Prayer for a New Baby His

God, I'm a father. I keep saying it and it still doesn't sound real. There's a baby in the next room that has my last name and I have no idea what I'm doing.

Everyone keeps telling me congratulations, and I smile and say thank you, but underneath that smile is a man who is terrified. Terrified of doing this wrong. Terrified of becoming my father.

Or not becoming my father. I don't even know which one scares me more. She carried this baby for nine months.

Her body changed. Her sleep disappeared. She did the impossible.

And now she's recovering and nursing and exhausted and I'm standing here holding a bottle, feeling like a substitute. Like the understudy who got pushed on stage without rehearsal. I want to be needed, Lord.

But I also feel useless. She knows what the baby wants by the sound of the cry. I'm still guessing.

I change diapers and I make meals and I do the things, but I wonder if I'm connecting or just performing. I'm supposed to provide now. Not just money.

Stability. Safety. A version of manhood that a child can look at and feel secure.

And I don't know if I have that. I don't know if my father gave it to me or if I have to build it from scratch. Psalm 139 says you knit this child together.

That means you planned this. You put this baby in my arms on purpose. Lord, if you trust me with this, help me trust myself.

"I am fearfully and wonderfully made." This child. Fearfully and wonderfully made.

And placed in the arms of a man who is afraid. Maybe that's not an accident. Maybe fear and wonder are supposed to live together in this moment.

I think about my own father. The things he got right. The things he missed.

The silence where words should have been. The presence where he showed up even when he didn't know what to say. I carry all of it.

And now I get to choose which parts I pass forward. Lord, make me a father who stays. Not just physically.

Emotionally. Make me a man who puts down the phone when his kid is talking. Who says I love you out loud.

Who apologizes when he's wrong. I don't want to be a provider who is absent. I don't want my kids to know my work ethic better than my laugh.

Help me be present even when I don't know what to do. Because showing up confused is better than not showing up at all. And Lord, help me take care of her right now.

She's giving everything to this baby. Let me give everything to her. Not because she asks.

Because I see it. Thank you for trusting me with this. I will get things wrong.

I will learn. I will stay. Amen.