Being a dad is truly one of my life's greatest joys, though at times it can be exhausting. I can lose my patience, and I fail more times than I can count. Yet those things pale in comparison to those moments of pure bliss whenever you hear one of your kids laugh for the first time, fight through a challenge, or hit a milestone.
If you're like me, we only ever learned how to be dads through osmosis, whether we like it or not. We have a lot of preconceived notions of what it means to be a good dad from our own father, the good, the bad, and the ugly. But this blog definitely will not be a "do this to be a perfect dad" type of blog.
I'm only in my mid-30s, and I have four kids. My oldest is seven. I don't have near enough life experience or experience of being a dad to pretend to preach to other dads. That's actually one of my biggest pet peeves on Instagram: when you see influencers talking about what it means to be a "real man" or be a "real Catholic father" when they're barely 26 years old with a kid that just started learning how to walk. I'm not saying that they can't teach us something, but I would rather learn from the dads whose kids are fully grown, still Catholic and want to come back around for holidays. That dad must have done a few things right!
So this won't be a blog giving you a list of dos and don'ts of what it means to be a Catholic father. Rather, I wanted to mark down a few things that I've learned in the seven and a half years since the Lord blessed me with my first child.
1) being an attentive husband always makes me a better father.
2) fatherhood is brutally hard at times, but always so good.
3) I am a better father when I cling to the Lord and His mercy.
4) fatherhood is physically demanding, so I need to take care of myself.
5) even though I have the idea of what being a good father means, I fail at it a lot.
6) quality time with my kids doesn't always have to involve going out or spending money.
7) I still have much to learn in order for me to be the father I want to be.
If you're a dad in the weeds right now, trying to juggle a career, being an attentive husband, and being the father God called you to be, and feel strapped and exhausted, my only piece of advice that I'll offer here is to do your best to remove whatever it is in your life and in your schedule that is preventing you from giving and serving.
You might have to remove something that's morally neutral or even good, but just not as great or as good as the things we need to do in order to live out our vocational calling to the best of our abilities. Maybe you love reading, but if at the end of the day, after you put the kids down and you haven't spent time to connect with your wife or haven't prayed yet, that book needs to be put aside for the sake of something more important.
If you just walk through the front door after a long day of work and you crave rest, but you see your wife struggling and stressed out, that's an invitation from the Lord to once again die to yourself in order to give without counting the cost.
There's a lot more to say about sanctifying your day. If you're interested in more thoughts on how to build out your schedule, check out my new book, Sanctify Your Day, for more info. That's a bit of a shameless plug, but this blog can only be so long.
I'll end with a prayer for Fathers written by Pope John XXIII that I would I invite you to pray if you're a father or for a specific father that you know in your life:
Saint Joseph, guardian of Jesusand chaste husband of Mary,you passed your life in loving fulfillment of duty.You supported the Holy Family of Nazarethwith the work of your hands.Kindly protect those who trustingly come to you.You know their aspirations,their hardships, their hopes.They look to you because they knowyou will understand and protect them.You too knew trial,labor and weariness.But amid the worries of material life,your soul was full of deep peaceand sang out in true joythrough intimacy with God’s Son entrusted to youand with Mary, his tender Mother.Assure those you protect that they do not labor alone.Teach them to find Jesus near themand to watch over Him faithfully as you have done. Amen.