Love, calling, guardianship: the faith of a new father

I will eventually get back to blogging about subjects other than my new daughter, but surely I can be forgiven for being somewhat single-minded these days.

A friend of mine wrote me a note a few days ago, asking how becoming a Dad at long last had impacted my faith. She gently pointed out that I haven’t been blogging much about spiritual issues recently, and thought that this might be my opportunity to turn to that subject once again.

When I saw my baby born nine days ago, I think (I can’t be sure) that my first words were “Oh my God.” Those of you who are parents surely know what I’m talking about (those who actually gave birth know far more). It is an extraordinarily primal moment — blood and sweat and all sorts of other fluids, the grasping hands of caregivers, the gasps of a woman in pain and joy, and, after a few heartstopping seconds, the cry of new life. There is no hyperbole in saying that that instant two Mondays ago was the most wonderful experience of my nearly forty-two years in this incarnation. I felt God with me and with my wife and new child; I sensed the “great cloud of witnesses” looking on. I cried, of course, tears of joy — and tears of thanksgiving for the safety of my wife and child.

I’ve been saying “Thank you” to God every day, several times a day, this week. I’ve also been asking, constantly, for His help and guidance as I do this new thing called fatherhood. I’m smart enough to know that I can’t possibly do it perfectly, but am sufficiently filled with love and zeal that I want to do every imaginable thing that I can for my wife and daughter.

But at times, of course, I’ve battled a lot of fear, and have called out to God in my anxiety. I have the usual fears that first-time parents have: “Is that a normal poop?” “Why does her breathing change so suddenly?” But I have other fears as well which I am turning over to Christ. I call myself a “born again” (albeit one with universalist theology and liberal politics) because I know what it is like to be transformed and changed by faith. But the memory of who it was I used to be — the drug addict, the borderline, the narcissistic manipulator, the self-injurer, the womanizer, the utterly self-absorbed — has haunted me a bit these past few days. What if that Hugo comes back? What more can I do to ensure that my daughter never knows first-hand those aspects of her father, and only encounters them through fragments of old stories and the myriad scars she will find on my body? I’ve been talkin’ to God about this every day. I trust His grace, because I’ve felt it. I trust, too, that I will be given the strength to persevere (one way of translating the “p” in TULIP, for you crazy Calvinists) until the end and past the end.

My faith also tells me that my daughter doesn’t belong to me. My wife and I are her guardians, her protectors, her guides, her shepherds, her gentle chief initiators into the world and its ways. But though she is a fusion of our genetic make-up (may she look like her mother, please), she belongs to herself and she belongs to God far more than she belongs to us. My faith tells me that each of us is called into the world for a purpose, a specific one; each of us is called to play a unique and vital role in the ongoing process of Tikkun Olam, the healing of creation. And I don’t know yet what my daughter’s role will be. She will reveal that to us after it has been revealed to her, and her calling will come to her in its own time, in its own way.

My wife and I will give her the best education we can (both in terms of formal schooling and what we offer in our home). We will raise her with a certain set of spiritual values, we will raise her vegetarian, we will raise her bilingually, we will raise her surrounded by books and people and animals and sports. We will, of course, nudge her in certain ways; we hope she really likes chinchillas, and that she will want to play soccer or run cross-country. But we know perfectly well that some parental passions do get passed on, and others don’t. She’s not here to fulfill the athletic or professional or artistic fantasies of her mom and dad. Despite her genes and her parents’ talent sets, our girl may end up a carniverous, introverted and sedentary chemist rather than the athletic vegan with the gift for words who might be expected. The daughter of a strong ENFP and a strong ESTP may react against her parents in all sorts of interesting ways! And while I have my hopes, I will do my best to balance the need to expose our child to a range of possibilities with the need to let her choose her own response to her own internal call.

This morning, I changed my daughter’s diaper just after 4:00AM. She was in a happy mood, making her little noises of contentment (she had just been at the breast). After she was freshly attired, I scooped her back up into my arms. Until this morning, it had taken her newborn eyes a few seconds to find me — when first picked up, her gaze would wander before gradually settling on the adult who held her. My girl found me instantly, and looked up at her papa with what seemed like open-mouthed wonder, and, what I would like to hope, was love. I melted, of course, and teared up with the intensity of loving this little eight-pound bundle of perfection. But even at that moment, four hours or so ago, I knew that she was not mine forever. I love her more than I thought it possible to love anything; she and her mother are at the center of my emotional universe. But I am only with her for a little while (a few happy decades please) on this earth. This morning there was just a “me” and a “her” in perfect happy unity. But in a few short years, she’ll be off to school, to camp, to college, to other countries and other commitments and other’s embraces. My job is to give her a foundation of devotion so strong so that wherever she goes, however she does her task of Tikkun Olam, however and with whomever she finds delight, she remembers that at the very beginning — and at the very end — there is love, there is love, there is love. That she will know that is my most fervent prayer today.