This year July 4th increased significantly in significance as a holiday for our family. Now we will not only celebrate the birth of the USA on July 4th but also the birth of our second granddaughter Cosette Ivanna Whitaker Suko. Ironically, our granddaughter is not an US citizen but I’m sure she will one day learn that she has some US roots and I hope that she will one day be able to visit the US. For now her home is Chile where our daughter Naomi and her husband Jorge live.
Right: Me with our daughter Naomi in 1999
When our daughter Naomi married just a few years ago many people asked us how we dealt with the difficulty of our daughter being so far away. The answer for us was always very simple, we’d rather have our daughter far away from us and close to God rather than close to us and far from God.
Yes, I know theoretically it’s possible to have both, but in our case knowing that Naomi was following God’s will, seeing that she was marring a godly man, and believing that she was in God’s hands was and is a great comfort to us. We have always tried to raise our children so that they can eventually leave us and live responsible faith filled lives of their own whether near or far from us. It’s a joy to see this happen even if it’s halfway across the world in Chile!
Of course, we do miss daughter and maybe even more we miss seeing our grandchildren. We hope that one day we will get to meet our newest little Cosette and kiss her soft cheeks. For now we will just continue to make a lot of video calls and pray that faith in will be passed on to the next generation!
Meanwhile I’ll keep working on my role as a grandfather of two precious little girls!
Children’s children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children.
Proverbs 17:6
