Letters to Noah: A shelter I can't provide

Dear Noah, 

Your mom and I can’t help but pause and stare at you as you’re sleeping. We watch your little chest rise and fall with every breath, resting so comfortably without any concern or worry in your mind. It’s calming for us to sit there alongside you. With each passing day, we are filled with disbelief over how quickly you are growing.You are already two, but it’s feels like it’s only been a few short months. So, it’s led us to slow down our rhythm and pace because we want to soak in as much precious time alongside you, Noah. 

It’s a surreal experience that I hope you will understand one day, too. But during these moments, it can also feel kind of strange. It can seem this way because I think back to the many months of preparing for you to come home, and now you are before our very eyes every day. You are beside us, relying on us for everything in this foreign place that you still struggle to understand. 

And I won’t lie to you; there is a part of me that cherishes this very fact. I love that I appear so useful, so comforting, so valuable to you. You depend on us, and I recognize that will not always be true. I know it won’t always stay this way, which is why I want to prepare you for all that is to come, Noah. As your dad, as someone who so deeply cares for you, there is something that I can’t hide about this world that surrounds us, son.

Not everything is as it ought to be. 

There is an inherent brokenness to everything that you will come to touch and experience in this life. I know, it’s disappointing to hear this. It’s difficult to experience things that appear so perfect, but ultimately they reveal their devastating faults that laid hidden beneath their surface. 

I feel this weight each and every time I carry you up the stairs for your nap, Noah. Because in my mind, no moment is more perfect than you resting your tired head on my shoulder. But then this truth creeps in and whispers in my ear, reminding me that this applies to me, as well. 

In this broken world, I am bound to fail you. Countlessly.

When you are old enough to read this, you will have met this truth on more than one occasion. I am not perfect, Noah. In due time, you will encounter the deepest fractures that exist in my soul by way of both my words and actions. I’m so sorry, son, but I can’t protect you from all this. I can’t be a shelter from the damage that this world can cause because I can be the source of it, too. 

If I am completely transparent, and I hope to be to you, this is the most terrifying aspect of becoming a father that I have struggled with so far.  

And to make it more difficult, it is also true of every other person you will meet. This inherent fractured state not only exists within me but extends to all people. Even you, Noah, will find this to be true of yourself. It will follow you into every interaction and each of your relationships. You will sense the mighty pull and sway it will have from both within and outside of yourself. It will attempt to influence you to become reliant upon it, much in the same way we have cared for you.

Yet, all hope is not lost, Noah.

As your father, I don’t have the means to shelter you from the depravity that surrounds, or that is in us, but take comfort that I was never intended to be such a refuge. 

Until the very End,

Dad

Psalm 46 / 71:17-18