"The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child-raising is not the child, but the parent."
It's been years since I picked up a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul. It is basically a huge collection of short stories in regards to the topic at hand; in this case, twins! 😄
Out of all 101 stories, there is truly only one that stood out to me. Although I have no experience with twins (yet! 😏), I think any parent can sympathize with sleep deprivation. Similar to this father's story, my husband and I truly went through it upon returning home with Kiva. The first few months were hell -- recovering from a C-section, unable to pass gas for days, all of us ended up catching COVID from the hospital stay, painful breastfeeding, all-around exhausted...
"It was miserable. It was brutal.
And it was exactly what I needed."
And similar to the father in this story, the reason the experience was all the more challenging for me, was because I was selfish. At that time, my thoughts were consistently about myself -- my recovery, losing my spark, my sleep schedule, my personal time, my sanity...
"The reason I felt so selfish during this period is because I was selfish. And the reason I worried I wasn't as patient as my wife is because I wasn't."
Kiva may have biologically given me the identity of someone's mother, but she is also the child who made me become the very meaning of the word. Through Kiva, I learned what it means to be a parent; the bar should always be at Godly love.
"For the first time in my life, I was so much more worried about someone else, their happiness and their every waking moment than I was about mine."
Being a parent means viewing your children through the eyes of God, and in turn finally getting to see yourself in that same light -- how God sees you. Your children can do no wrong; you will always love and care and worry about them. You do your best to help guide and navigate them through life -- yes, even if that means with more forceful intentions, at times -- because you only want the best for them. When they're in pain, you feel disgusted with yourself for being unable to alleviate them.
"But [my children] were like a mirror, one that forced me to look at myself and ask what kind of person I wanted to be when I grew up. ... Didn't I aspire to be more?"
We are all sick with the flu, and as Riley climbed out of bed to come get me from the kitchen for leaving her side for even one minute, it finally clicked for me; I am their everything.