Unfinished Letter from My Dad

I have always said that you were my first miraculous answer to prayer. That is not necessarily completely accurate. More precisely, you are my first “recognized” miraculous answer to prayer; and that answer hasn’t totally been completed, but parts of it are still a work in progress. While a few parts haven’t been fulfilled in in way which, on the surface at least, appear to be true, that may only be MY perception. The parts that haven’t seemed to have been fulfilled, may have been, but aren’t necessarily easy for me to know or perceive for certain. Still other parts must be of faith that I will not even have a chance of knowing until both of our earthly journeys have come to and end! But for those for which I am not sure have been fulfilled as I prayed within the first few hours of YOUR journey, I will always have faith that God will answer them as prayed that day. To me, the answers that I have witnessed until now are evidence, no proof, of that. Tribulations must come. These are opportunities for our edification, or sometimes for the edification of others; not necessarily to punish or correct us!

I said that you were my first “recognized” miraculous answer. I know of at least one other that occurred before that. That would be the prayer(s) made before marrying your mother. While I sometime may have wondered, I truly believe that meeting her, and marrying her has always been a miraculous answer to my prayers offered up “way back then”!

By the way, I have, at times, tried to tell you about that prayer offered for you that day. That has always proven somewhat difficult because the request was long and detailed. I was the only one praying for a very important request, and I wanted it to be not only successful, but I wanted to cover all of the bases.

That prayer included not only that you live, but also that you be:

• healthy

That’s where the letter ends. He lost his strength before he was able to finish it. I know that this letter was a private one for me, but I wanted to share the beautiful words he wrote for me. It breaks my heart that he prayed for me to be healthy, when I have come to terms with the fact that I was never meant to grow up and be healthy – that was established on the day of my birth. Although maybe he’s in a place now where he can have a word with God and do something about that. 🙂

My dad, Joe Jerome, passed away on June 7, 2014 after a long battle with Mantle Cell Lymphoma. He had asked me for my help in setting up a blog where he could write about his cancer and his faith, but when he died without that happening, we knew he’d intended for me to have his files so that I could share the words he had written. I will be sharing his words posthumously over time, with only minor edits to fix the typos he would never have made if he hadn’t been so sick and so affected by his “chemo brain.”