I have been
too scared to write to you for weeks. Doesn’t speak highly of me, but for so
long I have been worried to hold onto you, because I knew it would make it
harder if I had to let go. You came to your mother and I at the end of a long
painful journey, one we did not expect, and one that forever changed us. When I
think of you I think of your mother crying on a bed in Phoenix, sure that she
had lost another child. I remember of sitting in a doctors office and seeing
your fragile heartbeat and thinking I would never see your face. Finally I
think of Gods faithfulness, and that my son has a deep strength that will
forever be a part of him.
Your mother and I lost 3
pregnancies before you came to us. Pregnancy doesn’t really do justice to what
we lost. We lost 3 little lives that we longed to know. I know there is a
reason, perhaps they couldn’t live, maybe we were to learn some lesson, and
maybe it was just terrible luck. No matter what the cause, you were longed for,
prayed for, and desired above anything else in our lives.
We found out about you a few
weeks before we were planning to move to Georgia for a new job I had taken. Two
days before I left your mother started bleeding, and we were sure we had lost
you. We rushed to the doctors office and sat silently in a cold room staring at
a black and white screen, waiting in agony and apprehension for the all too
familiar image that would fail to show life. Then there was a sound, whooshing
quickly, and the shape of your newly forming body around your tiny heart; my
son, fighting for his life; and I, powerless to help.
In laymen’s terms your mother
had a bleed where her placenta had failed to attach properly to her uterus, and
the excess blood was literally crushing you. In the doctors somber words “we
had a high probability of miscarriage”. The next day I left on a 3 day road
trip to our new home, where you would be born months later. I did not know if I
would ever see your heartbeat again, I left the home and family I loved and
felt as empty as the vast expanses I drove through.
All these many long months later
you are here, I can hold you in my arms, look into your eyes, admire what God
has created, and your mother carried and given life to. You were born at 3:55am
on a Friday; we named you Deacon Russell Harding. Your middle name is that of
my father’s father. He was born in Michigan, died in Arizona, had two sons,
fought the Japanese Imperial Army in World War 2, married and loved one woman
his entire life, and would have liked to have known you, and someday long from
now will.
There is too much to write in
one sitting about how our lives while waiting for you were changed, but it will
be written, so you can know your father, and hopefully learn something to
prepare you to face the challenges that await. I write to your sister about my
life, what I learn, what I struggle with and rejoice in, and how I love her
mother. I will write to you similarly; however ours will be a different bond.
No better or worse than a father and his daughter, but there is something
unique between a father and his son. I will shape your life whether you accept
it or not, I know this because of how my father shaped mine.
I will do my best to show you
what a man is supposed to be, while at the same time learning and struggling
myself. I will endeavor to show you faith, how to treat a woman, how to love
one woman, lead your family, be compassionate, courageous, humble, honest,
strong, gentile, and respectable. I will fail you and learn from it, I will
raise you up with our family above all other things. You will have my love, no
matter your path in life or missteps. If you cure cancer or sweep floors you
will be my pride, as long as you work honestly and with perseverance. You will
know me more than any man on this earth, and will be bound to me, you will be
my legacy.
I love you now as I did when I
first saw your heart on that screen. I will love you all my life.
