Soul Shelter

A few months ago my wife and I had our first pre-natal appointment. On the sonogram, we watched a tiny colorless splotch of light flickering like a star. The heartbeat of our first child.

There was a time when the thought of becoming a parent left me stricken with unholy fear. The world around me seemed to say that having children meant bidding an abrupt farewell to youthful dreams and ambitions. It was the old “procreate and perish” mentality. After kids, life would become comprised entirely of self-sacrifice. There’d be simply no more room and no more time for indulging ideas of personal fulfillment. One’s individuality would cease to matter, one’s sense-of-self would die a quick and tidy death, and a primordial archetype called “Parent” would take over. As a parent, you’d spend your days consumed by work you loathed, endlessly fretting over the mortgage, the insurance, the car. You and your spouse would no longer dine out, no longer go to movies, no longer flee on impulsive getaways—or have the freedom to travel at all. You’d no longer even talk to one another except through a child. It was an unpretty picture, and it seemed guaranteed to obliterate every single goal I’d set for myself as a writer.

That was early on, when I was young and newly married and barely believed myself an adult, let alone a potential father. But as the years passed, my feelings began to change. Parenthood became a prospect less terrifying. My wife and I had weathered the challenges that confront every marriage early on, and our bond had strengthened. We had cultivated a shared vision of what our life would be, what our wishes were. We worked together to nurture our vision and support each other. We sacrificed and labored hard. And over time, the life we’d pictured for ourselves began to crystallize around us. Our work was going very well, there were new opportunities on the horizon, we were happy, we felt free. I began to see myself as a father. I no longer believed in those dark joyless images of parenthood, for I’d learned through a strong and happy marriage that any kind of life could be possible. Parenthood, in fact, seemed to promise unimaginable adventures.

But something funny happened. Though in an emotional sense I felt ready for fatherhood, I also felt that I’d gained good momentum in my work (as had my wife in hers), and that if we waited and continued working hard, there would soon come to us some even greater security, some unmistakable guarantee of stability for years to come. This would signify that we could now safely become parents.

I guess you could say I started looking for a sign. What the sign would be I didn’t know, but it would answer two questions with a conclusive yes:

1. Was now the time?

2. Would we remain financially secure?

Obviously there are very few material circumstances, short of coming into an immense inheritance or winning the lottery jackpot, that can provide a person with an unobstructed view of the future and liberate one from the material worries with which we all have to wrestle. A person can go on forever asking, “Is this it? Have I arrived? Is this the pot at the end of the rainbow?”

I asked it of everything in my life. I’d written and published two novels—did that mean I could be a parent now, or would I feel more secure with three novels? We’d bought a house—did that mean it was time, or did we need to wait till we could afford a bigger house? We owned our first reliable car, but did we need more than one?

There was a significant flaw in my thinking. Somehow, I hadn’t accounted for the fact that life simply goes on, whether one feels fully stable or not.

Though I certainly don’t think it’s a bad idea to seek security and plan a family carefully, there comes a time when one must recognize that the pursuit of happiness, in its multifarious forms, will always involve a feeling of risk, of embracing a financial or emotional unknown (or sometimes both at once).

After a long period of constantly fixing my gaze on the horizon, on the next sure sign of security, this was my realization at last: The horizon always recedes. Now is what we’ve got. Nothing has ever guaranteed our financial stability, and yet we’ve survived—even thrived! We’re happy and secure, and many risks have been required to get ourselves where we are.

So the main question confronting us was not: “Is the future guaranteed?” It was, “Are we ready for the joys of parenthood?” To this our answer was a profound yes, and that meant taking the required risk of embracing the unknown. Life doesn’t wait.

Our joy upon seeing that flickering heartbeat tells us that we’re destined for an awesome return on this latest risk of ours. There are many unknowns ahead, of course—but that’s reason to be excited! What could be more important, for the little one or its parents, than a willingness to embrace life’s great unknowns, and to risk becoming happier than ever?

See also: “A Moment of Fulfillment”