My Hero

One of the finest compliments I ever received was from a woman in my church. She said, “You remind me of Father Tim.” That was years ago, before she got to know me. Sigh. 

Father Timothy Kavanagh is a retired Episcopal priest who lives with his wife Cynthia in the North Carolina town of Mitford. He’s retired now, in his 70’s, and when he served as a pastor, he didn't have a big church and he wasn't a well-known speaker or writer. But still, he’s one of my heroes, and it would always be a compliment to be compared to him.

Father Tim and I are very different. He's Episcopalian, I've been a Baptist most of my life. He didn't marry till he was 62 and I've been married since I was 20. He’s a Southerner, born in Mississippi, and I've lived all my life in the West. Father Tim has one son, still in graduate school and not yet married. My two sons have completed college and are both married with children of their own.

But despite a lot of differences, Tim Kavanagh is a man I’m proud to know, and someone I aspire to be like. He is a man of prayer, and I wish to be, too. He loves people and they know it. I love people, but sometimes they don’t know it.  Father Tim consistently shares the gospel and regularly sees God’s grace transform the unlikeliest of people. I've seen Jesus save people, but long for more.

Maybe Father Tim isn't everybody’s idea of a hero, but he is mine.

And he isn't even real. Not in a conventional way. If you don’t already know, Father Tim is the creation of author Jan Karon, who wrote the first in a series of wonderful books about the fictional town of Mitford back in 1994. She just finished another one, Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good. But you should start with At Home in Mitford.

Don’t believe it when people tell you fiction isn't true. Of course it’s true. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” Jesus told great, eternally true stories that were “made up” - a father with two lost sons, a rich man and a poor man who end up in different places in eternity, a persistent widow, a kind Samaritan.

And I have a hero named Father Tim.