Jocelyn has been saying “Da-da” quite a bit over the past few days. That word seemed to have dropped from her vocabulary since Jon has been gone. I’m not sure what has brought it back but whenever she says it I find a picture or video of him and show it to her to make sure she knows what she is saying. Last night when I pulled up a few videos of him on the computer she smiled so big it hurt my heart. She has no idea yet what she has lost. She might not be grieving with me now but I know she will in a different way later. She will feel his absence in the various stages of her life.

Everyone needs to know the love of a daddy. It’s a love I can’t give to her no matter how much I love her and how much I try to be everything she needs. I will still be missing that piece. The only thing that breaks my heart more than the thought of her calling someone else “daddy” is the thought that she might not ever have someone to call “daddy”.

At least she has pictures and videos with him. She can see how much she was loved by him, even if she has no memories of him. The child that I carry won’t have anything like that to hold on to. Jon didn’t even know of this baby’s existence so I don’t even have a story of how Jon reacted to the news. I don’t know how I can ever make up for that.

I don’t want their lives to be marked by the absence of their father. So I pray and believe that God fills in all of the holes that Jon’s absence has left in the lives of our children.

(I’ve decided to end my blogs with verses from now on. Even if my heart has a hard time feeling the truth in them, I will choose to believe them anyways.)

 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing;
Psalm 68 : 5-6