• Bro. Runhuan Liu •
My Father in My Eyes
Daughter, Qianmei Liu
Three weeks ago, when my father came back after a walk, he had a pain in his lumbar region, and he had to stay in the bed, unable to get up. Then the doctor diagnosed this as the vertebral fracture. In the subsequent days the temperature changed greatly; as a result, he caught a cold. Because of the vertebral fracture, it led to the fact that each time he was coughing, it would affect the muscle of his lung to cause severe pain that phlegm in his lung could not be coughed up. In the last three weeks of his life, my father, like the living in all his life, had neither word of murmuring nor unpleasant expression, and just accepted all that happened on him. I especially remembered that his attending diabetes doctor had ever told me: “Your father is a patient with a very high degree of cooperating with the doctor. I just told him seventy percent of the things to watch out for, and he could certainly accomplish it to one hundred percent.” My father had got the fracture of thigh in the past. After the surgery, I immediately asked him to do the rehabilitation exercise of lifting up his leg，and he then just did according to what I had told him and uttered no word of pain. I just could see his expression of enduring the pain. This is my father.
My father was filled with praises and thanksgivings towards God in his whole life. When we walked to the suburb, he would say: “How beautiful! Praise the Lord! All these flowers, grass, and trees were created by God.” Because of diabetes, he had to strictly control his diet. Therefore, my father always stirred together the oil-free and saltless food to eat. I loved to see him having meals; he said while eating: “It’s delicious! It’s really tasty!” It seemed that every meal to him was the best gourmet food.
During the period of my studying in school, my father just lived at home for a short time. But when he was at home, I always saw him doing the cleaning or sweeping the floor; besides this he simply prayed. He kneeled down whenever he prayed. My father spoke little. He did not teach us with word, rather, with his conduct. During dinner, we, his children, usually talked with him about things happening in our school. He just listened attentively to our speaking, and sometimes would give us some directions. He had never urged us to have an outstanding remarks or any excellent performance, neither did he give the negative comment or unnecessry praise to what we had done. Because he thought that his children were the ones belonging to the Lord; as a result, he taught us how to conduct ourselves in a humble way and to have an empty heart to be instructed.
My father seldom stayed at home. Therefore, every Sunday afternoon when he came back from other places, he would take us to the suburb for an outing or to visit the saints. I could recall that in my childhood my father always brought us to the science and technology museum to watch the videos on the astronomy and science. He had ever also taken us, his four children, to visit the churches throughout Taiwan, from the north to south. I saw a kind of safety and trust from him. I remembered that when I was in college, I did not come back home until eleven o’clock one night, and my father was simply waiting for me at the entrance to the alley. After I got back home, my father did not say a single word of rebuke to me. But henceforth, I dared not to go back home so late.
When I was studying in junior high school and high school, we were living at the former site where now the first meeting hall in Banqiao is located. Sometimes I did not want to attend the meeting, and then I made up lies to run out. My father actualky knew that I was lying, but he did not expose it. He trusted me; therefore, I knew that I must do a better job that I might not disappoint him. Although my father was very busy, he was the safe harbor and insurance in my life. In the course of my schooling, whenever there were entrance examinations, I must ask him to accompany me, and he also did so as I asked. I remembered that one time at my junior high school graduation ceremony, there were next to no parents attending it. However, from a long distance I could see him standing at the entrance of the auditorium, and I was very glad to introduce him to my classmates one by one.
Sometimes brothers and sisters in our family could quarrel with one another for the distributing of doing the housework, and then my father would say: “Suffering loss is to obtain a profit.” His word caused me to bravely stand on the arena of life, learned to accept the unreasonable things and to regard this as a kind of learning. If today I have achieved any thing today, I owe it all to my father and his intercession behind the scene.
I love my father very much and also respect him a lot. Although he has left us, from him I saw his humbleness, care toward others, and his meekness to deal with all the people around him. He’d want us to remember the need to thank the Lord at all times, for we can be chosen and kept only because of God’s mercy.