Dennis Jernigan is best known for his music. Songs like, “You Are My All in All,” “We Will Worship the Lamb of Glory,” “Thank You,” and “Who Can Satisfy My Soul (There Is a Fountain),” are still used widely in churches around the world. Dennis, along with his wife, Melinda, raised their nine children together on a farm in northeastern Oklahoma. Now they are investing their lives in the lives of their many grandchildren. Dennis Jernigan’s children’s stories were first written as a means of teaching his own children about the character and nature of God. Now that his children are grown and out of the nest, it is time for the stories to be shared with the rest of the world.
When I was a boy, I never heard my father say the words “I love you” to me. Ever. As time went by and teen years turned into my college career, these words were never uttered. They seemed to always be on the cusp of his heart, but never breached the air of the spoken realm. It would not be until well after I had married and grown into a man in my midthirties that I summoned up the courage to ask him why he had never spoken his love to me: “Dad, why did you never tell me you loved me?” His answer spoke volumes to my soul, ringing deeply out of the past and with volume into the present: “My dad never told me he loved me…so I did not know how to tell you. But Son, I love you.”
After that encounter, everything changed. I could not help but wonder how a man who never said the words could have acted in the ways he did unless it was love. As I pondered my life and looked back, I discovered clue after clue and compiled evidence upon evidence to the contrary. The greatest expression of love is the laying down of life for the object of one’s love. My dad had done that ever since I could remember, and this story is but one of those beautiful memories I hold dearer than mere words. This is the true story of such love: The Incredible Growing Basketball Goal.
