Thoughts on Fatherhood: thinking ahead...

I don't have any children. One day, Lord willing, my wife and I will have little ones of our own. And though these children of ours are still to come, it seems to me that they have already begun to exert an influence over my thoughts and actions.

I think of my father and our time together so long ago. I think of what he was like and the legacy he has left me with long after his passing. I remember the words he spoke and the works he undertook. I remember his faults and his failings. I know that he loved me very much.

In many ways he was a very good father. He loved his children and sought to teach us what he felt we needed to know for life. I remember the many afternoons when he would subject me to 'helping' him work on the car or dig in the garden. He built the fence in the front yard and planted the hedge in front of our house. He fixed pipes, built a swing set, sifted the entire backyard to remove the rocks for a huge garden. He built a brick walkway around the house into the backyard. As he went about these tasks he took his children along to watch, to participate, and to learn. He told us stories about his past, about his memories as a child, about many things. He explained to us the importance of family and of standing beside each other. He read to us and prayed with us when he tucked us into bed each night. He worked hard to be a father and to raise his children.

As the thought of me being a father slowly inches closer to being reality, I find my thoughts often drift back to those days with my father, being dragged from task to task and story to story, learning how to be a man from his example and words. I find myself wondering what kind of father I will be for our children. I have no doubts that my dear wife will make an excellent mother when the time comes: she comes from great stock and from everything I can deduce had a great example in her mother. I watch her and know that she will also be a great example to our children of how to be a woman: she is hard working, caring, embraces life and knows how to love. What kind of father will I be? It has recently occurred to me that for me to be the kind of father I wish to be when we have children, I need to take seriously the kind of man I am right now. I need to make the positive changes in my life that I've been neglecting to make for so long. I need to be the example of what a man ought to be, not only when my children are watching, but also when they are not yet watching me - like now.

I know that I will not be a 'perfect' father (whatever that is supposed to mean). I'm not terribly worried about achieving any such thing. I know my father before me wasn't perfect. He had his shortcomings, his faults and failings. I know this and don't try to gloss over them as I consider his example of fatherhood. But I also know that he loved me and desired that I grow to be a man, a good man. He sought as best he could to teach me the important things of life. This will be my goal as a father. If my children grow to know that I loved them and learn to be men and women in the best sense of the terms, then I will have succeeded in my task of fatherhood.

For now my task is to be a man in the best sense of the term. Then, when our children arrive, I will be ready to be a father in the best sense of the term.

I wonder what they will be like?


N.B. One clarification for the sake of my dear wife: we are neither expecting nor planning anytime soon - do not inundate her with questions of impending pregnancy... ;)