By Deanna Cauthen

I lost my father to pancreatic cancer when I was 13 years old.  It was all very sudden–him getting very sick, the excruciating pain, my mother taking him to the hospital in the middle of the night, and then six weeks later, dying. Just like that, he was gone.

If you’ve never experienced it, the death of a parent, at such an early age, is one of the hardest things a child can endure.  It leaves a hole in your heart–an empty, lonely feeling like nothing else. At least, that was the way it felt for me.  Add to that the pain of not understanding why God would allow such a thing to happen and you can imagine the despair.

That was 37 years ago. Now, fast forward several years to January 13, 2001, the day I married Andrew Louis Cauthen, III. Like most people who enter into a marriage, I was in love and believed that Andrew would probably be a good husband and father, but in actuality, who really knows about these things. Only time would tell….

Well, time has told. We’ve been married, now, for almost 15 years and what did God do? He gave me a man with a great, big daddy’s heart.  I find it rather perplexing, but altogether wonderful that a God who would allow my father to exit my life at such an early age would, in turn, give me a husband who would play a part in healing the wounds of the past. But, then who can understand God?

I remember how my heart melted the first time I saw him look at Adrianna shortly after she was born.  I could clearly see that he was awestruck and he’s been that way ever since. Even at 13 years of age, he faithfully tucks her into bed at night and it blesses my heart as I watch him from the doorway of her bedroom.

But his love isn’t limited by biology. It’s been extended over and over again to his three stepchildren, the non-biological grandchildren that he’s helping to raise and to the hundreds of youths he’s mentored during his 23+ years of youth ministry. The devotion he has for them and the unwavering commitment to their well being is nothing short of God’s grace in action.

My biological dad has been gone for more than three decades, but the Lord has used the father’s love of my husband to heal my heart again and again. I am incredibly blessed to be married to a man who takes the ministry of fatherhood so seriously. God bless you, Andrew Cauthen!

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Deanna Cauthen, works as a contributing writer for the Decatur Dispatch and Tucker Times news magazines, publications of Hometown News Inc. and she has also been a staff writer for the Stone Mountain-Lithonia Patch, an online media outlet of AOL.com. As a freelance writer, she has written numerous articles for local and national publications including Christianity Today and Home Education magazines.  She is also the owner/operator of The ProWriter’s Studio, a public relations agency.