4/14/21

Dear Atlas,

It’s me, your Dad.

Lately, these mornings have felt like a final countdown, even more than usual. I want to feel ready for you, but I admit that I struggle to.

I’ve wanted more than anything to set a solid example for you to follow. However, I’ve forged a path that looks a lot more like the one to avoid than the one to follow blindly. I’ve wrestled with my own focus, sobriety, temperament, and confidence.

I don’t know where things will land, Son. I truly don’t. You come to me in all of my dreams, in many different shapes and sizes—yet, when I wake up in the morning, I feel like you are a million miles away.

More than anything, I hope your Mom and I are able to make it. The problem is that my confidence in this hope is fading . . . fast. If something doesn’t change immediately, I fear you’ll be reading these letters someday from afar—and I’ll be on the other end of the line, hoping you can piece together the full story.

I had so many different ideas of how my life would go, Atlas. Yet, all of those storylines have led your Dad here, to this moment. And I have to trust, trust, trust God in the process that somewhere in this story is a perfect plan, more perfect than any I could have written, imagined, or commanded.

Love,

Dad