We get years of training and education to prepare for our career, but we rarely have ANY preparation for the lifelong journey of fathering

Being a dad is one of the most thrilling and terrifying experiences of my life. Without doubt, these little beings called children challenge me beyond my capacity to comprehend. They inhabit my daily life and fill my dreams in ways that are both amazing and annoying. To say that I was unprepared to be a dad is beyond truth. I had no idea what was in store.

In my work with men, and more poignantly, as I investigate my own life and story, I’ve uncovered six key things I wish I had heard from a dad-veteran long before I found myself in the hospital holding a little creature. To hopefully assist those men who are twenty years my junior, I offer you these small nuggets in hopes of allaying some of your confusion and fear.

1. You are more important than you want to be.

All of us enjoy the feeling of importance – where we have people looking up to us, relying on us, and admiring our work. We strive for this in our communities and careers, and long for those moments where we get the affirmation that we have contributed something meaningful. It’s fun to be important.

But for the most part in the world, we believe our importance comes from our performance. Not so with kids.

Our importance in the lives of our children does not come from our performance but from our presence and our character. Our importance comes from the mere fact that we are their FATHER, and they are deeply and insatiably hungry for us to be WITH them at every turn. They long for us in ways we fear we can not fulfill, because we assume they long for our performance – like the rest of the world. No, children do not long for fatherly performance. They long for fatherly presence. They long for a fatherly character that feeds their souls and nourishes their spirits. They hunger for us in ways that our fix-it mentality simply can not satiate.

It’s much easier to perform. But your presence and character are more important than you want them to be.

2. It’s going to cost you more than you can imagine.

Being a father is one of the most costly endeavors any man could ever undertake. And while the financial costs are far too staggering and disheartening to even begin to enumerate, the costs to which I’m referring have nothing to do with money.

I’m talking about your life.

To be a father is to lay down your life. Fathering is a synonym for sacrifice. The reality of fathering well requires men to put others (primarily their wives first and then their children) before themselves in such a way as to give up comfort, personal pursuit, and ease. Only when all the members of your family are cared for and comfortable can you begin to think of your own needs. Being a father will cost you dearly.

3. The rewards are greater than you could ever dream.

And while the costs of fathering are staggering, the rewards will blow your mind. They do not come in international admiration, fame or fortune, or even in verbal recognition.

No, they come in those quiet moments in the in-between.

They come when you are nestled in the rocking chair at 3 a.m. after finally getting the baby to sleep. They come when you are walking terribly slowly up the trail, stopping at every new and miniature discovery because your child has not lost his innocent sense of wonder. They erupt into your world when your daughter sings and performs her made-up song for the hundredth time. They come when your drivers-education-son finally remembers to turn on his turn signal. They overwhelm you when your child slips her hand into yours as you walk down the grocery aisle, or when your hoard of children attack you with water balloons when you arrive home from work. They make all the costs of fathering vanish when your child asks, “Daddy, what is God like?”

The rewards of fathering do not come when or where you expect, because fathering rewards are sneaky. They like to surprise you.

4. Fathering others will also father you.

God has so craftily designed the power of fathering that it is mutually redemptive. I have wrestled with the reality of “unfathered” men for a long time. Many of them have suffered deeply from the lack of fathering they received from their dads. In those moments where they are desperate and realize they will never receive the words of affirmation, the intentional pursuit, or the gifts of blessing from their fathers, I remind them that God has designed another way.

When men father others, they themselves find healing.

It’s a mystery, I know. I certainly can not explain it. But the more I engage men who desire to father their children more than they themselves were fathered, I see a metamorphosis occur in their hearts. It’s as if the power of fathering so engulfs them in its healing power that no one can emerge unfathered. My advice for those men who suffer from deep, deep father wounds is to turn around and father their world. You too will be changed.

5. You won’t always know what to do, but you always have to do SOMETHING.

Fathering is an endless fire hydrant of situations in which you will find yourself clueless. You won’t know what to do. You won’t have a clue. And yet the world (i.e. your family, your neighbors, your church…everyone) will be waiting for you to make a move — a decisive move in one direction or the other. More often than not, you’ll be shooting in the dark.

As a father, immobility is not an option. You’ve got to move. You’ve got to shoot. You’ve got to do SOMETHING. Passivity is not an option — its consequences are far too devastating. It is far better to assess your options, survey your land, and if you just plain have no idea what direction to head…start moving anyway. Choose as wisely as you can, but choose.

Far more devastation comes from a father who remains passive or immobilized than from a father who makes the best choice he can make.

I love this quote by Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

6. You are going to mess up your kids.

Let’s just face the facts. Even while daring greatly and doing the best you can, you are 100% guaranteed to do a lot of things wrong. You are going to hurt the very children you so long to protect. It’s going to happen to the best of us.

But far more than doing things right, what matters most to our children is that we had a fatherly intention towards them. When they know that your heart as their father is turned toward them (Malachi 4:6), and that despite your shortcomings you had their best interest in mind and that the warmth of your kindness has forever been aimed at raising them, caring for them, being THERE for them…your failures and mess ups will pale in comparison to the depth of their gratitude.

Go therefore, and father the world.

Chris Bruno

Restoration Project Chief Visionary