Beyond the Birth Certificate

Today would have been my dad's birthday.

We always celebrated it on October 31st, even though his birth certificate said otherwise. Grandma Peney never accepted the paperwork. "I know what day he was born," she said. "I was there. I was wearing a great big pumpkin costume when they wheeled me into the hospital."

I think my dad loved that story. The stubbornness of choosing your own birthday. The mischief of keeping the truth uncertain. Maybe he believed his mom. I wonder if the certificate got it wrong sometimes, too.

My dad and I didn't speak much in the last couple of years. A few texts on birthdays and holidays were all we exchanged. I held onto a quiet hope that we might grow closer. I imagined that time would soften him, time for me to understand him better. I imagined more days to reconnect lay ahead of us.

That time ended the day he took his life. Grief has its own complicated shape. I miss him. I miss what might have been. I hope he found peace. I am so thankful for the people who have shared with me in the past months, story after story about how my dad lived out his faith in quiet ways.

A few weeks ago, my brother brought me a gift I've held onto ever since. A wooden Louisville Slugger 125, sharpie scribbles scrawled across its end, a chip embedded with gray concrete. The bat carries the memory of a night that changed everything.

My uncles had been praying for years about my family. At one of their churches, an event drew my dad's attention. Gladiators of strength performed on stage, ripping phone books, shattering blocks of ice, bending impossibilities into spectacle. They turned to the crowd and asked for a volunteer. "Perhaps someone who has been explaining 'how it's done' and how easy these tasks really are throughout the show." My brothers and I jumped to our feet in our seats to point out my dad. They challenged him to break more cinder blocks than the performer could with his head. When they tried to reclaim the bat at the end, he refused. He kept it.

As the night wrapped up, I heard the gospel for the first time. God sent His Son to die so that all who believe in Him would have everlasting life. It landed in hearts. My whole family was immersed in baptism that night. Years later, when my dad's wife and my youngest brother took the same step together, my dad and I talked about that night.

This bat reminds me that God honors what happens in the unseen, the lived reality, the heart that reaches for Him. Life fills itself with certificates, ledgers, expectations, and the records others keep of our worth and achievements. God does not measure the paper. He measures by faith. My God doesn't have to reference a birth certificate; He was there.

I miss my dad. I grieve what never came. But I give thanks for the moments that cannot be written down, moments that God alone remembers and preserves.

The gospel changes everything.