The Space Between Heroes

Oh I love, love, love being a father, I love it. But there are some difficult points right after birth that take a toll on a marriage. It’s the lack of sleep. It’s the three kids all on different sleep schedules. One who goes to bed at 8pm, another who goes to sleep at 9pm and another who goes to sleep at darn near 11pm. My wife is one incredible, amazing woman. I could never accomplish or do what she does unless God did a radical transformation of me. I look up to her in so many ways. Nursing, homeschool, and staying at home with the kiddos takes a toll on her and she’s out by 9pm every night, at the latest. And it’s hard. I miss her. Gosh, I miss her. I just push and push deeper into God during this season, as the cold winds deepen out of the north and it whites out outside, and I just hate the space between.

I’m not sure how many of you work and have kids, but if you do, then you know what I mean when I say, I feel like I have one good shot every day to lavish my love on my family. A short window when I am home in the evenings. And it’s just not enough. My heart just wants to pour out love and time with my beautiful wife and my children and it sucks, this world, this system, this whole making money thing. I’ll do it, every single day until I get called home, but I just want to see them. To see the faces of the ones that are most precious to my heart, next to Jesus of course.

Actually, that’s like the thing that makes this easier. Or relieves the heartache. Jesus and being away from him. I know he’s here in our hearts in his Spirit, but I can’t wait to be in his embrace, actually. And it’s that space between us and that hurts. It’s been so long since I met him and I just want to be in his arms for real with all of my family present. I guess that’s one of the most beautiful things about the rapture…we’re all together finally. Everyone who matters most to my heart is with me right then, most of all Jesus. That’s heaven. That’s paradise. It’s Jesus. If I can do 15 years this intimate with Jesus, but with space between, I can do a couple months now.

You know what’s crazy? We’re so sold out to the Kingdom, to Jesus’ heart, to raising Godly children, that we are actually adopting soon. It’s been a desire of our hearts for years and years and we are going to probably get the opportunity to do so here in the next several months. It’s what we do, we love kids, we love raising them, we willingly take on the sacrifices, and we do it. And we’re going to adopt an older child so it won’t be the same as having another newborn. And we’re ready to do it. We are. I just freaking miss my girl, my wife. She’s got my heart in a way that no one else in the world ever will. Only Jesus has it more. I remember feeling this way with both of our older kiddos when we were in this phase after birth and it was just as bad, probably worse because I was more immature spiritually back then. It’s uncomfortable now, to say the least.

I keep coming back to that verse, Malachi 2:15,

Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring.

I feel like a breeder sometimes lol! That’s awful, I’m kidding. Seriously kidding 😉

I was working out earlier and listening to some secular playlist on Spotify. There’s this song, I guess it was recently popular, called Don’t let me down by the chainsmokers. I had only heard it once before (lol if this is an insanely popular song and I’ve been living on Mars…I’ll pull the dad card on that one), but the lyrics really hit me. There’s this girl who keeps singing, “I need you, I need you, I need you right now. Don’t let me, don’t let me, don’t let me down.” I started processing that. Why do words like that sound so appealing, apart from just base sexual connotations? Seriously, what’s behind that? I think coming from a man’s point of view, there’s something about us that wants to be the hero. We want to be needed. We want to be crucial, critical to someone special. We want to be someone’s hero. We do. It’s a deep desire woven into the masculine heart. I see it in my son all the time. Like when he goes and puts on his Iron Man mask and plays superhero around the house and pretending I’m the bad guy which ends in a tickle fight. It’s part of how we as men image the heart of God. God likes being the Hero, he is the Hero of our story. It’s during these seasons of life as a dad, as a husband, where I just don’t get the opportunity to hear words like that from the one who I am crazy about. And it’s difficult because I have to completely derive that from God. And honestly, as amazing as my wife is (and she is), she’s not God to me .She can’t do what Jesus does for me. That deep down validation, of being a hero, I can really only get from Jesus. A spouse can’t put those validations on the other spouse, a finite person can never fulfill desires that only an infinite God can fill.

Anyways, I guess as you can read, I’m in a season of growth. It’s probably going to get messy on my side, as God comes in and does his work on my heart while I am shakily his hands and feet as a father and as a husband and as a man of God to the people around me, and still do the gazillion other things I have daily.

I hope you all are having a wonderful week! Yay it’s Wednesday and only a couple more days till the weekend!!! Wooo!!! God bless you all SO SO MUCH!! You’re precious to him, seriously thanks for spending a few minutes listening to a fellow brother in Christ talk it out over a couple posts. God bless 🙂