Lessons from a Daddy's Girl

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A daddy’s girl. That’s what I was called most of my life.

Ironically, I always thought that description was a little skewed because I honestly loved my mom just as much as my dad, and I built a stronger friendship with her later in life.

Even now, with both my parents in heaven, most people who knew me growing up would describe me as a daddy’s girl.

I get it; I really do. I also understand how blessed I was to grow up with both parents.

Currently, around 19 million children in America live in a fatherless home, with 49% of that number consisting of fatherless girls.

Unlike so many girls today, I was abundantly blessed to have spent so many hours of my childhood with my father. Thankfully, I loved and enjoyed the same things he did – all kinds of sports and outdoor activities, including yard work. Some of my earliest memories revolve around the things I did with my dad.

My daddy was a teacher, a basketball and baseball coach, and later, a principal. I traveled to school each day with my dad, and I attended school events that he attended: every game, every play, every meeting, everything. If he went, I wanted to go with him, and I most often did.

So, it’s safe to say that I am a daddy’s girl, and that’s probably why I laughed so loudly during a recent time of personal Bible study about Caleb and his daughter Achsah from Joshua 15 and Judges 1.

I’ve always loved the story of Caleb and Joshua, who were among the twelve spies sent by Moses to scout the new land promised to the children of God. Yes, the land was beautiful. Yes, it was productive. And yes, it was abundant in every way. The spies even brought back unbelievably large produce as an example of this promised land’s waiting abundance.

But … the land was also full of giants.

And ten of the spies said those giants were just too big to be conquered. Caleb and Joshua were the lone holdouts who believed that God was more than able to help them take their promised land from those giants. But instead of choosing faith over fear, the Hebrews spent the next four decades wandering in the wilderness.

As a child, I always marveled at how quickly those spies forgot that God literally separated the Red Sea into two gigantic walls of water and allowed His children to walk across that seabed into total freedom on dry ground. God even destroyed the quickly approaching Egyptian army by collapsing those same miraculous walls of water.

As the children of God finally entered their promised land forty years later, those same two men, Caleb and Joshua, were the only men still alive from the original group that fled Egypt. So, Caleb was the oldest man in the crowd when it came time for Joshua, as the newly appointed leader, to finally parcel out the promised land. Old Caleb still wanted the very mountain that he had spied out for himself long ago – and he was granted that exact land.

Now, there were still giants in his desired parcel of land, big and bothersome giants in a particular city called Kiriath-sepher. But Caleb was undaunted; he simply offered the hand of his beautiful and only daughter, Achsah, in marriage to the valiant man of God who successfully conquered that city and its giants.

A beautiful wife and beautiful land were excellent incentives to conquer those last few pesky giants, and the man who accomplished that task and won those prizes was named Othniel. But his heroic feats were not my favorite part of this story.

For me, the best part of the story occurred when the newly married couple realized that their land was marvelous, but it contained no viable source of water for family, crops, or herds. That lack of water was a very real and pressing need, one that Othniel evidently did feel right about bringing to his new father-in-law, according to details in Judges 1.

Mighty giant slayer Othniel need not have worried, though, because he had won and married a daddy’s girl – and she knew exactly what to do.

In fact, Achsah had no reservation whatsoever in asking Caleb for even more than he had already given her and her new husband. So, she simply climbed on a donkey and headed to see her daddy about some water.

When Caleb saw his daughter riding up – and before she even disembarked from that donkey – he asked her the most amazing question: “What wilt thou?” (Judges 1:14, KJV).

In other words, Caleb asked her, “What do you want from me?”

At this point, I laughed aloud, because that scene was familiar to me. Like my own father, Caleb obviously loved his daughter. But he also knew her well enough to know that she had an agenda. She wanted something, and he loved her so much that his heart was already set to give her more than she asked for. He gave her two water sources, an upper spring and a lower one.

Wow. Caleb gave her a double portion, twice what she “Achsah” for.

But after I had my little laugh over my bad pun and the water agenda of this biblical daddy’s girl, I began pondering the modern significance of this story. I thought of how many times I’ve come before my heavenly Father’s throne of grace and mercy with a selfish agenda.

Like Achsah, it’s almost laughable how often throughout my life I’ve prayerfully approached God with a real need – immediately after He had already blessed me abundantly above what I imagined or deserved. Yet, there I was, ready once again to ask God for something more.

Like Caleb, my loving heavenly Father knew me so well (better than I knew myself) that He knew exactly what my requests were before I even voiced them. And just like Caleb, my heavenly Father was ready and willing to provide the Living Water I needed.

Interestingly enough, in his examination of this same story, Reverend Charles Spurgeon summed up this father-daughter exchange with a challenging comparison: “Caleb said to his daughter, ‘What wilt thou?’ and Christ says to you to-night, ‘Dear child of mine, what dost thou want of me? Blood-bought daughter, what dost thou want of me?’”

In other words, He is still asking, “What do you want from me, my daughter?”

Spurgeon went on to explain: “As you ought to know what you want, you are to ask for it. God’s way of giving is through our asking. I suppose that He does that in order that He may give twice over, for a prayer is itself a blessing as well as the answer to prayer.”

Well … if that’s the case, then, go ahead, get my donkey out of the barn, and saddle it up, so I can go ask my heavenly Father for what I need. After all, I am a Daddy’s girl!

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