Date: 1/10/2012
Author: Devin
Title: An open letter to my first baby
January 10, 2012
To my first baby:
I suppose I should say “I'm sorry” for the fact that this apology has taken so long to come about. I have thought about the following words for what seems like an eternity. There have been many late nights where I have fallen asleep thinking about these words and other times they are the first things on my mind when I open my eyes in the morning. I know there have been occasions where I have expressed these in various, singular ways, but for whatever reason this morning I decided I would write them down for you to see. I do at least hope you understand that you were our guinea pig. Though we had read books and listened to those who had gone before us, we had absolutely no clue about what were we doing when we brought you home from the hospital. Please understand that we were really just winging it and learning as we went along. Some of it seemed like common sense.....if your diaper stunk we changed it and if you spit some food out we figured you didn't like it. Outside of that, bless your heart, you were living with a couple of rookie parents who were going around the block for the first time. I suppose it's a miracle you even survived the first few years at all :) I guess in some ways you are our miracle baby :)
I want you to know first and foremost that, just like your younger brother and sister, I love you with every fiber of my being. I want you to know that as far as I am concerned, outside of God, my sun rises and sets with you. I know that at this point in your young life you can't begin to fathom the depths of the love that a parent has for their children. I don't expect you to fully comprehend or be able to even absorb 1% of the fact that I would be willing to stand in front of a speeding train and give up my life if it meant you didn't have to. As I type these words I have to remind myself that you will not be able to digest the true meaning of what I say until one day when you hold a newborn child of your own making in your arms. Then and only then will some of this stuff begin to sink in. Hopefully at that point you will be able to reflect back on these few thoughts and say, “Wow, now I understand what the 'ole man was saying. Maybe he did know a thing or two. I guess he was pretty smart after all :)”
Please now allow me to fall on my sword. I beg your forgiveness for the times when I have tried to be your friend rather than be your parent. I wished I would have clued into the fact that at any given time you had plenty of friends and that what you really needed was the thing you had only one of.....a Daddy. I am sorry for those instances when I became a spineless ragdoll with no backbone. It was during those times that I would buckle under the pressure of “everyone else is doing it” and “their parents let them”. I often made very poor decisions that usually ended with the word “Yes”. In light of that fact, I am satisfied that those poor decisions would not have been so poor if I had chosen to use a different word that I didn't use near
enough..... “No”. I wished I would have been the “mean parent” more. You know who they are.....the parent that doesn't understand; the parent that doesn't believe in fun; the parent who is not “cool”. I wished I would have been far more concerned with your spiritual well-being than I was your popularity or your acceptance among your peers. I feel somewhat ashamed that I have allowed you to grow up knowing far more about Sponge-Bob Squarepants, Brittney Spears and Michael Jordan than you have God and the Son that he sent to die for you. I wished I would have done a better job of teaching you that God's Word is the most important book in the world and that even if you excel in your school books, that learning how to live is still a higher priority than learning how to make a living. I apologize for taking on responsibilities that should have been yours, for bailing you out when you should have paid the consequences, and for giving you things that you should have earned on your own.
There are a blue million other things that I should probably say I'm sorry for but I'm running out of space. Remember this.....Lord willing, you still have some time to maybe correct some of the things I have messed up. I am going to try to learn from our experience and do better with the two coming up behind you. By the way, I hope you don't mind that I shared this with a few hundred of our friends. I have a feelin me and you ain't the only ones who have walked this road. Maybe it will make them feel better too. I love you K.
Parent the extra mile - Devin