Chapter Nine: A Father's Message—A Farewell and a Promise Written in Love
I do not want to write this chapter as a theological essay.
This is a letter from Daddy to you.
So I want, as much as possible, to preserve the voice in which I wrote these words in October 2024.
At that time, your departure from us was still very recent.
There were many things I still could not explain.
And there were still many tears I had not finished shedding.
⸻
My dear Little Wheat,
As I write this letter, it is the forty-seventh day since you left us.
There is already a touch of autumn in the wind outside.
But Daddy's heart still seems to be stopped in that August afternoon.
I still remember holding you.
I remember us singing hymns.
I remember everyone weeping.
I remember kissing you for the last time.
Some memories stay with us not because we try to remember them,
but because we loved too deeply ever to forget.
⸻
Do you know?
Your whole life was only nineteen months.
Yet Daddy often feels that you took me into places I had never truly entered in all the decades before.
You never opened your mouth to preach a sermon,
yet you made me rethink every sermon I had preached.
You did not walk a very long road,
yet you took Daddy into the deepest and most painful places of faith.
You did not grow to adulthood,
yet for the first time you made me truly understand:
Being a father is not possessing a child.
It is loving him, walking beside him, and finally acknowledging:
his life never truly belonged to me.
⸻
When you were born, Daddy once prayed to God:
“Lord, this child is Yours. I am willing to dedicate him to You.”
At that time, I did not know what those words would mean.
I thought dedication might mean:
one day watching you grow up,
teaching you to pray,
taking you to church,
reading the Bible with you,
watching you come to know Jesus,
and perhaps one day watching you walk the path God had prepared for you.
I never imagined
that nineteen months later,
I would have to face the word “entrust” again in a completely different sense.
⸻
When you were sick,
Daddy asked God again and again to heal you.
I truly hoped for a miracle.
I hoped that one day the doctors would tell us:
“His condition is improving.”
I hoped you would open your eyes.
I hoped to carry you home again.
I even imagined in my heart:
If you recovered,
Daddy would stand in the pulpit and tell everyone
how God had heard our prayers.
But things did not unfold in the direction Daddy asked for.
Even today, this is something I cannot easily explain.
Nor am I willing to manufacture a simple answer for God.
⸻
Little Wheat,
in my deepest grief, Daddy once imagined:
perhaps one day,
when Daddy has finished his earthly journey,
you will come and take my hand;
perhaps we will meet again in God's renewed world;
perhaps then,
there will be no more PICU,
no machines,
no farewell,
no afternoon when Daddy had to let you go.
These are pictures in the heart of a father who misses his child.
Daddy cannot say that every detail of what I imagine is a fact Scripture has already told us.
But Daddy can tell you:
I hope to see you again.
Because in the end, my hope is not built on my own imagination,
but on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
⸻
Paul writes:
“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” —1 Corinthians 15:20, KJV
So Daddy still waits in hope.
Not because I know every detail of heaven.
But because I know:
Jesus has risen.
⸻
Little Wheat,
you are the pride of Daddy's life.
You are the truest sermon I have ever preached,
the deepest sigh in my prayers,
and the most unforgettable song in my worship.
Thank you for coming into our lives.
Thank you for letting Daddy know
that it is possible to love someone this deeply.
Thank you for letting our family learn again:
how to cry,
how to pray,
how to stay with one another,
how to hold on to Christ when there are no answers.
⸻
Daddy still has to keep walking the road ahead.
Continue shepherding.
Continue preaching.
Continue loving Mommy.
Continue serving the church.
Continue telling people the gospel.
Continue learning how to be faithful.
I will not forget you.
But neither will I stop living the life God has still entrusted to me because I miss you.
If your nineteen months truly left a seed in Daddy's life,
then Daddy is willing to let that seed continue to bear fruit.
Not to turn you into another Savior.
We have only one Savior: Jesus.
But to let your brief life continually remind Daddy:
Time is short.
Love people while there is time.
The gospel is true.
Death does not have the final word.
⸻
In the original letter, I once wrote:
“When I finish the mission God has entrusted to me on earth, I will come find you. Then you must take my hand and lead me into the garden of heaven...”
That is still a picture Daddy treasures deeply. The original manuscript does indeed preserve these words.
Today, I am willing to leave it here.
But beside it, I also gently write one sentence:
This is a picture born of a father's longing, not an eyewitness report about the unseen world.
I do not need to erase this imagination.
I only need to know honestly what it is.
⸻
Thank you for coming into our lives.
Thank you for letting Daddy love you.
Thank you for staying for nineteen months,
so that through all the years that remain to me,
I will know that I was once changed so deeply by such a small life.
Until the day Christ makes all things new,
Daddy will keep walking
with love,
with tears,
and also with hope.
Your forever Daddy,
Paul Zhang
Written in Indianapolis October 2024