Each year Father’s Day comes around. And each year since my Dad passed away I think about how much I have grown, how much my life has changed, and how much my heart has shaped me into the person I am today.  I think about all the things I have done since he has passed and it seems I have lived a lifetime without him.  But then again it feels like he has been there every step of the way.  And he has been there with me…in my heart.  You see my Dad gave me his heart: his big, strong, passionate heart is the same heart that beats inside me.  There was never a moment when he was still living that I doubted he loved me.  Every night he would say goodnight and tell me he loved me, even through high school.  Every time we said goodbye, he’d say, “Love ya!”.

I was never that girl who got her heart broken by boys in school.  Honestly, I never really had time for them or cared to have a boyfriend.  During my school years, I just couldn’t find the boy I wanted to give my heart to because it already belonged to someone else…my Dad.  He was the only man I needed in my life.  He never disappointed me.  He was a role model on how to love.  He loved my mother so very much, and I alway knew I wanted, no needed, to find a love like that.  He helped me create the expectations of the man I needed to give my heart to.  And I always knew it was going to take a while to find that man.

It wasn’t until I was 19 that my heart was broken for the first time.  On November 27, 2009, my Dad broke my heart.  I couldn’t believe that he was the one to first break my heart. But then I had to understand he answered God’s call to go home to heaven. Although I was heartbroken, it didn’t last long.  You see, something else happened on that November night.  As I was at the scene of his accident, I overheard my mom say, “What are we going to do about Sarah?”.  Everyone was so worried how I would be after he died because I was very close to him.  After I heard her say those words, it was like someone had picked me up and wrapped my heart with assurance that I would be just fine.  And I know who did that act I needed so much right then and there.  It was my Dad healing the heart he had just broken.

But my heart didn’t heal overnight.  Over the course of these six-and-a-half years, I have pieced together my heart with the help of my friends, family, God, and my Dad. I am happy to say that now my heart is healed.  I know my Dad didn’t mean to break it, and I am the person I am today because of my once broken heart.  I am also so grateful for the people who have helped me heal it.  I pray that it will never break into those many pieces again, but that’s “just part of it,” as my Dad would say.  Part of this thing called life is about all the pieces it takes to make it a great one.  And I know that he is so very happy that my heart is healed and how I have given it to a man that far exceeds his and my expectations, the Fish Farmer.  Now, I am looking forward to everything my healed heart has to give in the years to come.

To sum it up, my heart is full this Father’s Day, and I wish all those Fathers out there a day of heart felt wishes and a blessed day.  To my readers, thank you for giving me an outlet to share stories of my Dad and the story of my once broken and now healed heart.  To my Pops, thank you for giving me your heart.