Mark, that is exactly how I feel myself a lot at the moment. With a new baby here as well, both the responsibilities I have to my family and my own inadequacies weigh on me heavily, and I share many of the sentiments you express in this prayer.
How are us fathers to provide financially and practically, teach our children, spend quality time with our children, spend quality time with our wives, support our wives so they can also have quality time with the children, work in our various Christian ministries, and most importantly spend time with God also (the item that should be first but is so easy to put last as everything else presses in)? And fit this all into a week? While dealing with the various differing personal issues that each of us fallible humans has? While our families continue to grow with more children and (for some) wives as well?
The role of the father, the patriarch, the servant-leader imitating Christ, is as deeply challenging as it is incredibly rewarding. We can only do it by leaning on Him.
And it's easy to say this, but the reality often involves praying "God, please give me the strength", then walking back into your life and finding the reality is just as hard as before you prayed, and you really can't see how he's changing anything at all. Sometimes we must press on through faith even when we cannot see any light ahead, knowing God will provide it in His time.
We usually talk very freely about the wonderful blessings our wives and children are to us (which they are, I love my family), but we hide the difficult things. Our society makes out children to be so difficult that we do everything to show that a "large" family is actually great (not that I really consider your and my families large, they just are in our society!). But great blessings come with great responsibilities also, and we need to acknowledge this and support each other in the hard task we have of raising Godly families.
Those people who we look up to and think they've got it all sorted might actually just hide their own problems better, and need our support also.
How are us fathers to provide financially and practically, teach our children, spend quality time with our children, spend quality time with our wives, support our wives so they can also have quality time with the children, work in our various Christian ministries, and most importantly spend time with God also (the item that should be first but is so easy to put last as everything else presses in)? And fit this all into a week? While dealing with the various differing personal issues that each of us fallible humans has? While our families continue to grow with more children and (for some) wives as well?
The role of the father, the patriarch, the servant-leader imitating Christ, is as deeply challenging as it is incredibly rewarding. We can only do it by leaning on Him.
And it's easy to say this, but the reality often involves praying "God, please give me the strength", then walking back into your life and finding the reality is just as hard as before you prayed, and you really can't see how he's changing anything at all. Sometimes we must press on through faith even when we cannot see any light ahead, knowing God will provide it in His time.
We usually talk very freely about the wonderful blessings our wives and children are to us (which they are, I love my family), but we hide the difficult things. Our society makes out children to be so difficult that we do everything to show that a "large" family is actually great (not that I really consider your and my families large, they just are in our society!). But great blessings come with great responsibilities also, and we need to acknowledge this and support each other in the hard task we have of raising Godly families.
Those people who we look up to and think they've got it all sorted might actually just hide their own problems better, and need our support also.
