Last Updated on June 26, 2018 by OCF Communications

by LTC Frank Gray, USA

dear Son,

This is the first letter I have written to you in time of war. Unfortunately, there will be more. In this letter I will try to explain why your dad is back in the Army after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Finally, I am asking you to pray for me, because my one desire is to do my duty to my country, come home, and live my life in peace.

Son, there are evil people in this world, and they are set upon destroying our God, our nation, and our homes. They hate us simply for being Christians and Americans. This has been proven time and again by the attacks and planned violence on our way of life.

The people who are doing this are terrorists, and they are our enemy. These terrorists must be destroyed if we are to live our lives with the freedom to worship our God and to keep our traditions as Americans.

It has been my prayer since 9/11 that my generation could fight these terrorists and defeat them. This is not to be so. My Special Forces comrades and I are on patrol every day throughout the world to secure our democracy and our freedoms. But we realize after several years of war that it will take more than we can do in a lifetime.

Please know that your father—like Joshua, Caleb, and David—was hard-wired by God to be a soldier. I will spend the rest of my life defending our God, this nation, and our homes. You, too, must accept this responsibility. This does not mean you must grow up to be a soldier. But this does mean you must grow up to be a citizen of two kingdoms—God’s and America.

It is a sad day in a soldier’s life when he must ask the next generation to pick up the gauntlet and be ready to defend our way of life. But in reading the Bible and history, I am not the first father to do so, nor will I be the last.

Therefore, my son, you must grow up strong and smart, and be ready to fight. This is why your mother and I have insisted that you study hard and go to church every Sunday. This is also why we spend time every day teaching you our values, how to be a moral person, how to live a good life, and to love others.

But it is up to you to learn these lessons. And it is also up to you to live a life worth living—a life given to the noble legacy of defending our God, our nation, and our homes.

Love always,
Daddy

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).