The Hardest Part of Fatherhood
What am I going to do with the family God has given me?
Being a dad is simultaneously the best and hardest role I’ve ever had to play in my life. I recognize that sort of sentiment may be cliché, but I do not care because it is true.
I am grateful to be the dad of two little girls, ages six and two-and-a-half. I’ve written about them both in this newsletter multiple times (like here and here), and it is such a joy to get to be their daddy.
One of the more common parenting reflections I’ve heard from people over the years is that parenting is often the most difficult in the toddler and teenage years—before the age of three and after the age of 13. Having one child on either side of that three-year-old checkpoint, I understand the logic here and don’t disagree that it gets a bit less difficult as kids get a bit more independent.
But of course we parents would be mistaken to believe parenting somehow gets easy as independence blooms. Because with independence of mind and body comes its own struggles. These struggles may be less of an assault on the senses than overnight wakings and overflowing diapers, but they are struggles nonetheless.
Without a doubt, one of the most difficult parts of parenting for me on a most practical level has been the evaporation of personal time and space that comes with being a parent. I am a generally quiet and introverted person who likes my personal space and a quiet room for long reading sessions. Parenting blows all of this up, which is beautiful and difficult at the same time!
But sacrificing my personal preferences has not been the most difficult part of parenting.
The hardest part of parenting, for me, is remembering that my beautiful daughters aren’t really mine.
Stewardship All the Way Down
Best as I can tell, the Christian life is all about stewardship.
Life is made up of countless decisions that ultimately come down to, “What am I going to do with what God has given me?”
What am I going to do with the gifts and talents God has given me?
What am I going to do with the money God has given me?
What am I going to do with the career God has given me?
What am I going to do with the home God has given me?
What am I going to do with the time God has given me?
What am I going to do with the suffering God has given me?
What am I going to do with the family God has given me?
Everything I have, including my role as a father, has been generously given to me by my Father, the God of the universe—including my daughters.
These girls are not mine, but the responsibility to steward and shepherd them is mine, and remembering they are God’s gift that he has lent and entrusted to me is the hardest part about being their dad.
Every triumph and every trial in my life is dropped into my open, feeble hands by the loving, strong hands of my God, and when I attempt to close my hands around these gifts I run into trouble.
I get cagey. I overprotect. I bear burdens I’m not meant to bear. I attempt to solve problems for which I have no solution. I become my own pathetic, weak, little god.
The hardest part about parenting the little girls God has placed in my hands is resisting the urge to close my hands around them in an attempt to protect them, to be their god as I am too often my own, to forget that they ultimately belong to their heavenly Father and not their earthly one.
The hardest part of fatherhood is remember that I am the best kind of dad when I hold my girls with open hands, stewarding them as gifts I have been given by the heavenly Father we share.
This is difficult because it requires me to submit to a will that is not mine and to have faith in a God that is not me, for the good of my daughters and for the glory of God.
