Rushed to the labor and delivery unit upon arrival, my wife and I were still processing the suddenness of everything happening. Our child was still not due for another three weeks and yet the moment had arrived. There was little time to get situated in the room. The baby was arriving fast and my wife began to deliver even before the doctors had time to coordinate themselves.
I found myself engulfed in an intense situation of which my wife was at the epicenter of its chaos. I understand that what I was going through is of no comparison to her experience but this is written from my perspective for the benefit of other men to hear. I was surrounded by women, the only male in the room. Each one was trained, prepped and focused on a specific task. Even my wife understood what must happen and her main battle was a feat of will over pain. If the hospital had a task sheet of what everyone was supposed to do, my name would be absent. From a clinical procedural perspective, I bring nothing to the table.
It was not long ago that society had the men waiting in the lobby passing out cigars while their wives tackled their most painful experience isolated from their other half. I’ve yet to find any biblical mandate for this and glad to see this fade from being the societal expectation as psychology has found that the presence of Dad at birth significantly reduces health issues for the mother and child, as well as strengthen attachments between the father and his child.
Needless to say, being in the room mattered regardless if there was any technical procedure only I could fill. However the instinct of a man is to prove himself useful and with purpose. This void is authentic in manhood and it requires our own labor (pun) not to simplify it to a materialistic task.
I found myself doing the only thing I could really do without getting in the way… being of encouragement to my wife. I held her hand, comforted her through contractions, listened to how she felt, and spoke gently to her. I reminded her that joy would soon follow. I reaffirmed that all this pain was momentary and failed in comparison to our future glory and the immense joy we would soon have in seeing our son. It is an intense moment and what Jesus highlights in His Word is true. It is crazy to realize that through this pain comes the greatest sense of joy you can experience only milliseconds after your greatest anguish.
In the midst of all the focus on the delivery, a doctor leaned over to me and said with an affirm voice, “you are leading so well.”
At first, I didn’t know what she was talking about. One look around the room, you wouldn’t possibly pick me as team lead. Yet ask my wife what was the most crucial component for her and she would say, “I don’t know how I could have done it without you.”
Later I had the opportunity with the doctor to discuss her comment. I realized there was an endless amount of ways I could have handled the situation, of which the doctor has seen her fair share. However, from her observations they can be categorized down to two.
“There is a difference between reactive and responsive”
This is true on so many levels. And what is expected of a desired mature man is the latter, which led me to this thought:
The principles of fatherhood predate birth.
Being a “good dad” is not something you arrive at, anymore than being a world class athlete. The qualities that your child and your wife need are qualities that have been cultivated over time. They have been prepared, practiced, and measured. They are qualities that have been valued long before moments like these.
This is not to dismiss transformation. But don’t count on a reactive relationship with responsibility and leadership to produce qualities of patience, virtue, and discipline, if they haven’t been there before. Your inner Travis Kelce that we’ve seen on the sidelines will be given free range. When we are reactive to situations, we fall back on our natural tendencies to proceed. We are allowing the state and intensity of the moment to dictate how we will react rather than leading through it.
God is calling for fathers to lead. To lead means to respond with direction. We are called to guide those entrusted to us towards God. We often confuse this to mean we have to have everything figured out. This is not true and impossible. What we can determine is what we lean on, which in turn, will guide others to do the same. This means to lead requires us to fall back on what has come before.
The Bible not only is purposeful in teaching us the ways of God, rebuking our missteps and correcting us back… but also training us in righteousness to prepare us to respond righteously when we experience difficulty or hardship.
A godly father trains and engages the principles long before there is a child. Take note of God, our Heavenly Father, who measures our discipline and instruction based on his character and not his emotions to the situation. If we allow ourselves to be reactive in the way we raise our children, where would we be guiding them but to be reactive themselves? We teach them to be a victim of life rather than a sojourn of it. We teach them the easy path rather than the strength they can find in God to uphold responsibility. Unintentionally we would be teaching them to be unintentional with life, rather than purposeful. Meaning requires intentionality, thought and work.
To be prepared to be a rock of stability is the first principle our family is looking for from us as a father. The only way to be that is a life that practices cultivating a reliance on Christ to be our rock. Trust, that is not shallow, is not reactive but a deep well of a history of counting on Him. This will allow us to approach conflict, chaoticness, discipline, and every aspect of raising our kids and leading our family with what they need in order to live purposefully towards God.
We will not always respond correctly. Even with the best intentions we will sometimes react with our emotions to situations or coast through them more focused on our own agenda or entertainment. There is grace for our shortcomings when we recognize them as such. We will not always get it right but at least when we identify unwanted results we can trace them back to a reactive moment and repent.
The good news is there is training while on the job. We should always be in training. This is what it means when Paul tells us to mature in Christ. Maturity is not something you arrive at, like “when I have a kid, then I’ll change.” Maturity builds off other small steps of maturity. The principles that are mandated for fatherhood don’t just start at birth. They are unearthed. Embedded in our roots. They are principles valued long before and practiced in everyday life.
...so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ
Ephesians 4:14-15
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