Exhaustion and Stubbornness

Caden had his first case of being overtired yesterday.

There wasn't anything special to the day; he just chose not to sleep. Dads, if you've ever had a small child that was overtired, you know the havoc that it can wreak on a household - lots of crying, lots of wailing, but no sleeping. Ironically, when you're overtired, you don't sleep.

But there's something else that Caden wouldn't do because he was so exhausted...

Eat.

Twice yesterday, my wife was trying to feed him, and he refused to take the food. He was so busy crying and wailing and being upset. He was so focused on being miserable that he didn't even take the food that was right in front of him.

I sat there helplessly trying to figure out what I could do - rubbing his head, shushing him, I even busted out a little "Mary Poppins" - nothing worked. Caden just laid there, screaming and ignoring the nourishment that was being offered.

I wonder how many times I do that. I wonder how many times we do that. Where we get so focused on how we feel, or what's going on in our lives, that we completely miss the blessings that are right in front of us. How many times have I woken up at the beginning of a day and decided to be mad, or upset, or bitter, and consequently was completely oblivious to all the great things that were going on around me.

I doubt if, as a three month old, he was aware of that dynamic, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. We miss the blessings that are going on around us every day - my daughter who wants to dance with me, my wife, who has cooked an amazing meal that I don't even really pay attention to because I"m so busy being upset, even my son, who needs to be held, and I get to be the one to do that.

Does life sucker punch us in the gut sometimes? Of course it does. Do the events that happen to us make us feel weak and tempt us to throw in the towel? More often that any of us would like to admit, probably. The truth is, though, we have a choice. We have a choice to let ourselves be taken out of the game - as dads, as husbands, as men. Or we can choose in - we can choose in to relationships, we can choose in to fatherhood, we can choose in to seeing what we've really been given, not what we haven't.

I'm going to choose the latter. That's how I'm going to dare to be daddy today.


Have you experienced events that threatened to take you out before? Did you choose to stay in? How?