A letter from Dad, for my children.
My dear children,
One day you will want to know who your father was before he was your father. So let me tell you, honestly, the way I always will.
I was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I did not have the kind of start many children have. My parents were young, and they were not married when they had me. In the eyes of the world I was an accident. But I have never believed that, not for one day. In God's eyes I was born on purpose, for His purpose — and what God says about me matters more than anything my mother or father could say.
I have never once asked either of them how I came to be. I do not need to. Like every child of Adam, I had no say in it, so I carry no shame about it. It is simply where my story begins.
I was raised by both sides of my family, and they could not have been more different. My mother's side was very poor. There were days with nothing to eat. We did not always have proper clothes, or even the things you need to stay clean. Poverty was real, and I felt it. And yet — this is the strange part — on that side I was loved. I have no bad memory of them. I was free there. I played outside all day and came home only to eat, to sleep, or to help with a chore.
My father's side had much more. They gave me most of what a body could need. But the one thing I needed most was missing there. I never felt at home. I had plenty, and I was lonely in the middle of it. That taught me something I have never forgotten: a full table is not the same as a full heart.
Let me tell you about my mother. For a time she lived in another city. While I was still very small, my grandmother once took me there to visit her for a whole summer. It was just the two of us — my mother and me. I had a wonderful time. I was loved and cared for, and I still hold that summer close to my heart. It is one of my happiest memories.
In those years she had married a man in that city, and together they had a son — my half-brother. But then her husband died, and everything changed for her. His own parents had already passed away, so it was his distant relatives who turned on her. The man had left behind some property — trucks, a rental house, and the home they lived in — and those relatives wanted all of it for themselves. In that place, in those days, a woman's rights were not respected the way they should be, and there was no one close to stand up for her. They made life hell for her — there is no softer word for it — until she had to leave that city and come back to Addis Ababa. She brought my half-brother with her, and the two of them moved in with her own mother — my grandmother. She had no work. She lived on what little she had saved, and when that ran out she began selling her jewelry, piece by piece, until there was nothing left.
Not long after she came back, she became sick. I do not fully know what the illness was. What I know is that the doctors sent her home because they knew they could not save her. She went back to her own mother's house — the same house where she herself had been born — and she passed away there, with her mother and her little boy near her. I was about twelve. I have often thought that in a country with better hospitals she might have lived. So many people there die simply because the care is not there. But I will never know the whole truth of it, and I have made my peace with that.
I did not meet my own father face to face until I was in grade school, when he came from the United States to visit. Before that he was only a voice on the phone and a few photographs. Because of him and his mother, I received a good education and the things I needed. His mother loved me and cared for me, and I will be grateful for her all my life. May she rest in peace — she was loved and respected by many. From the rest of that side of the family I received very little, and that is the part that made my childhood hard. You do not need the details; I will carry them to the grave. Some things we hand to God and do not pass on.
I came to America because of my father, when I was about seventeen, and I am grateful for it. He did his best to send me to a good school. But he and I never really had a father-and-son closeness, because we had never spent the time together to build it — and that is a hard thing to start when you are already grown. In my last year of school, life became difficult for him, and that reached me too. Still, I worked hard. I kept my grades above a 4.0, and I went on to university in California. And then, for a season, I stepped away from nearly all of my relatives.
My father is still living, here in the States. He has built a good life, remarried, and has four children — three girls and a boy. We talk from time to time, when things are good between us. His wife has always been kind to me, and she tries to build the bridge whenever she can. I am thankful for that. Time and God have a way of softening things that once felt too hard to touch.
I met your mother through a friend. I will not lay out the whole story, but we knew quickly, and we were married young, in our twenties, at a courthouse. We have been married ever since — and by the grace of God, we still are.
I will be honest about my faith in those years: it was in a bad place. Then one day I stumbled, almost by accident, onto a sermon by a brother named Zac Poonen on the internet. Something broke open in me. I began to take God seriously. Through that teaching, and old Christian books, and the grace of God, everything changed. We later made our home in Ohio, where your mother had gone to school, and that is how we came to be here.
Now let me tell you a few small, ordinary things about your father, so you remember the man and not only his story. I love soccer — it is my favorite game to watch and to play. I love a good cup of coffee, the way my people have for generations. I love to read; a good book is one of my quiet joys. And I love working with my hands, fixing and building things around the house. These are small things, but they are me, and I hope you will remember your dad in them.
And then God blessed us with you — every single one of you. You changed our lives, and we would not trade you for anything in this world. We love you with our whole hearts.
As your parents, we are trying to train you up in the way you should go. My deepest hope is that God would be well pleased — first with my own life, then your mother's, and then with each of you. By His grace we will get there. We just keep marching, trying to become more like Christ in every part of life. That is my job as your father, and God helps me do it.
So here is how I want you to see me. I am your earthly father, yes. But more than that, I am someone running ahead of you on the same road — a man bought by the blood of Jesus, for His glory.
And I want to be very clear with you about one thing, because many Christians are not. I do not believe that once a person is saved they can simply coast, sure they are safe no matter how they live. The Bible warns us otherwise. Think of the people God brought out of Egypt: they were rescued, they walked out free — and yet a whole generation fell in the wilderness and never entered the promised land, because they stopped believing and stopped following. "So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief." (Hebrews 3:19) That is a warning for me, too. Being rescued at the start is not the same as finishing the journey.
So I do not take my salvation for granted. I press on. I keep my eyes on the promise, because I know that if I ever let go of it — if I ever lost hope in it — I would be lost. I am not willing to lose sight of it. So I keep walking in righteousness, trying to become more like Christ — myself first, and then with your mother and all of you right beside me. That is the journey. We walk it together, all the way home.
Love,
— Dad
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