The TriDad Life

Dear Beanpod,

One thing you’ll learn is that your Dad can be a sensitive guy. Being with you or thinking about you sometimes just makes me tear up.

One of my favorite things to do with you is pick you up in my arms, put a playlist of Broadway musicals on my phone, and just dance around our living room. I’m quite sure you are enjoying it, at least until you get hungry or tired. The feeling I get in these moments is so wonderful and odd and new. So many emotions are coming together at once. You make me feel so very grateful for all that I have in my life, and yet I also feel an unmistakable twinge of sadness as I let my mind slip to moments in our future when you’ll be grown and you’ll leave. It’s a funny and amazing experience to be your father.

As I write this note, you are just past four months old. We feel like every day is a milestone, and we are feeling something close to settled. Don’t get me wrong, things are as crazy as ever. But there is a sense of normalcy now. Your Mom and I, we are settling in to being parents, doing what we need to do to take care of you. We learn more every day. We are just thrilled that so far, you are doing so well, and that you are happy and healthy.

I’m starting to understand a few things as a parent now. We are doing everything we can to make sure you are comfortable, that you’re in good health. We’re reading up, we’re asking around, we’re taking you to doctor check ups. We’re equipped with so many things that fill our home to help us in our endeavor to do as much as we can to take good care of you. Bottles and monitors and toys and lotions and gadgets and so, so, so many diapers. We’re blessed with access to modern items that can help us in our parenthood journey.

But there is a limit to what we can do. Every night, when we put you to bed, is when I confront it most regularly. I look at the monitor with you on it, fast asleep. It is at that moment, that quiet moment, when the busy world stops, and I face the reality that I can’t really control what happens to you as you sleep.

This is when I rely on something that I suppose I’ve been trained in since the beginning. A habit that has come and gone throughout my life, but an element that I believe has always been present, even when I wasn’t acknowledging it. Something beyond, and greater, than we can know or experience fully in this physical world. It’s something that is becoming more and more real now to me now that you are here.

I pray to God. I ask him to do what I can’t. I ask him to take care of you while you sleep.

It’s got to be something that every parent confronts. As hard as you try, you can’t control everything. You can’t be with your child 24/7. You can’t control all of the intangible things that might be going on within their body, however many monitors you might buy.

This is what we call faith. It is a gift, a concept that, as we say as Christians, “passes all understanding.”

Over the weekend, we did something important. We had you baptized into this faith. As I looked down on you while our pastor blessed you with water, and in the days since, I’ve thought about what it meant, what to take from it. We like to call it a miracle. And I keep coming back to that concept. A gift, a moment, a living blessing that “passes all understanding.”

I love that concept. It makes sense to me. As humans, we have amazing capacity for learning. We have an innate desire to figure things out, and we have done amazingly well. But I’m of the mind that the more we learn, as we get more and more sophisticated, the more we discover how much we DON’T know, how much we’ll never know.

And so, as a father, I’m now really grasping the true gift it is to live with the belief that there is a Creator that is benevolent and good, who was active in the water that the pastor blessed you with, that your life will proceed according to the Creator’s plan. And in that, I’m humbled and honored to recognize that this Creator chose me for such an important role in your life story, according to his divine and unique plan for you. I’ll never fully understand it, but it calms me, and it gives me confidence.

So, beanpod, rest well. You’re in good care, here in your home with your parents, and in the constant protection of your Creator. It will be amazing to see what he has planned for us all in the years to come!

Love,

Dad