To Seth, on His Wedding Day

Dear Seth:

On this day of your wedding, fragments of experiences we’ve shared seem to randomly spring on my consciousness, reminding me of what a special relationship we enjoy. I find myself reliving a moment from our “11-year old trip.” We’re on I-4 and approaching a string of Oscar Meyer Wiener cars and singing “I Would Walk Five Hundred Miles” at the top of our lungs. Or we’re at the Encontro das Aguas, where the Rio Negro flows into the Amazon, jumping off the third deck of the boat right into the spot where the brown and the black water touch, fearlessly swimming with piranhas, stingrays, and the dreaded Candiru (whose victims would rather be eaten by piranhas). Or we are giddy at the marvel of creation as we feel the mist of the falls at Iguacu. Or I’m soaking in the hot tub at our house in Louisville, wondering about the awful smell emanating from the yucca plants, a mystery that only you would solve.

The natural apprehension a father feels at this moment is greatly reduced by your choice of bride. Candace is truly wonderful, everything your mom and I prayed for since you were born. I remember singing Wayne Watson’s “Somewhere in the World” and pleading with God to send you a godly wife. Now that we have seen His abundant answer to our petition we praise Him for His providential care over Candace’s life, bringing her to you at this moment on this day. The added blessing that she came to faith in Christ several years ago because of an email I sent her is a special delight that I hope to someday tell my grandchildren—including Hershael Wallace York III (no pressure or anything).

Your path to this point has been winding, to say the least. You and I have both grown and matured on that path. From childhood to manhood, you have never been boring. You were different from the moment you were born, loudly announcing your entrance. Your laugh as a baby was the deepest, most robust belly laugh to ever come out of so tiny a body. I would make faces and get Michael to perform for you just to hear that laugh.

Your childhood was a magical time for me. You were sweet, generous, and the most considerate kid I ever knew. I don’t think anyone ever gave you a piece of candy you didn’t offer to give to someone else or at least share. I used to worry about you because you had no “killer instinct” in sports. When we enrolled you in a soccer league you hated to score because you felt badly for the kid on goal. On many occasions when you were winning a race, I watched with a strange mixture of admiration and frustration as you would slow up before the finish line so Dean, your best friend, could catch up and cross the line beside you.

I can also remember when you came under conviction for sin. I worried that you were too young, but you were persistent. I kept putting you off, explaining that you might need to wait a while. Finally, one night after church you brought me my Bible, looking at me with pleading eyes and said, “I need to be saved NOW!” As soon as you trusted the Lord, I noticed your prayers change from the repetitive petitions of a little boy to the heart cries of a young believer. I would listen in wonder as you prayed for specific things that spoke to situations of which you couldn’t possibly be aware.

I worried about you when we left Lexington and moved to Louisville. You were only twelve, and your entire identity was about to change. No longer the pastor’s son, you suddenly found yourself going to church without me even being there because I was gone preaching somewhere on Sundays. But you did great, making friends easily and establishing your own identity. You were unconsciously cool, comfortable in your own skin, as at home with senior citizens as with your peers. I always have admired that trait in you. You have as many friends in their forties as twenty-somethings. You can enjoy hanging with Twister and Barkley, both in their eighties, as you do with Les or Will or Jake.

I used to enjoy terrifying you that I would embarrass you in front of a girl. I let you think that I was capable of saying something so creatively awful, so deliciously humiliating, that you stayed just a little on edge. When you were with a girl I would look at you and simply smile and you would wonder what I was about to say. I don’t think I ever really did it though—at least, not nearly as potently as you imagined. The only thing I remember doing is when you and some girl were going to a basketball game. You were too young to drive and I had to take you. Holding your breath all the way there, when I left the two of you at the game, you opened the car door for her and, holding her hand, began to walk away from the car and toward the door. You thought you had escaped, that you had made it—when suddenly I lowered the window and shouted after you, “Don’t forget to put that ointment on your sores at nine o’clock.” You know what I love about you, though? You enjoyed the humor of that as much as I did.

Soon after high school I watched you begin to make a series of bad decisions, to stray away from the things that your mom and I had taught you. Like many—perhaps most—parents and their children, we had some tough times. You had to learn for yourself that the values you had learned were worth having. You made mistakes, suffered consequences, and went through stages of repentance and restoration. Through it all, your spirit remained open to me. We never had a time in which we discounted one another, rejected one another, or failed to remember how much we love each other. I cannot recall exactly what it was or when it was, but I have a distinct memory of a time when we had a very tough phone conversation. I was angry and aggravated and so were you. But when the conversation was over, you ended it the way all of our phone conversations end. “Bye, Dad. I love you.” The knowledge that we loved one another so much got us through those times.

Your adventurous spirit has been a constant joy to behold as well as an occasional source of concern. You climb mountains, you camp out in zero-degree weather, you rappel off cliffs, and you have even jumped and killed a deer with a knife. No job has ever been too hard or too dirty for you. I am convinced that adventurous spirit will one day make you a great force for the gospel.


The time you spent with David Miller was like college and graduate school combined. Your decision to travel with him, driving his RV, meeting his personal needs, working at his deer camp, and hearing him preach day in and day out, was a good decision. Perhaps more than at any time in your life you learned what it means to be a servant. Though you had always struggled with getting up in the morning, even with an alarm, you suddenly were able to rouse yourself from sleep in the middle of the night when you heard his faint call. Working 7 days a week and virtually 24 hours a day was great preparation for marriage and its relentless requirement for vigilance and effort. When you came home after nine months of working with David, you were very different than when you left. You soon found Candace, though you had known and dated each other previously, and you were certain that the Lord wanted the two of you to be together for life. I know this: you could never do better. We love her. If the Lord blesses you with children—even if you don’t make one of them a III—your mother and I can not think of anyone we would rather be the mother of our grandchildren and the companion of our son.


Today marks a turning of a page for both of us. As you begin a new chapter, you close one for me and nudge me one step closer to old age. While you face the challenges and temptations of a young man, I walk that dangerous path of middle age where so many have been lost and ultimately drowned in a flood of ego and unrealized dreams. We must pray for one another and trust our Father to keep us in love with Him, with our wives, and with those who desperately need to know Him. May our marriages model His love for His bride, His sacrifice and sanctification of her.

Of all the things I remember about you, one thing dominates. Two years ago, when you ran the triathlon in Florida, the day was unusually hot for May. You had made it through the swim and the bike phases with admirable strength and a very good time. When you finished the first of three laps of the run, I was stunned at how well you were doing. I remember thinking that you were in great shape to finish in your optimal time. I walked up the hill, about a quarter of a mile from the checkpoint, and sat down in the grass, waiting for you to pass me and complete your second lap. The time in which you should have finished that lap came and went, and still I waited. Twenty minutes, thirty minutes later you still had not finished that lap. I knew you were in trouble, but I could do nothing but wait.

When I saw you come over that hill and into my sight, my heart broke. Your run had ebbed away to a slow, painful walk. As you drew nearer I noticed your calves, all cramped and disfigured, and with every step I saw you suffer. Standing up, I walked to you and we began to talk. You explained how the cramps had come, in spite of all your efforts and measures you took to avoid it, your body just couldn’t keep up with the dehydration of the struggle and the heat. You still had one lap to go, another four and a half miles to complete your 70-mile course. You had every right to stop. Surely the little medal and the bumper sticker you would be awarded weren’t worth the pain I saw etched into your face. I told you that you would have another day, another race, that there was no shame in stopping now.

You realized that I had used the word “stop” euphemistically, and you rejected my attempt to soften what you knew it would really be. “Quitting is not an option,” you told me. And with your body drained of hydration, your muscles spasming in a cramped and cruel rebellion, you walked on until you crossed the finish line.

As wonderful as Candace is, as fulfilling as marriage may be, unimaginable and unforeseeable challenges lie ahead of you. I can give you no better advice and no wiser words than those you spoke in the race that day. Quitting is not an option.

If you are as determined to love your wife, if you are as focused on serving her, if you are as committed to crossing the finish line with her by your side, you will be a Man among men.

Love always,

Dad