How Deep The Father’s Love…
I’ve had a hard time trying to figure out the best way to write about what being a father means to me. I love being a father, more than I think I’ve loved doing anything. And when I think about my two beautiful boys, I find there is a deep sense of an unquenchable joy—somewhat sorrowful in that it is indeed a sort of longing-joy, a joy that is at all times fresh and new and full of wonder, that this heart of mine truly doesn’t bare the capacity to even fully hold. And in that way, it is a beautiful and joyous sorrow. But more than that (because I really can’t truly convey that feeling in words), it is a pure and marvelous joy.
To those who may read this and are not fathers, or perhaps to those who are fathers but do not relate in the same way (as I’m sure there are), I feel that most of what I will say will fall on deaf ears. I mean this in no way to diminutize those who are not fathers or who don’t share in my views on fatherhood, but only to say that I know that I couldn’t at all read about what it means to be a father and at the same time understand it in the same depth that I do now.
I feel that this is absolutely true of me. Before, I would have friends or family that would step into the fold of becoming a parent and, though I was excited and congratulatory, I didn’t really see what the huge excitement. I remember once looking at someone with several children and saying to myself, “That just looks too stressful.” The idea of caring after tiny humans seemed overwhelming to me. All that personal time those fathers once had are for a large part diminished, if in existence at all. And that doesn’t look like fun. But the truth is, and I can say this in absolute honesty: it is well worth it.
How can I describe what it is to be a dad? What it means to be a father, what it feels like? This is dificult to say. If I were to assign one word to it, as I essentially already have, it is joy. But telling you honey is sweet, and having you taste a bit of honey brings to the mind a much different understanding. So for now I will say that becoming a father is like having your heart level up. After we had our first boy, Eomer, I remember telling my own father that I had no idea that becoming a father came with a whole new set of emotions, and not all of them pleasant! I had new love and a joy I had never known before, but I also had deeper fears that occupied my mind, dark scenarios that would run through my mind that I had never weighed or measured before. A new sorrow, and some nights I was even sad for reasons that I couldn’t explain. It felt like puberty for adults: I had all these new emotions that I didn’t know what to do with!
When I spoke to my father about this, he put the feeling into the most perfect words. He said, “When you have a kid, it’s like there is a chamber in your heart that you never knew was there, and then it suddenly becomes unlocked!” And that is the best way I can describe it.
To those of you who are fathers, I think these words more than likely strike a familiar tone to you, and perhaps I am sheltered in the fact that I have an excellent example of a father, but I can’t imagine any father feeling anything converse.
With these new emotions came new trains of thoughts, more vision of my own future, new light in the darkness, and a renewed desire to fight that darkness. And of course, sweet replenishable joy. I found that going-ons in the world that I paid little heed to now became much more important to me. I became more philosophical, more self reflective. What world can I help build for my children? What kind of approach to hardships can I teach them? How do I teach them to love? How can I show them the importance of things like delayed gratification in a world so steeped in impulsivity? How can I show them to love others, to reach out to the outcasts, to not be afraid to be an outcast, to look for truth above pleasure? Wisdom above quantity of knowledge? This list goes one.
Truthfully, I cannot do any of these in perfection. I am a man who is well acquainted with sin, a human-factory of poor decisions and mal-disciplines. But that is actually good in some ways, because my boys are humans as well and prone to follow the same paths as I have (hopefully not lol). I hope that they will see in me not only my sin, but also my repentance. I hope that they will see that I fail because I truly can’t do these things because I am bound to a faulty non-ideal human condition. And I hope that they will see that God is my righteousness; that the Holy Father is the ultimate version of a father; that he offers forgiveness and patience even while I’m not sorry and don’t plan on changing things. That he offers love unconditionally even though I try to assign a formula for why he loves me, or feel that I am undeserving of love altogether. That he offers a stronger and wider shoulder to carry the burdens and stresses that I don’t want to or simply can’t bear.
In addition to all that, I have to say that becoming a father has immensely stabilized my understanding of what it means to follow God as my father. I think of the great flush of love I feel—the immenseness of my joy!—that I have when I simply think about my children, and I am a faulty, selfish man, then how great it must be to realize (to taste the honey, as it were) that my love for my children is but a fragment of the Father’s love for me! I almost doubt it because I know how much love that I feel for my children, and I know how underserving I am. But yet one of the biggest examples that Jesus uses to express our standing with God, is that as a follower of Jesus, he is our father, and we are his sons. One of the greatest reminders of his capacity for being our children, aside from the example of Christ, is depicted in this verse:
“If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in Heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” Matthew 7:11 (ESV)
To me that is part of the fatherhood gift. I have seen a glimpse into the universe of love that I had not known in two ways:
1) I know what it is like to love something that is my very own in a way that nothing can ever compete with.
2) I know a glimpse of how the Father views me. How much capacity he has for grace, how much capacity he has for mercy, for forgiveness, for love. How much joy I bring him.
Scripture teaches us that we all are essentially longing to know our Ultimate Father (our “All-Father” if you will allow me a norse-mythology reference :) ), and that our Father has built this longing in us because he seeks to collect his children to know him, to know what we are to him, to know that we were designed for that deep joy and love that only a parent can know.
And, for me, that is the epitome of what it means to be a father.
