Jesus Freaks: Sins of the Father

“So for years they knew nothing about their…grandchild? Well, I guess non-grandchild since I wasn’t legally yours… But…”

“Kennedy,” Roland sighs, “all I thought about at that point was drinking. That was it. I woke up to drink and did so until I passed out. My parents kicked me out in short order, and I found myself first on the couch of my sister, then my brother’s when my sister didn’t want me around her kids anymore.”

Cousins…

“So,” I prompt, “Jesus…”

“It was your fifth birthday.” Roland’s voice is so tight it barely classifies as a voice at all. It drops to a whisper. “Of course I didn’t know it was your birthday. I’d spent the previous five years with maybe six months of sobriety stitched together. One day here, two there, a week here… Anyway, at that point I was busy lying to myself that I was a functioning alcoholic. I’d been working on various local political campaigns at the time. Sure, I was getting the job done, but I made sure to drink before and after each project.”

This doesn’t surprise me—Roland being a functioning alcoholic. Charisma, it seems, is stronger than the bottle at times. I can almost see him staggering around his house trying to piece together a clean outfit, but taking the time to check his hair and smile before heading out the door.

“I’d been staying for a week at my parents’ house because my apartment was undergoing some renovations, and I got a letter in the mail. No return address.” As if out of nowhere, tears pour down Roland’s cheeks, making it uncomfortable for me to look at him. “I opened it, and out fell a picture of the most angelic little girl I’d ever seen.”

I open my mouth to refute the angel claim, but he stops me. “I’m serious. You were playing outside in this bright yellow sundress that had white flowers on it. Your hair was in braids and the picture captured you mid-stride, running with a full-toothed smile.”

I shift in my seat, uncomfortable that I never knew of this mail exchange.

“There was a note folded up inside,” Roland continues.

“What’d it say?”

“It said,” Roland takes a deep breath, “‘I just thought you’d like to know.’”

He stares at me quietly, and I shift again.

“That’s it?” The words seem a little cold, even for my often cynical mother.

He nods. “That’s it. I fell to my knees in the kitchen of my parents’ house. Thankfully they weren’t home, or they would have thought I was having a drunken psychotic episode.”

“What’d you do?”

Roland lifts his chin, but the tears still roll down his cheeks, off his jaw, and down his neck. “I reached into one of the lower cabinets—that held the liquor—and opened the first bottle I touched.”

“Charming,” I muse and roll my eyes.

Roland holds up his hand, as if asking me to withhold judgment. “I kept looking at your picture out of the corner of my eye. It had fallen from my fingers to the floor and I was sitting there, next to your picture, glass bottle to my lips. Before I knew it, the bottle was sailing across the room, and it hit the wall on the other side, breaking into a million pieces as I screamed ‘Jesus Christ!’ as loud as I could.”

I jump, because in the midst of telling the story, Roland actually screams Jesus Christ. He grips his hair with both hands and lowers his head as if relieving the moment.

“I screamed it over and over again. I’d grown up in the church, but hadn’t ever been a regular. But as my knees dug into the cold tile…my curse changed into a petition.”

“How?” I whisper, fighting tears of my own.

Roland shrugs. “The longer I looked at the picture, the tighter my stomach twisted. You were looking directly into the camera and, it felt, directly into me. You have my eyes, Kennedy. Your mother was so beautiful, and my drunken twenty-year-old mind assumed that you’d end up looking exactly like her. But, in that picture, it was me. I couldn’t deny it. And every single day of your life I’d failed you. A little, innocent, blissfully happy child that deserved way more for a father…even if I would never meet her.”

I sniff and stand. Needing to move for a moment, I walk to the sink and get some water. “But…how?”

Roland turns to face me. “How what?”

“How did Jesus reach you in that kitchen? How?” While I’m familiar with my own God moments, I’ve never had one as powerful as the one Roland is describing. I can’t wrap my head around the idea that in one moment he was in a downward spiral, and the next he was pastoring to millions. I know there were a few years in between the two. But how did he know it was God?

A bittersweet smile touches his lips. “Jesus is always reaching for us, Kennedy. Every single one of us, all the time. In that moment, it wasn’t my brain choosing. Something within me—my soul—screamed. In that moment, in your eyes, I reached back.”

The vision of my broken father in the fetal position on his parents’ kitchen floor, screaming for Jesus and crying over me is too much. Tears sneak out of my eyes. I lift my chin and manage words, finally.