Death is sad, but maybe there's still reason to be hope.

I was three and he was sick. Heart disease, exacerbated by drinking, smoking, and who knows what else.

He died that year. And thus tore the curtain of my life, top to bottom, exposing my heart to great hurt...though I didn't yet know it.

Two years later, my mother remarried, to a man I'd later refer to as "dad," "Ron," "stepfather" and "jackass." Each had merit.

Over the next ten years, Ron sprinkled in loving moments (days out on the boat) and fun moments (buying me the Power Wheels Ford F-150 Bigfoot when he moved in was a masterstroke) with a lot of indifferent ones. Now 26 years later, I know that he wasn't actually indifferent, but that he was simply hurt himself (see: human) and his defense mechanisms didn't let him to care for me well. So from 5 to 15, he was present but not accounted for.

I had one dad, and he was dead.

As high school began, my animosity and resentment towards my stepfather were at full boil.

As I was to learn manhood, he was still largely absent. But after going to church for many years, I actually began to trust God. Christ. And one of the first things I was naturally conflicted about was my treatment of my stepfather.

I began to care for him better (which is amazing all by itself because I was wholly ridiculous). And then a miracle happened:

The man changed.

A 60-year old man was broken by a sarcastic, hurt teenage boy who decided to hug him and say "I love you"—though neither of them deserved it. Hence, love changed him.

When I left for college three years later, I'll be damned if I didn't watch that man cry as he and my mother dropped me off at school.

His heart truly had changed.

Unfortunately, his heart was far too similar to the heart of my birth father (see: human, again). Though the disease was different, the result was the same. This time, the culprit was congestive heart failure, aided by poor eating, too much Pepsi and 60 years of smoking.

And though the death of my stepfather was also of supreme sadness, there was also joy in it.

Because regardless of how much the aforementioned affected each of our lives (another post for another time), I am thankful that I got time. 30+ years of life, three with my birth father and 26 with my stepfather.

I wouldn't have ever guessed or planned the script for how those 30 years played out, but I'm thankful for how they did.

For both my dads. For each day. God can and does use all for good regardless, and I hold on to that truth. Particularly now.