Where did you come from?

"1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:

2 Abraham was the father of Isaac,Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

3 Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram,

4 Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon,

5 Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse,

6 and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,

7 Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa,

8 Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah,

9 Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,

10 Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah,

11 and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon.

12 After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,

13 Zerubbabel the father of Abihud, Abihud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor,

14 Azor the father of Zadok,Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Elihud,

15 Elihud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob,

16 and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.

17 Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit." [Matthew 1:1-18]

If you are willing to be patient, hope will always find you even if you sit in the dark, waiting for something - or someone - to come and turn a light on.

My father took much more than his last breath with him when he left us. He took my childhood with him. He took my dreams. He took my music. He took his voice and his laughter. He even took my family, that fell apart the instant his heart stopped beating. He also took part of my soul with him, because as a 27 year old I was not prepared to exist where he didn't anymore.  He took black and white movies and John  Wayne. He took Christmas for a while too. But he never took his love away from me. It took me a long fifteen year-minute to realize that he left us far more than what he carried away with him - and that what I felt he took was merely borrowed by grief, to be returned to the hearts once mourning turned into one day after the other, and pain didn't hurt as sharply as it once did. Nothing is lost which is remembered. 

His name was José. I felt secretly proud of his name as a child, because it was the name of the father of Jesus on Earth. I didn't know much about Jesus, but I knew that much. It felt important, it felt essential even. In my childish innocence I sometimes wondered if they were related. Now I know that they actually were - as part of the descendants God promised to Abraham, who are in fact as numerous as the stars today. The level of intention and everlasting forward thinking of the Father of the world is astonishing to me, when you read the very well known words that He said to Abraham when He was laying out the road map of our civilization's future for him:

"4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring (seeds) all nations on earth will be blessed (will use the name of your offspring in blessings)". [Genesis 26:4]

My Dad, unlike Abraham, had however wrestled with God, walking away from the Father at a very fundamental level, where his faith possibly crumbled and pushed him back a few thousand feet behind the Savior, unable to catch up with Him to his very last moment on Earth. I didn't understand this when he was still alive. He never spoke of God to me, nor I knew that he had been so close to Him that he knew everything there was to know, until he wasn't anymore. Somewhere down that line he stopped communicating with God because he stopped understanding His plan. We however are not supposed to understand His plan though. We are His vessels, His children, His family. As a parent I understand this principle now, because my child is not supposed to understand everything I tell or encourage her to do: she is only suppose to do it, and trust that I have her best interest in mind. Somehow he felt this made no sense anymore - where "this" was a God that would not show up when needed sometimes. The disappointment was so deep that he rejected the idea of even allowing his children to learn of God. As a result, my siblings and I grew up without Jesus sitting at the table. God was not discouraged, but He certainly was not encouraged either. 

In the midst of my Dad's disappointment there was perhaps a life he didn't quite understand. He loved Nature with a passion, and he made it a life's journey to get to know as much as possible about as many animals and plants as he could, and I know he knew God had created them to co-exist with us here on Earth. He hated wasted time and he loved good food, good Jazz, good classic movies and good books. And he also believed that respect was a God-given hierarchy bestowed on all parents over their children, whether the children agreed with it or not. He laughed from the outside in, trapping his laughter between his head and his chest, making it all that much more hilarious, increasing his chances of shaking uncontrollably while his face turned red. He had a distinguished sense of humor and a very perhaps English appreciation of jokes. My father also loved Spain so much he despised its lack of historical awareness. He was a Quixote in a land of windmills, who often screamed to a world that seemed to never understand the importance of loyalty, courage, decency and honor. He was a cigars aficionado and a brandy enthusiast, who understood bullfighting as a necessary battle between good and evil - and called me an ignorant every time I argued how cruel that was to me - and who loved extra virgin olive oil and red wine in equal proportionate ways. My mother's cooking always made him smile and his afternoon naps were never to be interrupted, during which he would fall asleep in his favorite chair and softly snore while claiming to be watching the news or a movie. He loved our dogs too, and became our Collie Wusby's favorite person from day one, creating a connection between them that lasted until she died about ten years before my father did, breaking his heart to the point of having to bring another dog home to heal him - Oscar, the Lhasa Apso. And he did. My father was brilliant in mind but short in words, and oh how I miss those few words. 

He died at age 53 and I think he never thought he would live long, so he lived as much in the moment as humanely and financially possible. He raised three children with my Mom and  at the end of his short-lived life he acknowledged what mattered to him most in the hospital, while under the hallucinogen effects of heavy pain medication, that mitigated the excruciating suffering that cancer was causing him. "I have all I need right here", he said, "one, two, three, four": my Mom Josefa, my sister Carolina, my brother Héctor, and myself - who were all sitting with him in his hospital room that day, hoping for a miraculous recovery. But sometimes God has other plans, and it is our job to go with those plans if even with muttered gratefulness, especially when it hurts. It seems impossible when you are standing in the middle of your valley, screaming for answers, but I can tell you that all your hope and mine need to remain is our willingness to hope on - regardless. I saw my father die. He was breathing one minute and the next he wasn't anymore. I thought it broke me. I thought nothing would ever make sense anymore, and I looked for band aids for the soul that never stuck nor healed my wounds - until God found me in His house and showed me what my father had been meaning to tell me all along: that God is real - even when you can't feel Him. And I know he felt Him, because I never heard him deny God.

My Dad didn't take his heart with him. He didn't take his memory either. He didn't take all the animals he told me about, or all the times he made me laugh. He didn't take what mattered, and what he did take, has already been returned. All I have to do is look at my daughter to see him in her.

I was blessed to have been one of the stars in his universe - and one of Abraham's too. 

"Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you." [Exodus 20:12]