The Journey of Fatherhood

The following was written by David Campaigne, a Senior Private Wealth Advisor in Blue Trust’s Baltimore, Maryland office.

Peter Buffett (son of legendary investor Warren Buffett) said, “We’re each born into someone else’s story.”¹

I’m thankful for the “story” I was born into. I’m grateful my parents set my sister and me on the path of Christian faith and thankful the Lord has continued to guide my journey.

“In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:4-6, NIV).

My Dad was a pastor and planted a love for God’s Word in my heart that continues to grow stronger over the years. At one point in my youth, I thought about following in his footsteps and becoming a pastor, but as I grew up and became interested in business and finance my life story took a different route. A few years after college I learned about

Blue Trust and was surprised to find a company that does financial planning and investment management from a biblical perspective.

I never imagined I would find both a calling and a career that integrated my Christian faith so well with what I do for a living. My parents were so proud that I found this great fit so early in my career and I’m grateful they taught me what to value most in life.

I’ll never forget the day I officially became a father myself. Our journey to parenthood took longer than my wife and I had anticipated. After getting married, we planned to enjoy the first few years of marriage and then have children, but God had different plans for us (Proverbs 16:9).

After my wife and I walked the difficult journey of infertility, God put the desire on our hearts to become parents through the miracle of adoption. We adopted our first son (who was eight month old) from Seoul, South Korea after a nearly two-year process. While most parents are overcome with joy when their child is born, we experienced both joy and sorrow when we met our son and his foster parents for the first time. The joy was because we met our son for the very first time. The sorrow was because our son had to leave his wonderful foster parents who had cared for him since birth. We praise God for walking with us through all of our emotions and experiences in this life, from the greatest of joys to the deepest of sorrows and everything in between (Ecclesiastes 3).

Two years after adopting our son, we adopted our daughter, who was just one year old, from South Korea. My wife and I are eternally grateful for our kids’ birth mothers and for the courage they showed by bringing these beautiful children into the world knowing they would be raised by another family.

One of our family’s favorite verses of Scripture is Ephesians 1:4-6 (NLT):

“Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.” (Emphasis added.)

None of us are born naturally into God’s family, but we are all adopted into His Kingdom through Jesus.

Whether you are a father of biological children, a father of adopted children, or a father figure to a child, may we as earthly fathers continually strive to better reflect the unconditional love, encouragement, and patience of our Heavenly Father. We are blessed to be dads to the children in our lives and pass our story and God’s story on to them.

As James 1:17-18 (NLT) puts it:  “Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession.”

From all of us at Blue Trust, we wish all fathers a Happy Father’s Day!

¹ Holladay, J. Douglas (2020). Rethinking Success: Eight Essential Practices for Finding Meaning in Work and Life. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Scriptures taken from NIV(R), copyright by Biblica, Inc.(TM) and New Living Translation, copyright by Tyndale House Foundation.