Just 17 days ago, Katy and I walked into a hospital and told the lady at the front desk that we were there to have a baby. Just a couple of hours later, I was holding that baby in my arms in the operating room. Compared to the 39 weeks that we endured previously, this felt like a very brief moment in time.

Since then, a few people have predictably asked “what it’s like to be a father”. Currently, I don’t really feel like a father at all. I feel more like a guy who just had a baby with his wife. I really haven’t had to do anything “fatherly” yet. I mainly just try to take care of Katy and help her out with the baby. Changing diapers, swaddling, and the like are not fatherly-like things to me. They’re just things you have to do with babies.

So I guess I should try to answer a similar question. “What’s it like to have a baby?” I’ve thought about this for a while now (because I knew people would ask and I knew I would end up blogging about it), but it’s been very difficult to articulate with words. It’s hard to tell people what having a first child is like without inadvertently quoting a movie or tv show, or something else that makes you sound cheesy. On the other hand, if I try to hold back any hint of cheesy-ness, then I run the risk of sounding like my heart is made of stone (Kevin Boyd asked me if this was finally the one thing that made me cry, if that’s any indication of my outward physical emotions).

The only thing that I can definitively say about the experience, at the risk of sounding cheesy is this: It was the closest brush with God I’ve ever had. No youth camp or Passion conference or mission trip could ever match up to what it’s like to hear that tiny voice cry for the first time. Just knowing that out of practically nothing, God formed a life inside of Katy, and that life grew into a baby, and that baby is made up of Katy and I, and that baby will grow into a beautiful girl. This was the first time in my life that I’ve ever witnessed a physical miracle of God: seeing him make something amazing out of nothing that I can hold in my hands and watch as she grows up.

It’s a pretty impressive experience to see God do His thing like that. Now I get to watch her develop, learn, and grow right before my eyes. And soon, I will be learning how to be a father, which will be a miracle in and of itself.