Rock on!

This super-size rocker has been a longtime

fixture outside a furniture store in Moscow, Idaho

I’m a big fan of rocking chairs—well, maybe not this big. But the soothing action of rockers takes me back to my childhood and sitting in the lap of my dad for story time in his spring-action platform rocker. When I started my first job three hours’ drive from home, and needed to assemble furniture basics, I could hardly wait to buy my own rocker.  My bed was third-hand. My ancient hand-me-down couch had wires poking through the frame. My passed-on dining set was, well, plastic and cheap. But in that first year I added a colonial style wooden rocker to my household.  When things got tough at work or in relationships, it was my “place to go” to read scripture and talk with my Heavenly Father.

More than a decade later, when I married and had babies, that rocker was moved to the nursery. Motherhood gave me a special appreciation for Psalm 131:

My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty;

I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.

But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, both now and forevermore.

When my two older grandsons visit and take their naps at our home, the three-year-old still likes Nana to rock him. I ask what he wants me to sing, and it’s always “Mary had a little lamb.”  I follow up with “Jesus loves me” and some other Sunday school songs until he’s mellow enough to place in the portable playpen where he takes naps here. (His brother rates the crib in the guest room.)  As I cover him and whisper, “Nana loves you,” I’m taken back to those stretching times of trust when, quiet before God in my earthly rocker, I sought the spiritual strength to keep my hope in Him. When things in my life were going haywire, I wanted to be still and quiet before Him.

My mother died in 1978 when I was barely thirty, so memories of her are becoming more precious. One memory, captured by camera in an era when photos were rare and expensive, shows her as a newborn in 1919, propped up in an old rocker. I knew she was born in a log cabin in eastern Montana, the firstborn of a Norwegian immigrant and his wife, whose childhood polio left her with one leg shorter than the other. The family lived in poverty, tilling the land he'd homesteaded. I don’t know the story of that old rocker. Because my grandfather (who died when I was a few months old) had trained in carpentry in Norway, it’s possible he even crafted it.

I realize rockers have no inherent spiritual quality. But when I sit in my current favorite rocker, my heart waiting for the whispers of my Heavenly Father, I know He is there for me. I am stilled and quieted before Him, listening, and learning.

Rocking with Daddy

“Think of crawling up in God’s lap,” I wrote my friend, who was going through a difficult time in her life. “Just lean in on Him, like you’re secure in a daddy’s love.” In suggesting that word picture, I was thinking of my own dad and special memories of his favorite red tapestry rocker.

Though the memories are fuzzy, like the yellowed photo I have of him in that rocker, I still remember climbing into his lap for story time. I’d gaze at the book pictures as his voice rumbled the text and his foot tapped a steady rock. Before long, I’d fall asleep to the rocker’s comforting swing.

After I grew up and got my first job, I furnished a cheap apartment with a lumpy twin bed, a dining set mended with duct tape, and a sofa that had popped a spring. Because of warm memories of my dad’s rocker, I knew one more thing would make it “home”: a rocking chair.

On one weekend visit home, Dad took me to a local unfinished furniture store. An already-varnished floor sample rocker beckoned. I leaned into its high back and tapped a rock. I wanted it, but hesitated. I was already paying off a car. Reluctantly, I left it at the store.

Three days later, I called Dad. “If it’s still there,” I said, “please get it. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.” The next night he phoned. “The rocker’s gone,” he said. “Oh,” I groaned. “It’s sitting in our living room,” he teased.

That rocker would follow me to three states over the next decade as I worked and attended college. Dad was always a phone call away for car advice, wisdom for troublesome roommates, and support of my career goals. I know he and my mother prayed for me.

I was 31 and still single when he died of a heart attack, six months after Mom’s death of cancer. As I cleaned out their home, I reluctantly sold his worn-out rocker. After all, I had now my own rocker. And in those dark months of grieving, I’d often go there to read my Bible and pray….and rock. At such times, I almost felt like God was holding me.

Three years after my parents’ deaths, I married. Within a few years, I became a mother and used that rocker to cuddle and comfort my babies. Eventually I sold it to make room for a mauve velour rocker, soft and big enough for two small children to snuggle on an adult’s lap.

On nights when my husband gathered our children in the upholstered rocker for bedtime reading, I’d watch and remember my childhood. I will never forget Dad’s welcoming, secure lap as we sat together in his favorite rocker. In that simple act of earthly parenting, he modeled the amazing father-love of God.

I am saddened when I hear of people who do not have loving earthly fathers. Yet that is God’s plan—that fathers deeply care for their children. In Psalm 103:13, David wrote that an earthly father’s compassion for his own children should be as God’s compassion on His spiritual children (“them that fear him”).

Even as an adult, I still need my spiritual Daddy. When my world becomes frightening or confusing, I know He’s just waiting for me to come to Him. And often, it’s in my current blue rocker, imagining the comfort of His loving arms as I read my Bible and pray, that I experience His peace.