A Father’s Love Rediscovering the Empty Tomb

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The Deathless Prophet

“He was right! It was everyone else who was wrong!” I wish these words had elicited the same emotions back in 2016 when I heard them for the first time, as they do now, as I write them on this page. Lara Croft was my sister after all. I was eight when this young lady came into our house full of life and joy. She was the connective tissue between a physically broken son and a physically outgoing father. The computer was her bassinet and Tomb Raider her beating heart.

It’s funny, as I recall now, I don’t remember my dad every reading us a bedtime story or tucking us in at night.  What I do remember is the hum of the computer fan as it burst to life and the rhythm of my breath as I crawled across the old burgundy colored carpet, not wanting to get into my wheelchair.  Who needs a wheelchair, dad is playing computer. Dad is playing computer!

This was our nightly ritual, me sitting on my knees and my brother sitting on an old wooden stool, both of us starring intensely at the flickering CRT monitor as Tomb Raider booted up. As the developer and tech manufacture logos appeared on screen we all wondered where the adventure would take us next, to heights of the highest mountain or the depths of the deepest ocean. This was our nightly ritual, and these were the best bedtime stories an eight year old boy could ask for, though eventually, as with most stories, we forget where they came from and why the matter. 

“He was right! It was everyone else who was wrong!” I cannot write these words without chocking up. They are at once the opener and healer of a wound.  We often believe that to heal a wound we must forget the past, forget how and why the wound was creating in the first place. In doing this however, we regularly deprive ourselves of one of the best tools to reconnect with our humanity.

In part that is the journey behind the journey, the driving force of this story, my story. Connection matters, the past matters, two very important realities I chose to forget for twenty-two. If there is anything I want my story to convey it is this, stories matter and they have meaning and value beyond entertainment.

I say this not as some artistic warrior chest thumping. I say it because it is true.  I say it because a broken daughter help a broken son reconnect with his earthly and heavenly fathers.