On Becoming a Father

I’m becoming a father.

A Dad.

Daddy.

I never could have anticipated the roller coaster of emotions I would experience when this day finally arrived.  When Judy pounced on me that early morning shoving the urine soaked “stick of knowledge” in my face, I was excited. I was bleary-eyed and half-conscious, but I was excited.

A new life – one that her and I had caused. What?

What sort of magic is that? 

I spent the rest of that day on a barely contained emotional high. I am becoming a father. I kept telling myself that over and over again. I couldn’t believe it. Nothing ever felt so surreal. So make believe.

In the following days, the ephemeral excitement settled into an abiding satisfaction. I was content with this new vocation. I was looking forward to becoming a father.

Then something strange happened.

About a week after Judy’s heartfelt early morning raid, I was walking from the university library over to our car and I was struck by a noticeably different version of the previously rehearsed celebration of fatherhood. I thought those same words, but the tone in which I heard them was more sober.

“Oh shit…..I’m going to be a dad.”

I’m not sure if any of you other first time dads have had a similar experience, but for me it was a stop-in-your-tracks kind of thing. In that moment, I started to realize some of the multivalent, inescapable entailments of fatherhood.

For one thing, Judy and I qua Judy-and-I was coming to an end. The carefree explorations of LA on a lazy Saturday. The spur of the moment drives down to San Diego for a quick overnight vacation. I began to realize that the admittedly narcissist do-what-we-please-when-we-please approach to life that I preferred was going to expire.  Honestly, I didn’t know how to feel about that.

I turned out that I was upset for a bit.

I know. I know.  How could I be upset that a new life was on its way into the world? How could I be upset that God had finally chosen to answer our prayers? How could I be so selfish?

Well. I don’t know. It just turned out that I was.

And there I stayed; feeling that disturbance of my life to different degrees for a few weeks.

I’ll note that Judy was especially sweet to me during this time. She let me feel that frustration without condemning me. She surrounded me with her faithful love and granted me the emotional and cognitive space I needed to understand myself.

Yeah…she rocks.

I’m not exactly sure when those feelings went away. I think I might have just woken up one day and realized they were gone.  Somewhere in the midst of sleeping and waking I tamed my demons.

Replacing that feeling of loss was a quiet, almost indiscernible call.

This was less of a “writing on the wall” experience and more of “wind whispering” phenomenon. I couldn’t quite tell at first what I had started to know in that moment, but I knew it was big. The call I heard was attempting to augment the story of my life. I liked that feeling. It felt important and I wanted more.

In the following weeks, as I ruminated on that experience of calling, I began to understand that the call was to fatherhood.

Fatherhood.

This reality is more than a product of potential biological causality.  More along the lines of exemplifying a certain relation to another human person. A relation that bears certain attributes.  Attributes that I know are not – to one degree or another – already dispositions of mine.

I freaked out about that for a few days. Again, cue Judy’s patience and reassurance.

But then I realized something. Something about calling.

When God calls us to something, he anticipates a period of becoming.  Progressive advancement into our new vocation.

No matter how much I want it, fatherhood cannot be actualized overnight. The various attributes that aggregately produce fatherhood are progressively nurtured into a soul. My soul. These cannot be coerced. They are learned.

This is the journey of fatherhood. A journey of understanding and becoming. A wonderful journey. A never-ending journey.

And….here we go.

…

I’m becoming a father.