He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered - Titus 1:7b
Having a child, especially a child with a disability, has a remarkable way of humbling you. When my oldest was born, I was confronted with the reality that this completely dependent image-bearer relied on me and his mother for absolutely everything in his life. Children confront us with the reality that life is not about us but about loving and supporting others.
This is why, when someone harms or neglects a child, our instinctive reaction is disgust and anger. I remember when my oldest was born and received his Vitamin K shot. The nurse asked for my permission and explained why he needed it. I consented, then watched as she stabbed that needle into my son. Immediately, all rationality seemed to rush out of my brain. It took everything in me not to tackle that little ninety-pound nurse because she had hurt my baby.
From my wife, I understand that mothers often experience this sense of care and protection from the womb. For fathers, however, it often comes in that hospital room, in the moment when we lock eyes with and hold that little baby for the first time. We feel the weight of that responsibility, and it overwhelms us.
Yet, as the long days and nights creep in and the lack of sleep begins to test our sanctification, pride, selfishness, and anger begin to creep in as well. We start to feel that our own will and our desire for sleep, food, rest, and other comforts ought to take priority over the needs of our wives and children. Faithful fathers must fight this impulse and overcome it little by little.
When my second child was born, within just a few short days we found ourselves spending our nights inside the CVICU as we waited for emergency open-heart surgery. The love and fear of that season overcame so much of the pride in my own heart, but it eventually began to creep back in. The arguments that once revolved around middle-of-the-night diaper changes became arguments about who was going to turn off the feeding pump and who was going to check the heart monitor. As medical parenting gave way to disability parenting, I discovered that whatever arrogance remained in me would fester and infect nearly every area of my life.
The crisis of medical parenting or disability parenting does not solve the heart issues within us. Instead, it often covers them up for a season only to reveal them later.
Parenting in chaos and bringing order to that chaos requires us to fight against our sin and put it to death. Paul writes in Romans 8:13, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” This is not an optional exercise for the Christian father. We are called to put sin to death.
Arrogance is one of those sins that we find foul and disgusting in others but excuse endlessly in ourselves. Watching a husband disrespect his wife in public makes our stomach turn. Watching a man habitually choose his hobbies over his children brings scorn. Hearing harsh words come out of someone else’s mouth shocks us. Yet when the conviction of another person’s sin arises in our hearts, we are often just as quick to manufacture excuses for our own. The harsh words that shock us in someone else’s mouth are somehow justified when they come from ours.
We must truly recognize the enemy before us if we are going to strike him down with the sword. If we believe him to be a friend, how difficult will it be to land the blow?
Look to Christ in all the beauty of His humility. He stepped out of heaven and pursued not His own earthly pleasure but our salvation. He laid aside His heavenly glory and took upon Himself our suffering. He put on our flesh and took on Himself not the form of a king or prince but the form of a servant, born into the backwaters of the Roman Empire. He endured not the silent death of a well-preserved man passing gently in his sleep but the horrific death of the cross.
If anyone deserved true joy and true pleasure, it was the Lord of heaven’s armies. He is the one before whom angels hide their faces because the glory of His holiness is too much for them to behold. Yet He humbled Himself for us.
He did this to bring us into the promises found in the rest of Romans 8. We have been given not merely a clean slate but adoption as sons. We have been promised an inheritance with Christ, the Spirit’s help in our weakness, God’s sovereign work for our good, and the assurance that nothing can separate us from His love. Our ultimate glorification is not a distant possibility but the destiny God has secured for His people.
If Christ went so low to bring us so high, how can we refuse to put to death our pride and self-will?
One of my recurring temptations is my struggle with change. Since my son’s diagnosis with Level 3 autism, my own childhood diagnosis of Asperger’s, now generally classified within Level 1 autism, has become clearer and clearer to me. One of the difficulties many autistic people experience is a tendency toward rigid thinking and a strong attachment to schedules and expectations.
I often find that I can become extremely angry when the plans I have constructed in my head change. Sometimes I have not even communicated those plans to anyone else. Other times, those plans are based on a complete misunderstanding or my own lack of attention. While the wiring in my brain helps explain why I respond this way, it does not excuse my actions or my response to those emotions.
I must learn to distinguish between the difficulty I experience and the sin I am tempted to commit in response to it. My neurological wiring may help explain why a change in plans feels so overwhelming, but it does not give me permission to respond with arrogance, anger, or selfishness. I am still responsible for how I treat my wife and children. I must put to death the self-seeking nature of my heart, even when doing so requires me to fight against deeply ingrained patterns of thinking and responding.
As a pastor with young children with disabilities, my schedule lacks almost any sense of stability. Between fourteen different standing appointments, funerals, hospital visits, immediate church needs, phone calls, nursing schedules, church events, and whatever additional things I commit to without considering my own mortality or need for sleep, there is rarely a predictable day.
This means that when I arrive home, there are times when conversations with my wife about our plans have slipped through the cracks. I walk through the door expecting to shift into dad mode and simply survive the evening routine, only to discover that my wife has a dentist appointment and our nurse has taken the night off because it is her anniversary. Now all of it falls on me.
When I walk through that door and the plans I made for myself fall apart, I am forced to make a choice. I can take up the sword of the Spirit and put my own will to death, or I can give myself over to my emotions and take an already difficult situation and make it considerably worse.
You see, the character required for fathering in chaos can either steady a home being tossed about by a storm or sit pouting next to the helm. Rather than taking hold of the wheel and steering the ship through the storm, we can spin it around like the giant wheel on *The Price Is Right*, throwing our family into even greater chaos.
Chaos caused by disability or medical parenting can become an instrument of God’s grace because it amplifies the consequences of failing to govern our own souls. The stakes are higher. Our selfishness does not simply inconvenience us; it burdens a wife who is already exhausted and children who are already dependent upon us. Our anger does not exist in isolation; it adds another storm to a home already weathering several.
The chaos does not excuse our sin. It exposes it. And by God’s grace, it gives us another opportunity to put it to death.
Other Articles in This Series
Fatherhood in Chaos Part 1
A Father Above Reproach: Fatherhood in Chaos Part 2
Don’t Make Her Carry it Alone: Fatherhood in Chaos Part 3
His Children are Believers: Fatherhood in Chaos Part 4