I was a freshman in college when I first met Rod
Conover. I tagged along with my sister
and her then boyfriend to attend a bible study at the Conover’s home on Whitty
Road in Toms River. I was maybe 19 years
old at the time, had met Jesus some 6 years earlier, from a broken home, wounds
buried deep within my heart.
I didn’t
know at that time that Rod was an apprentice of a wonderful artist, Jesus, and that
he was in the business of calling the gold out of people, painting pictures with
his words and actions, calling things that are not as though they are, like his mentor,
Jesus did.
I met Jimmy there in Rod’s living room, hair down to his
shoulders, maybe a year old in Jesus.
And I saw how Rod looked at Jimmy.
He treated him as an equal, this 19 year old hippie artist. Jimmy’s friend, Valerie who regularly spent
time with Jimmy getting high together, had invited him to Rod’s house where her
life was getting transformed. Rod
encouraged Jimmy to get into the Word of God and share scriptures during the
weekly “church service” in his basement.
Within a year or two, Rod had put Jimmy on the preaching schedule,
encouraging him to use his artistic talents with chalk talks as he shared.
I was away at college most of the 2 years I had known Rod,
and Jimmy. During that time Jimmy and I
started planning a wedding. Rod was
there with us all along the way, Jimmy’s go to for questions and
struggles. Our pre-marital counselling
consisted of bringing things out of me that I didn’t even know were there,
potential issues for conflicts with my soon to be husband, and dealing with
them now instead of later. It was
painful at the time, but looking back I see that Rod was painting my portrait
alongside of Jimmy’s, calling out the gold he saw in me.
Shortly before the wedding, as the three of us met to
arrange the schedule for the wedding ceremony, Rod asked me “Who will walk you
down the aisle to give you away? Your dad?”
“No!” was my abrupt response. I hated my dad. He’d left our family when I was 13 years old,
and I could count on my fingers how many times I had seen him in those 8
years. I had decided that I would not
even invite my dad to my wedding. No, I
would ask my big brother, David to walk me down the aisle at my wedding.
Rod listened calmly as I explained why my dad didn’t deserve
to be at my wedding. And then he asked
me a question.
“What is the loving thing to do?”
I knew I wasn’t loving my dad. And I immediately knew the loving thing to do
would be to invite him to the wedding, and give him the opportunity to walk me
down the aisle as well. So I agreed to call my dad, all the while hoping he had
another engagement and couldn’t make it to my wedding. But on June 29, 1974 Dad came to my wedding
and walked me down the aisle and gave me away to Jimmy.
I thought I would feel so good about doing the right thing,
but that was not the case. I was “doing the loving thing”, but not doing it in
love. It was then that I realized that I
needed help loving my dad. When I
thought of my dad, I became angry – there was no love in my heart for the
man. So I told Jesus I had no love in my
heart for my dad, and asked him to give me some of his love for Dad.
Jesus was so happy when I asked him! I felt like his face lit up and he said,
“I’ve been waiting for you to ask me to help you with that!” And help me he did. Slowly but surely I began to love my dad, and
years later, Dad asked Jimmy and me if he could come and live in our home. We were able to open up our home for him to
come and live with us the last years of his life.
You see, the Master Painter’s apprentice, Rod Conover was
painting that, too, as he painted my portrait.
And here I stand today as he painted me, a woman who has learned to
forgive, a cherished daughter, so loved by her Heavenly Daddy, and her earthly
daddy.
Mine was not the only portrait Rod painted as he attended
the Master Painter’s painting lessons, but those stories are for another day.
