Tonight I sat down to write about you. How you are my solid foundation. My rock. My strength. My shield. But then I was lost for words and nothing but tears came when my mind was grasping for words. In more ways that I can explain, our lives have been turned up-side down the last two weeks. And yet, you’ve been tirelessly working to help make them feel right-side-up for me. I know that often people will say they don’t know how they’d live without someone…but I couldn’t be any more serious and literal in saying I genuinely don’t even know how to do life without you. I feel abundantly lucky and blessed that God has gifted you to me and that you are the one I spend most my days, most of my minutes, with. I have long thought you were the greatest husband on the planet, but you have proved to me in a multitude of ways that you are the very best of fathers. I could write pages, perhaps volumes, on how I’d define a good father…your name would fall next to each one. I had never loved anyone as much as I’d loved you. Until I met our Son. But the three of us share a love that, I’m learning, can withstand any and all hardships. Even ones I never would have thought we’d be tested to endure. That phrase: iron sharpens iron? That’s us. But that’s only because of you.

Jason, since I cannot think of an accurate way to thank you for loving me, protecting me, and saving me all these years, I decided to share the first letter I’d written to you on your very first Father’s Day. If I hadn’t already written it, I would have laughed and told you I felt the EXACT same way as the author. And the pictures of you truly living this out, even years later, speaks more than my dictionary of words ever could. Nothing’s changed since then, my Love. Except my heart’s stretched out wider and it beats loader for you than ever before. Can you even imagine that?

Thank you for loving me and Eli and for being the anchor of our lives when we are all lost in the waves. I love you more than life. Happy Father’s Day!

xx Shannon (& Eli)

I sat there hoping no one had noticed it was missing. And surely if they had, was it even possible they’d know that I had it? In my desk?! I mean, how often does anyone look at those old pictures anyway? My 7th grade hand kept writing. I sat in Mr. Johnson’s class that year with only 4 other kids. Giddily I laughed to myself during a test because I’d taken your picture–your class confirmation picture–off the wall of the school’s hallway and stuck it in my desk. Only my two closest friends knew it was in there, but every time I had to reach for a pencil, pull out a folder, or put my things away, there you were: staring up at me through an old framed piece of glass. I thought for sure, you were looking right at me. And how it was that I was going to land you, even though you were now a cool, public-school-8th-grader, I didn’t quite know. But I was going to keep a picture of you in my mind (and maybe my desk!) until I figured it out. You were everything I thought I wanted…

…until I got you. And then you made me cry. I stared up at the ceiling the night you brought me home after our first official date in the 12th grade. It had been somewhat of a blind date because even though you’d known OF me all these years, you didn’t really know me. And while I had studied your face and every move for half my life, I hadn’t really known you either. I laid in bed that night crying. A tear stained pillow held my crazy-smiling head. I had no idea how I’d done it, but I knew I’d made an impression on you. I don’t think I slept at all that night. All these years, all I wanted was a chance. And you had been more than I’d ever imagined. You were everything I thought I wanted.

…it’s just that even I didn’t know you’d become more that even that. I had no idea you’d also be capable of becoming the greatest daddy a little boy could ever have. You dote on our child when you’re with him and never back out on a chance for that to occur. You offer to hold him, feed him, change him, play with him, and snuggle him, melting my heart. During our first few weeks home as a new family, you got up with me, at every-single-night-feeding, just to be with us. A few times, I stumbled upon a clean kitchen after an early morning feeding, or a dinner-filled table after I’d laid him down for the night. I love hearing you two laughing at the littlest of things. And the way you scream at me to come see how far he’s scooted across the room. And every so often, I brush a small tear from my cheek when, through the baby monitor, I overhear the little things you tell him about me. Your devotion to being a father is something I wasn’t sure was possible. How a single person can uphold so many positions without failing any of them amazes me. And I wonder if you are secretly hiding a cape under your shirt when you leave for work each morning.

You, my love, are the single (aside from Eli!) greatest joy of my life. And I can’t wait to hear our little boy tell his friends one day that his daddy is better than theirs. For in my heart, I’ll smile because he’s probably right!  

–Father’s Day 2012, The Hidden Cape

We love you Jason. Abundan much. ♥