How Dave Ramsey changed my life.

604104_10154787327470721_5777297252343560944_nDave Ramsey changed my life.

No, I’m not talking about the amazing financial guy (who also happens to be my first cousin.)

I’m taking about my dad.

David Lawrence Ramsey was born March 15, 1935. He has a brother and sister, three kids and a wife. He served our country, owned a business and worked hard his whole life. He believed in an 8-year-old when he said, “I want to become an editorial cartoonist.” He also believed in a 22-year-old college graduate who ended up as a high school janitor. I know he is proud of a 48-year-old father of three.

I know. He told me yesterday.

This will probably be the last Father’s Day dad knows he has a son. Dementia is robbing him of so many of our shared memories. A man who waterskied at 78 is now barely able to walk with a walker. Time and a horrible disease are stealing him from my sisters and me. I can’t tell you how much it hurts to watch him being robbed like that.

As we sat in the lobby together, I told him of all the times he changed my life. When I was six, we were working on his 1953 Ford Pickup that he was restoring. At one point the wrench slipped and he crushed his fingers. He swore loudly, one of the first times I had heard him do that. I looked at him and said, “Isn’t that wrong?” He said, “Yes. But I try to make up for it by being good to people.”

Dad’s theology always made sense to me. He truly WAS good to people. I saw him help so many when he could have made a fortune off of them instead. I would have bought used car from him.

We talked about all the times we waterskied at my grandparent’s cabin in Tennessee. I teased him about trying to kill me when he’d try to make me fall. He grinned. Some memories are stickier than others!

Dad and I are very different people. He played basketball and baseball. I played football. He loved working on cars. I like drawing pictures of them. But I am very much his son.

As his light flickers out, his memory lives on in my sisters and me. All three of us can say without a doubt that he loved us more than he even loved himself.

Father’s Day is for most dads. Dad’s Day is how I celebrate my father.

Thank you Dave Ramsey. You changed my life.

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