughter mingling before the girls filed into the tent and the boys headed toward their latrine area. Dawson propped his guitar against the log and moved around the fire ring to settle beside Mikayla, where they watched the kids disperse.
“What a week,” she sighed. “They look wiped out and yet…content, I guess. At peace.”
He nodded. “Means God’s been working in them, changing their hearts, opening their eyes to see Him in daily life.”
She wrapped her arms around her knees and glanced at him. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen it happen over and over. Most of them send emails when they get home, sharing some of what they learned, how they changed, and what it all meant to them. Really cool testimony of what God was up to during camp.”
“I wonder what this group will have to say,” she mused.
“That they had the best staff ever.”
She giggled.
“Seriously, ’Kayla. You did great work with the girls, and the boys commented on how they wouldn’t want to be in a skills contest with you.”
The highest form of compliment. And the nickname warmed her heart. “Good to know.”
“Did you enjoy it? Enough to do it again?”
“Definitely!”
“Phew.” He wiped his brow with a flourish. “There’d be no way I could replace you.”
“You’ll have to come September.”
“Don’t remind me.”
She sighed and rested her chin on her arms. She didn’t want the reminder either. She’d already become far too attached to this job. And this guy.
“I’m sorry about what you’ve been going through,” he said eventually. “The whole dad thing.”
“Thanks. It’s been a rough couple of months. What started it all was finding out I had a hole in my heart.”
“Seriously? It sure hasn’t slowed you down.”
“They repaired it about a week later. I guess it’s not that uncommon. But because my twin didn’t have it, or anyone else in my family, it got me looking through family medical history. Then a comment from my soon-to-be brother-in-law prompted me to do some DNA work. One thing led to the next and the next, and here I am.” Still trying to find answers.
“God’s funny like that.”
She straightened and met his gaze. “Do you give God credit for everything?”
“Mostly. Not when it’s something stupid I’ve done, but since I don’t believe in coincidence, it’s easy to see God at work in the world.”
“You don’t see anything as coincidence?”
“Nope. I see a bigger picture. I don’t know why you didn’t know the truth earlier, but for some reason it came out now through that particular series of events. And I, for one, am glad because it led you to Winter Park and then to Outlook.”
Something to consider. “Aren’t you afraid of giving God credit or blame for stuff He didn’t do?”
“I give God credit for turning my life around, for putting the right people in my life at the right time who shared their faith with me. Over time I realized that none of that was coincidence, and that’s taught me to look for God in everything that happens no matter how small. Your being on the Lone Pine path wasn’t a coincidence. Neither was your being at Vi’s coffee shop when I didn’t know where to even start looking for you.”
Her heart fluttered at his decisive words, at the thought God had been controlling her steps. “Doesn’t that take away the idea of free will?”
“Not at all. God knows us, the choices we’ll make, what we need when. This will seem weird, but I see it as a big chess game, except that there aren’t any opponents. Now, this isn’t something I learned at a church; it’s just the way I’ve been able to make sense in my own head of how life unfolds.”
Chess wasn’t her thing, despite Dad’s many attempts to teach her. Lips pursed, she raised an eyebrow.
“As we make moves, decisions, choices each day, God makes counter-moves.”
“Such as?”
“Well…what led you to end up on the Lone Pine trail?”
She thought back to her arrival in Winter Park. It seemed so long ago now. “I’d just arrived in town and needed a hike to clear my head before starting my search. I found a map and just…picked it.”
“Okay. And we got a later start than I’d planned because we had to wait for Hannah to find her hiking boots. If we’d headed up at the scheduled time, we’d have missed you completely.”
“So God hid her boots?”
A grin flashed in the firelight. “Possibly. Would we have seen her boots mysteriously slide under the couch? No. But I’ve seen things unfold like this over and over in the past ten years. Just a moment here or there and the results would be drastically different. Someone’s throw-away comment speaks directly to another’s unspoken question. Three different people mention going to hear a speaker, so I go and sit next to someone who becomes a major donor to the camp.”
“And you don’t see that as God moving you, the chess piece, around.”
“I don’t, because at any point I could make a different decision, decide not to go to the conference or make the remark that someone needed to hear. And I believe that happens. After the fact, I’ve learned that had I said whatever it was I felt nudged to say, that person would have changed their plans, been encouraged, or made a different decision.
“So God doesn’t make us do things, but there are times when we get a feeling or a persistent thought that prods us one way or another, and we realize later it’s exactly what we needed to do or say. For our benefit or someone else’s. Or we might never know if there was a reason for the nudge.”
“A God prod.”
“Exactly.”
Mikayla sighed. “This is a lot to figure out.”
“It’s taken me ten years to get to this point, so don’t rush it. Just be open to the world around you, and watch God move. You might not realize it ’til later but eventually you will. And if the chess analogy doesn’t work, you’ll come up with something that makes better sense. Now let’s turn in, or we’ll be the ones carrying our stuff down.”
He stood and held out a hand, pulling her to her feet, then kept a light grasp on her fingers. “I meant what I said earlier, Kayla. This has been a great week leading camp with you. You aren’t afraid to jump right in. You’re brave and funny. And I’ve learned a few tricks from you along the way.”
A shy smile lifted her mouth. “I loved every minute. Thanks for taking a chance on me.”
He squeezed her hand and let go. “God wou
ldn’t have it any other way.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Touché and good night.”
Snuggled in her sleeping bag later, she smiled into the darkness. She wouldn’t have it any other way either.
~ 25 ~
Bidding farewell to the kids the next afternoon was more painful than Mikayla had expected. Every group she’d led in college had started with strangers and ended with friends, but this was different. In the past it had been about what she could teach them. This time she’d gained far more from the kids and Dawson than what she’d given.
Within hours of their departure she received numerous texts and emails from all four girls with the expected number of exclamation points and emojis, but also heartfelt thanks and musings about what the whole week had meant. Their enthusiasm warmed her heart. They’d learned about camping and trying new things, but it was what they’d learned about God, who He was and what that meant to their lives that changed them most.
Their revelations brought back the fireside conversation with Dawson. The questions that had stirred then continued to poke at her throughout the weekend as she and Kyle prepared to lead day camp. Needing answers, she sought Dawson out Monday afternoon after the day camp kids had departed, Lula dancing along behind her.
Daws looked up from the papers strewn across his desk and smiled. “Hey, Mikayla. Come on in.”
“Am I interrupting?”
“Thankfully yes. Have a seat.” He motioned to the chair. His own squeaked a protest when he leaned back. “This is the least enjoyable part of my job, completing grant paperwork. Brenda usually does it, but she’s visiting her boyfriend in Montana until Wednesday, and this stuff needs to get sent in.”
“I can come back—”
“No way. I desperately need a break. What’s up?” Lula jumped into his lap and licked his chin, making him chuckle.
“Nothing worth interrupting your work for.” She lifted her shoulders, and added, “I’ve just been thinking about what we talked about Friday evening around the fire and comments the girls have shared in their emails.”