I am writing this at 5 a.m. on the day before my first Father’s Day as a dad. My daughter is swaddled up, sleeping on my desk after her 4 a.m. bottle. It’s raining outside. I am not a birthday guy. Never have been. Growing up, I always felt an odd sense of guilt on my birthdays. I didn’t like the spotlight. I didn’t want the attention. Our time on earth is limited, and a birthday marks another year gone. Even as a child I felt an overwhelming sense that we have so little time on earth and there’s so much to do. Birthdays are a reminder or our mortality. I’ve always been a bit skeptical of people who actually cared about or, worse yet, celebrated their birthdays. And yet, I am proud to say it: I am so excited for Father’s Day tomorrow. Not for a gift or to play golf. No, but to actually be a father on Father’s Day. My dad once said that he felt, growing up, that he was born to be a father. He didn’t mean it in a boastful way. He saw fatherhood as a vocation, not a check-in-the-box. I felt and feel the same way.…Continue reading Prayer on a (bonus) Father’s Day
Month: June 2018
Skin in the game
My wife and I finally left the hospital with our baby after she spent 21 days in the special care unit. Twenty-one days of being poked and prodded. Twenty-one days of a feeding tube. Twenty-one days of being hooked up to loud, beeping machines. And 21 days not at home. Twenty-one days of tears leaving the hospital. Twenty-one days of uncertainty and fear. And then suddenly we got to take her home. And the 21 days doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Carrying our baby out of that hospital in a car seat was one of the best two or three moments of my life. I felt freer than I ever have in my life while also weighed down with the solemn burden of fatherhood. I know some people spend their whole life talking about the “good old days” and reminiscing about a time when they were younger, but not me. All I can think about is the here and now and the future! My little girl’s future. My daughter will, inshahallah, live until the year 2100. 2100. It’s only 2018. Eighty-two years ago it was 1936. World War II hadn’t even happened yet. Today’s day in age it can be tempting to…Continue reading Skin in the game
Contradiction
Hmmm… Russel Berger’s great sin against secularism? For posterity’s sake, the Left in 2018: They forgot the asterisk on that bottom tweet–*unless your ideas or beliefs are too diverse as we define it, in which case . . . you’re fired!”