The Ceiling and the Floor

By Jonathan Ryan Patterson

I grew up in Tucson, Arizona.

Desert dirt, dirt bike exhaust, and Bible pages. That was my dad’s world. By default it became mine too.

Weekends weren’t optional. You were either in a Bible study, doing yardwork, or heading out into the desert on a dirt bike or a dune buggy with boots that were going to come back dirty. Sometimes all three before noon. He didn’t negotiate it. He didn’t explain it. That’s just what we did.

He was tough. Strong-willed in a way that doesn’t bend when you push on it. I didn’t get away with much. Didn’t matter how I framed it. He had already seen the angle before I finished the sentence.

And he wasn’t raising me to chase things. That was never the point. Not money, not status, not whatever the world was selling. The priority was Christ. That was the ceiling and the floor. Everything else was just noise.

I didn’t always understand that when I was living inside of it.

I do now.

What he left me wasn’t financial. It was his prayers. His testimony. The way he served God without making it a show. That’s the legacy he was actually building the whole time. Not a bank account with my name on it. Something that would hold when things got hard.

It held.

I look at what I’m trying to build now and what I want to pass to my sons and I understand it. Legacy moves in one direction. Father to son. I just had to get old enough to recognize what he was building. Wisdom doesn’t show up early. It shows up when you’ve lived enough to earn it.

He knew that. He built accordingly.

Thanks Dad. Happy Father’s Day.