These were the words of my social media meme just 48 hours before the Bill Hybels story broke.

I had no idea.

The irony didn’t stop there. The news broke as I sat in a hotel room in Springfield, Missouri—the very place many years earlier my own megachurch pastor-father had his crushing public fall from grace.

It might disappoint you to know I don’t want to talk about Bill Hybels.

I’ve been his daughter. I’ve lived the hard road of the public scathing aftermath, and I know what it feels like to have your world turned upside down by printed articles and public commentaries.

No matter how old you get or how many people know your father’s name, to you, he’s just “Dad.” And the man who held you when you had a bad dream at night is the man you know.

Jim Reimer was the everyman but then again, he wasn’t. He was a blue jeans- and boots-wearing, down-to-earth fighter of the underdog. Like many bright lights, it was easy to stammer over your sentences when he came around.

A room didn’t stand a chance when Dad walked in; all the oxygen became his. I’ve never known anyone with more command or charisma.

And yet, I’ve never known anyone more complicated or tender.

Because for all that bravado, he was as fragile as a reef. Turns out, the tough guy isn’t necessarily the one who never breaks.

I watched him silently beg people to treat him like the normal man he was. But that was hard for us all.

The story is too long, but the abbreviated version is this: he lost his church over some tax trouble and wound up in a two-year sabbatical living out on a gravel road in a travel trailer. Those of us who loved him most cried ourselves to sleep at night, begging God to visit Him in the dark.

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