Like most newlywed couples, I can remember how excited my wife and I were to have children. 3…4… maybe 10? We planned to wait a couple of years before getting started on our new little family, however, our colicky firstborn son didn’t think that was such a good idea, showing up just a year into our marriage.
Since that time, life and parenting has thrown us many curveballs over the years. Parenting is hard. But why shouldn’t it be? Raising little humans with sinful natures was never meant to be easy, right? Parenting is not for the faint at heart, and here are three awesome reasons why:
1. Parenting stretches you.
Most couples think they have all the answers to being a good parent… until they actually have kids. I know I did. As if marriage isn’t hard enough, parenting is even harder. It stretches you in more ways than you can imagine (not to mention the whole watermelon in the stomach thing, ladies :). Just when you thought you couldn’t live on less sleep or manage any more personal responsibilities, God, in his sovereign sense of humor, adds a little human to your already spinning plates.
“To be a parent is to be chief designer of a product more advanced than any technology and more interesting than the greatest work of art.” – Alain de Botton
2. Parenting grows you.
Yes, your job is to grow them, but, if you’re doing it right, in the process, they end up growing you too. Some of the greatest practical and spiritual life lessons I’ve ever learned have been through my kids. I am a better person, parent, and Christian today than I was before I had children. Through them I have increased in my level of patience, my quality of prayer, and my reliance on God’s power and not my own. I became a better parent the day I realized this.
“Fathering is not something that perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.” – Frank Pittman
3. Parenting changes you.
Once you have children, your perspectives change. Your priorities change. You will never see life again through the same lens as before. Your reason for living has monumentally shifted, and your heart will never again feel the same. Because pieces of your heart now live outside of you, and to a certain extent, outside of your control. And when those ‘pieces’ hurt, you hurt. And when they soar, your heart soars with them.
“We never know the love of a parent until we become parents ourselves.” – Henry Ward Beecher
