I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to me to be a parent. Not just a daddy (although it's my favorite job to date), but a parent - a father.
On the more temporal side, it means another mouth to feed, tiny hand prints on my ever-so-precious TV, and another source of premature grey hair (yes, I do have hair left to turn grey).
It also means having a little someone whose hugs seem to melt away my roughest days. It means a tiny-handed play buddy. It means an added responsibility and a person who is very easy to leave an impression on. That's a lot of pressure. And I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
It's a terrible cliche that you'll learn more from your kids than they learn from you, But the thing about cliches is that they're usually right. In the near two years that I've been a father, I've learned a great deal about myself. I've also come to more fully understand what love really is. I'm speaking of the love that God has for us. I truly believe that you can't understand the true meaning of love until you've become a parent.
It's no surprise to me that the purpose of this life is to learn from having a family. Doing so has helped me grow and expand my capacities more than I could have imagined. Having a little boy at home who thinks the world of me as his daddy has pushed me to become better; to become the man he can be proud to claim as his father.
Growing up I had an amazing example of what a father really was. Someone to hold you when you're scared. Someone who does everything in his power to provide enough for you to have a happy life and to teach you how to be happy with what you're given. He's also someone who loved me enough to censure me when I needed it. For that I'll always be grateful.
I'm a strong believer that the Lord doesn't send us here to DO anything. He sends us here to BECOME something. I'm a daddy, but I'm becoming a father. Hopefully I make more forward progress than backward on a daily basis. Luckily I've got a wonderful little boy to keep me on the right track.
-Scott Ostermiller
PS. What does it mean to you to be a parent?
No comments:
Post a Comment