A Letter to My Husband on Father's Day

This weekend is a big one for our family. Not only are we celebrating the Daddy in our house, but we're also celebrating his homecoming one year ago. One year ago Jamy returned home to our family after being gone for seven months. One year ago we were celebrating answered prayers, changed hearts, and a family forever changed.

This year, it's been good for my heart to look back. To be reminded of the work that God has done and continues to do in our family, and celebrate God's continuous work of redemption. This was the letter I wrote to Jamy last year on Father's Day and is just as true today.

Jamy,

So much has happened in our family since celebrating your last father's day. You've left our family and come back home.

But the father who left his children 7 months ago, the father who left his children even long before that, is not the father who has returned this Father's Day weekend.

You have come back stronger.

You're learning that strength is found in humility and admitting your weaknesses. That true strength is admitting you have none on your own and resting on God's work in your life.

You have come back braver.  

You have a quiet confidence; not in yourself, but in finding your identity in whose you are.  

You have come back transformed.

God's miraculous and redemptive work in your life has utterly changed you.  

The man you have become, and are becoming, is one that I'm incredibly proud of. The work you've done, and allowed God to do through you in these past several months had been nothing short of redemptive. It has begun to change you and the very fabric of our family in amazing and beautiful ways.

So on a day I would imagine it might be hard to look back and see the faults, the failings, and the pain, it's good to look forward at the new life God has given you as a father.

A new picture of what Jesus would look like with skin on in our house.

A new legacy to give your children of following hard after Jesus.

And when you keep passionately pursuing him, 

I will be proud if Jackson becomes a man who looks like you 

and and if Isabelle marries a man like you 

and someday they become fathers like you...

I love you, Jamy.  Happy Father's Day.

S