What has to die in order to be made alive?
It’s 4pm on Friday night. My wife and I get a phone call from the hospital. We pack up our bags while I stuff the remaining Taco Bell in my mouth and excitedly load in the car. We are in the small group of people who want to go to the hospital today. As we check in and see how things are different we cant help but be excited for how our lives are about to change forever.
After a long night of being checked on, nurses coming in and out and monitors buzzing and beeping like a metronome in a recording studio we start to realize that our idea of a quick and painless hospital visit might not turn out like we expected. Throughout the day we had moments of fear engulf us as the difficulty of bringing life into the world was falling on us in new waves. We are expectant, but slowly watching our energy and excitement that we carried into the hospital with us start to wear off.
31 hours of hard labor, and my wife gives birth to our first child. A baby girl. Time stopped for me when they placed her on my wife’s chest. I started to see my life and the things that I hoped for, the way my day is ordered, the things that bring me joy slowly start to fade. I was instantly transported to an out of body experience where I watched the person that I formally knew as Trent slowly die.
The feeling didn’t go away, it only intensified as I held my daughter for the first time. As she looked into my eyes and slowly stopped crying because she recognized my voice and my smell. I can only imagine she was slowly putting a face to the feelings of comfort she felt in moms womb as we would talk and love one another. She knew me, but I didn’t know her yet. As she fell into my chest and relaxed she slowly won my heart.
Our first night as parents was exhausting. More beeping, and monitors. More nurses checking on us every hour. A baby who would get hungry or dirty and need fed or changed. The first time she cried I woke from a vivid dream where I was the old Trent, the me that I was watching slowly die. The me before being a father. I awoke from this dream where I felt like the old me, and when I opened my eyes the out of body experience came again. And that old me was dead.
I watched this new me, this baby Trent if you will scramble and pick up my new daughter to soothe her for the first time on my own, no nurses to watch, wife still asleep in bed. I watched as my daughter was being cared for by this new Trent, a new Trent I can only describe as having a heavy weight, neither bad nor good at this point, of responsibility for a completely dependent human life. I snap back to my body looking at my daughter terrified, knowing I am just as young as she is in a way, and I have no clue what I am doing.
Some moments of life are so monumental that the old self HAS TO die to make room for a new self. As I have grow into the weight of responsibly for my daughter I am realizing that this new self is stronger, the old me would have collapsed under the weight, but this new me is stronger. No doubt I have a lot to learn, but I am so excited to watch this new me grow to hold the responsibility given to me with an open trusting hand.
It makes me wonder how many more moments I will have where the old me has to die to make room for a new, stronger version. As I reflect on the impact of this weekend more I hope that I will continue to be given the awareness to see how my internal world processes change and slowly becomes who I was created to be.