As kids go, I was only an average risk-taker. I didn’t leap off the roof of the house, or race through busy intersections on my bike, or swallow giant jawbreakers whole. But I was ready for almost any challenge that was preceded by these three words: “Daddy’s got you.”

I heard them as I rode my training wheel-less bike down the driveway for the first time, and leaped (eyes and nose squeezed shut) into the deep end of the Quintana Oil Company swimming pool.

The words weren’t audibly spoken at other fear-filled events, but I was still certain of them when I stood at the free throw line in my first junior high basketball game, bawled my way through a newly-broken heart at sixteen, and watched my parents drive away from my college dorm the fall of my freshman year.

Knowing that someone who loves you “has your back” can go a long way to making you brave. It did me.

I wonder how many things I wouldn’t have tried without my dad’s constant, encouraging presence. I wonder how often I would have waited in the shadows and hoped for someone else to lead if he hadn’t told me I could?

My dad who made me brave did the bravest thing for me when I turned thirteen. He wrote me a letter (delivered with a long-stemmed red rose) that celebrated my short life with typical paternal enthusiasm, and ended it with words something like this: “Your mother and I will always be proud of you, but it is your Maker you must answer to, and yourself you will see in the mirror each day. Many things may change, but one will remain constant: your Dad’s love for his daughter.”

Early on, my dad set me free from pleasing him to fully follow Jesus – and the dreams He had placed in my very young heart.

That’s why it’s been no great leap of faith for me, in the days since, to believe without questioning bold words like these from my heavenly Father’s book:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 35, 38-39)

What would you attempt today if you were certain that your loving Abba Father had your back?

Then believe it. Daddy’s got you!

© Leigh McLeroy 2002

(With love and thanks to my dad, who celebrates his 70th birthday this week…)