It is over ten years now since my father passed away, but it is this year that I discovered the truth of my father in a more complete way when my sister visited us from France for our son’s wedding. My sister is a past school principal and a historian. She told me the rest of our family story that she had received from our father in his passing.

I had known before that my father had been involved with Bletchley Park, the code-breakers, and I had known some of the areas of the world he had been in from photographs of his. I had not known the extent of his work. He had been with Sir Winston Churchill in the War Room in London serving there as well, as an Enigma operator.

It explained why our neighbor across the road when I was a boy had been one of Churchill’s bodyguards, Mr. Holloway, who had slept in the War Room when the bombs dropped on them. Mr. H’s fireplace was adorned with Churchill’s cigar butts.

When I visited the War Room that had just been opened in London for the first time there were two beds for policemen there. One bed had a name they knew but not the other. I was able to tell the curators the name of the other policeman who had slept in the bed.

This secret of my father’s, unknown to me, explained why when I had gone abroad in Europe I had been followed and my hotel room searched. It explained why when I had held some meetings at my house in Hackbridge, near Carshalton, I had been joined by a man from MI-6, and also a man with Signals Intelligence from the British Army. It seemed so friendly of them. My father was very good at keeping secrets and I was very bad at catching on.

I didn’t understand why my Uncle Robert gave me a massive book of Churchill’s on the occasion of his 90th birthday.

Now, as all of this is apparent, I feel so foolish. I couldn’t fathom why my father was so eager for me to be successful in mathematics; he had a friend of his try and teach me, not just math but even Einstein’s theory of relativity. My father didn’t live to see me work as an IT security person for an American bank. I think he would have liked that.

Now of course, I am following my father’s other passion. The Lord was his shepherd and Dad traveled the world with the Word on his lips. He had been so pleased when I started properly going to church when I was in America and when I told him I was studying to be a preacher.

I had been adopted by my mother and father at the age of six weeks, so no DNA had supplied these interests I have now acquired, only the DNA of examples — which in this case were discipleship and love. I have no idea of my mother’s true story. I can only guess it is still a secret.

It is only when we look back that we can begin to see a pattern in our lives, not just our own parents working behind the scenes but God himself moving chess pieces of fate for our ultimate salvation.

Colin Brown is the pastor of Boardman’s Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on Locust Road.