Stop Shoulding and Start Winning!
I thought I did. I thought I had done all the right things and didn’t expect anything less than a perfect baby.
But on that day, I was told that it didn’t matter what I had done, thought I’d done, expected would happen. That day, my world was destroyed and it was obvious I had control over NOTHING!
As a Dad, you’re “supposed” to be strong and in control, right?
You know, have the upper hand, or at least appear to. Be stoic. Be the protector.
But I was none of that.
I was completely useless and felt like I had failed in a major way.
How could I be a father to someone who might never walk? What kind of life would he have anyway?
What friends would he have if he couldn’t talk or play games?
If he couldn’t sit up by himself, how could he ever do something as simple as hold a crayon? That would make school pretty much impossible.
I asked myself, why was he even allowed to be born?
It wasn’t fair to our other kids. They were so young and had their whole lives ahead of them. There was so much potential there. They shouldn’t be burdened with this.
There was nothing for me to be thankful for. Life was over!
He was telling me something that I already knew but couldn’t put into action.
That really it didn’t matter whether I wanted to keep dealing with seizures and ER visits, with useless specialists or a dysfunctional education system.
“That’s life, Mike. You can’t run away from it. Figure it out.
That somewhat random conversation was a turning point, no question.
My role as Ben’s Dad was NOT to feel good about him scoring the game-winning goal or achieving high honours. Those are great accomplishments but it was NOT about me.
It was about supporting Ben to become the person he is meant to me and not was supposed to be. Whatever that looked like.
It was about believing that the future COULD be bigger than the past, and bigger than I could imagine.
My role was to figure out how to make that happen.
Yep, we are definitely born to break (a lot).
But most importantly, we are born to win!