I remember standing alongside Karen’s bed in the delivery room in La Jolla, California. In the moments before our first kid was born I held her hand and wondered if, through all her pain and effort, she could tell how sweaty my palms were. In my head I was cycling through all the ways life was about to change, all the ways I needed to change if I was ever going to have any hope of being good at this fathering thing.
In that hospital room I let all the fears of the coming years crowd in at once. They jammed together and overlapped so that my unease over changing diapers smashed right up against my concern of how I’d help him navigate the world of dating. My fear of holding babies kept company with the worry that I’d never be able to help him with math homework more advanced than long division. To say nothing of colleges, weddings, careers and the natural hardships, feelings, and healing that life brings our way.
The tears I shed that day were an equal concoction of awe and panic.
Today, the most frequent advice I give to new fathers and fathers-to-be is: Relax. You’ll learn as you go.
We don’t have to figure out fathering all at once. Those first couple weeks all they need is to be held. And then to be changed, fed, and put back to bed. And trust me, that’s enough. Those tasks will feel like more than enough.
Then they’ll become second nature, and just when you’ve begun to master them you’ll find you need another skill. You’ll learn to interpret fussing from crying. You’ll learn the difference between hungry cries and hurting cries and angry cries and just crying to cry cries. (There’s a lot of crying.)
And later you’ll learn how they like to be loved. How they need to be disciplined. How they best receive encouragement. All three of my kids help me know what they need and what they need me to be for them. Bit by bit they’ve taught me how to be a father.
But throughout a really wonderful Father’s Day weekend, I realized that my kids have taught me so much more.
As I said before, somewhere along the way I realized that in fathering, my kids help stagger the lessons. We learn to be parents as we go. But this weekend God pointed out how often my kids are helping me learn to grow. They’re teaching me how to be a better human. My children are teaching me how to be a child of God.