When You Have Children

Guest post by Matthew Berg

When You Have Kids

When you have kids life changes; you change. You look about the days with different eyes where your perspective is refined. You see new things in each day given that only parenthood could have revealed to you. What used to hold great importance suddenly doesn't, and what didn't before now does. New life changes life and parents are refined by their kids. Yet this is only part of it all.

When you have kids the child awakens in you again. The adult is always there, yet wonder and whimsy rise from some distant slumber inside you. The days change through parenthood and you begin to truly live.

When you have kids you will have hard moments, you'll face what you likely didn't think you would, and you'll do it all for the love of a child, 'cause they're your child. You'll have irregular sleep patterns, irregular eating patterns, and you'll put yourself aside for their well-being. Love will be the why and the reason when you're a parent. ​

When you have kids you will become a little braver, a little smarter, a little more selfless. You suddenly stop believing you can't and simply do what is good because you must; and your must eventually becomes a want. You stop settling for just enough and start striving for what's better in life, you seek to be better in life.

When you have kids your time isn't your own, yet you find less and less this bothers you. There will be times for "alone time" (or self-care), moments where you will need to internally recharge to be your best you, yet this will not be your first priority. You will share sickness, sacrifice your dignity, even put yourself in harm's way for your kids all because you are different...because you are a parent.

Life will not be easy, but the journey will be worth it. You will not have all the answers, but you will learn them as necessary. You will have to be stronger than you know, and do what you will think you couldn't, but you will learn who you are when you have kids.

When you have kids, you don't have them, they have you. Traits will follow through their lives, habits will develop in them that they will see from you; you will look to make good habits when you realize this. You will never be perfect, and that's ok. It is in those moments of failure that the most growth will happen when responded to well, in both you and your kids.

When you have kids, you will look for a new way to live, for a healthier amount of margin. You will learn new skills and stretch yourself to better lead by example. You will refuse to stay the same if it means investing better in them, better in your family. You will navigate the roads of life with what you have while learning to hone each resource and skill to create a better way of living.

When you have kids in your later years (such as my wife and I did), you will write to

make a better life for your family (as I am now), to be there with them more than simply giving leftovers of yourself.

When you have kids life changes without question. We as parents (however we entered into that journey) will choose how it changes....whether for better or worse.

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Matthew is a renaissance man: follower of Jesus, husband, father and working writer from the Midwest now living in the South.