Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Archery

Twenty-two days ago I became a dad… again. Our new little girl, Norah Rose was born on Monday, January 2nd at 10:55 PM. Needless to say, the birth was amazing, my wife was and is amazing and Norah is pretty much the bomb! It has been so fun to watch the way in which our two-year-old Anna reacts to the new baby. For the most part, she is crazy about Norah and wants to hold her and smooch on her and all of that. Every now and then a little jealousness creeps in, but for the most part she loves her new little sis.

When we only had one newborn, I had no way of knowing what she was going to be like once she started walking, talking, singing and making jokes, but now Anna does all of those things and everyday I wonder what Norah is going to be like at age two. Now, I know kids are as different as night and day sometimes and so, I don’t really have any way of knowing what she will be like either, but now I at least have a frame of reference. One thing I have learned is that I won’t have to wait very long to find out what Norah’s going to be like, because these precious early days of infanthood (is that a word?) fly past like a fighter jet… you know it was there because you heard it, but it was so fast you can’t even get a good look.

So, all of a sudden I have turned around in my life and I’m 26 years old, blessed like crazy in 4.5 years of marriage, and I have two daughters! Whoa! I have kids… plural! This is all just going so fast and I want to do this right. I want to understand who I am supposed to be as Anna and Norah’s dad… What are my responsibilities as their father? Who am I supposed to be in their life? I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, but there’s a pretty cool parental job description in Psalm 127. Solomon says, “Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.”

So, if kids are arrows, then parents are the warriors. More specifically, parents are the archers. That is such a cool way to describe a parent’s job. I think that the natural desire for a parent is to shelter their child, and try to protect them from the messed up stuff in the world, but that is not a parent’s job. The Lord is our shelter and our protection, and He is that for our kids as well. My job as a parent is to be my girls’ warrior… their archer. My job is to shoot them out from myself and give them everything they need to make it farther out than they would have without me, and farther out than I can go. I am their warrior, and my job is to fight for them with prayer, lifting them up to their true protector and shelter. If I am a good dad, I fight for my kids through prayer, I aim them out into the fray and I know when to let them go. If I am a good archer, I am a good dad.

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