I was on the floor sobbing in a way I hadn’t experienced before, as if the tears were coming from the deepest part of my soul. It was the day after my son was born and I was about to head out to pick up Chick-fil-A for my wife and I. As I was grabbing my stuff to head out, with worship music in my ears, I took a glance at my 2 day old son laying in the roll away crib that hospitals use, and I just couldn’t hold it together anymore and literally fell to my knees and cried my eyes out. I remember my mother in law, who was in the hospital room, coming over and placing her hand on my back providing whatever comfort she could by praying over me, while I tried to process all of the emotions I was feeling in that one moment.
I guess I hadn’t realized just how much I had suppressed throughout my wife’s pregnancy, and possibly my entire life. I was terrified, truly terrified, at the idea of becoming a father; specially to a son. Not having grown up with a father myself, left an immeasurable void in my life that at the time I was still trying to understand, process, and heal from (and still am). I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am beyond privileged and grateful for the childhood I had growing up. Thanks to my mom (my adoptive grandmother), I had everything I needed and wanted growing up; with the exception of one thing, a father’s heart.
It wasn’t until I turned 25 (about a year into my marriage) that I started to realize how much I craved a relationship with my father. I don’t know if that actually meant my actual father, but just someone who I could actually consider a father in my life. Nevertheless, I started to yearn for just the option of calling my father after a tough day and just sharing what I was going through, hoping first for a listening ear and then for fatherly wisdom to help me move forward. I had days where I just wanted to call my father and share some great news like being promoted at work. I had moments where I just needed to feel the embrace of my father or just maybe watch a movie together, or catch a baseball game… and the list goes on. So not having any of that, really started to resonate and sink in at that point in my life and even though my son wasn’t born until ~5 years later, I was still very much so in the same season; far from healed, yet faced with the reality of having to be a father now to my son.
Being a parent is not easy by any means. You have to sacrifice so much of yourself for the sake of that little human you are raising and looking after. What made it even more difficult, or at least it did for me, is that no one ever took the time to sit me down to talk through what I was truly getting into. All I would get was the same cliché statements, “You’ll be fine…. it gets better…. give it time…. it’s going to be great….etc.” yeah, try telling that to me after the first 15 minutes of being home from the hospital consisted of seeing my son turn blue at the lips because he was choking on his own amniotic fluid, and I literally thought to myself “my son will die in my arms…”, true story by the way. Thankfully he’s fine and that was just a moment of significant trauma and PTSD for me (welcome to parenting huh?).
I realize up until now, it seems as though nothing ever really got better, yet that’s not true. My intent here is to simply be vulnerable and transparent about my struggles through fatherhood in hopes to encourage anyone else feeling alone to keep going, because it does in fact “get better”, yet it takes work and a lot of intentionality. Here’s a few things I’ve learned along the way almost 5 years in:
- It’s okay to not have it all together
- The reality is that what I struggled with the most in the early stages of parenting, wasn’t necessarily having to take care of my son, it was having to face the truth about myself. I had to face the fact that this image I had of myself, of being someone who was calm, in control of his emotions, patient, self-less, a man of unwavering faith, etc. all went out the window when I became a parent.
- I allowed fear to hold me captive, I realized all the ways I was still extremely selfish, I realized I had so much more work to do to control my emotions, and I realized how little control I truly had when it came to dictating how things should go; anyone who’s a parent knows how much dictating really happens at 2 in the morning when your baby is incessantly crying with no end in sight.
- Yet, it’s okay, being a good parent is not about having it all together, no one does. It’s about how you show up in spite of how broken you are. Show up messy, show up tired, show up clueless, show up in pain, show up fearful, no matter how, just show up!
- The reality is that what I struggled with the most in the early stages of parenting, wasn’t necessarily having to take care of my son, it was having to face the truth about myself. I had to face the fact that this image I had of myself, of being someone who was calm, in control of his emotions, patient, self-less, a man of unwavering faith, etc. all went out the window when I became a parent.
- Healing is not a destination, it’s a journey
- There’s going to be times where you are feeling like you are on top of the world and like you’ve cracked the code of parenting, and then there’s going to be times where you couldn’t feel any lower as a parent. However, healing happens at the mountain top just as much, if not more, as it does in the valley; keep going!
- Recognize where you are at in your own journey, and don’t go through it alone. Find someone, a friend, a therapist, a family member, whoever it may be, just find someone you can trust to bring alongside you in this journey; you’ll be better off and as a result so will your family.
- Be gracious with yourself, you are living life for the first time too
- I have to remind myself of this quite often. I envy those parents who seem to have it all figured out. Specially when I think I spend more time getting it wrong as a father than I do getting it right… parent guilt is a real thing man. Stop comparing yourself, for comparison is the thief of joy.
- Instead, remind yourself that you are showing up the best way you know how to. Keep putting in the work, show yourself grace, be an example of humility and apologize when you are wrong, these are some of the things your son/daughter will remember the most. In the end, they just want you, not the perfect version of you, but just the present version of you.
- After it’s all said and done, even after a tough day, they may just want to put their Spiderman slippers next to yours because even in their sleep they just want to be close to you.
In the end, I may have not had my father to model any of the above growing up, and while I may still very much so be a work in progress, no matter what, I am fully committed to continue in this journey that is fatherhood as I keep cultivating a father’s heart in me. I will keep leaning on my Heavenly Father who has been there for me from the start, as a “father to the fatherless”, and more than anything I will love my son until the last breath that I have leaves my lungs.
I hope this added value to you in some way, shape, or form.
You Are Not Alone
You Are Not Alone 