On Becoming a Dad
By Steele Shippy, Simquily.com Contributor
Life brings along many adventures, from learning to walk and ride a bike to catching the first fish, climbing a mountain, scuba diving in a cave, and jumping off bluffs into a lake. But none of these experiences compares to the adventure of becoming a dad.
In many different ways, being a dad is so much more than what I expected or ever could have imagined. As I look back, this adventure of fatherhood is similar and yet completely unlike any other adventure in life.
Each of us reacts differently to adventure, but depending on the situation, it’s likely that at some point in our adventures we will experience excitement, anticipation, fear, exhaustion mixed with rushes of adrenaline, and pure joy.
Excitement & Anticipation
I’ll never forget the day my wife and I found out we were going to have a baby. The gift of life is one of God’s most precious gifts, and the news brought about the most incredible feeling of excitement and anticipation as we celebrated together and shared the wonderful news with our parents, family, and friends. In gifting us with a precious life, God had begun two new exciting adventures: one for us and one for our parents, our child’s grandparents.
As our baby grew inside the womb, I could barely contain my excitement about fatherhood. With every visit to the doctor, every ultrasound, every time we got to hear our son’s heartbeat, my excitement grew for what was to come. Those precious moments of anticipation will never be forgotten.
Fear
No adventure is compete without confronting and overcoming a few fears: Will we be good parents? How do I change a diaper? What happens if he gets sick? Am I prepared to care for another human? All these questions and more began to slowly creep in and overshadow the excitement. But, thankfully, by God’s grace, we overcame these fears, realizing that God gives us—and will continue to give us—the tools and guidance to succeed in every situation.
Exhaustion and Adrenaline
Depending on the adventure, there comes a point at which you might feel like you can no longer continue. Whether it’s a marathon or a hike to the top of a mountain, the exhaustion is incredibly real, but so is your determination to succeed.
The day (and night) of delivery came and went in what seemed like both an eternity and the blink of an eye. Don’t mistake or construe my next comments as me saying that what I experienced was more difficult than what my wife endured. As a man, I will never understand the sheer exhaustion or the rush of adrenaline women experience while giving birth. But I will say this: I never knew I could be so exhausted and yet so amped up at the exact same time as when we welcomed our son into the world at three in the morning, almost twenty-four hours after we arrived at the hospital.
Holding our little one for the first time (and not knowing if I was doing that right), and hearing our newborn wail (and wanting to desperately provide comfort without knowing how), all culminated in one gigantic and overwhelming realization that I really had no idea how to care for our new child. The experience was nothing short of exhausting. But those moments of pure exhaustion were met with one adrenaline rush after another, because the experience of becoming a dad was unlike any other adventure I’d journeyed before. And I believed that God would equip me for this adventure.
Joy
That feeling when you’ve finished the race, reached the top, or caught your largest fish yet is what I would call “happiness.” But “joy” is that feeling that comes from a heart full of thanksgiving. As I look back on life, I think of many adventures that brought about “happiness,” but few brought about pure “joy.”
Becoming a dad—the journey to fatherhood, the adventure to which I’ve been called to raise up a son to love, serve, and fear the Lord—that is joy. Hearing our son’s heartbeat for the first time in the womb, holding him in my arms, rocking him to sleep, watching him take his first steps, listening to him babble “Dada,” saying bedtime prayers, and being a witness to how much fun he has running around naked, all these experiences combined with lots of unknowns and many sleepless nights make up the joyful adventure of becoming a dad.
