Lessons Learned Being a Husband and a Father (so far…)

In the past 3 years I have gone from being a very single young 23-year old man finishing a computer science engineering degree at the University of Texas at Arlington, to being a married man of slightly less than a year and a half with one eight-month old little girl, working as a systems engineer, working towards a Masters of Divinity degree and prayfully considering where our little family is going to put down roots.

Much in my life has changed.

Along with these changes have come many lessons and mistakes.

Of these lessons (or perhaps more fundamentally observations based on fundamental truths), two have stood out in my 15 months of husbandhood and 8 months of fatherhood (not counting the in-the-oven time): namely, as a Father, I’m to exemplify God the Father and as a husband I’m to love my sweet wife as Jesus loves His Bride, the Church.

Now, in many ways, this is both a blessing and a curse.  It is a curse because the reality is that there is no one on this earth who can do it.  It’s nigh impossible.  I am absolutely incapable of loving my wife like Jesus loves me.  I simply cannot.  I can never love my daughter like the Father loves me.  Any attempt, while noble, will always fall short because I am, quite obviously, not Jesus.

Yet, this reality is also an extreme blessing because in the Father and in the Son I have perfect examples of how to love my family.  When my daughter is crying at night, very loudly, and there is absolutely nothing I can do to soothe, calm, or quiet her and I am tempted to get made and flustered and discouraged, I can remember all of the times I have whined and cried and shook my little fists at God and my mind can be calmed and I can love my daughter in some small way like how my Father loves me.  When I get flustered and my wife and when the romance is not there and when I’ve had a sucky day and she’s had a sucky day and I’m short with my words and I’m impatient and angry with my thoughts and I just want to go to bed instead of being with my wife,  I can be kindly rebuked by my Savior’s Love for me; that love that lived on this earth, was broken, beaten, bruised, spat upon, tortured, bloodied, crucified and killed and I can know His great love for me and have a tangible example to encourage me to forget myself and my own petty needs and love my wife as Jesus eternally loves me.

Being a husband and a dad is better and harder than I ever imagined.  God has surely graced me in allowing me to do it.