Depression and Finding the Perfect Father

Let me tell you a personal story that I do not normally share, nor do I take lightly.

After two years of marriage and being unsatisfied with every job I had ever had, I felt a pull in my spirit to go to seminary. During this time, I was really on fire for God and I felt like there was something bigger in store for me than sitting in an 8-5 job for the next 30+ years. I had tried various industries and different companies and all of them left me emptier than the previous.

During this decision on whether or not to go to seminary, my wife and I were trying to have our first baby. Everyone around us was getting pregnant easily or without trying. P.S. Please be aware of others when telling them of getting pregnant or how easy it was for yourself. Not everyone has that fortune. For some, it is a struggle and a battle of the emotional and spiritual. So let’s just be careful. Others want to celebrate with you, but for some who have tried so hard and for so long and have been unsuccessful or may not even have that opportunity due to a variety of reasons, the way we share the news can be difficult.

Anyways, off my soapbox, in a joint decision, I decided to apply to seminary and try out a few online classes to see if it filled the void. and was truly something I felt God calling me to do. After a month of going to online classes and learning so much, I felt God telling us we need to move from Chicago to Dallas so that I can go to seminary in person. My wife and I went back and forth and then finally said, let’s do it. Let’s move to Dallas. As soon as we made the decision to leave, the next day, we found out we were pregnant with our first child. Now, this was going to be an even tougher decision. It meant I would need to find a job that could allow me to go to seminary and still pay the bills.

As I transitioned out of my job over the next two months, I sent out literally a thousand applications. I heard nothing back. Not even a spark of interest. So as time got closer for us to move, we were getting more and more worried. How could we move without a job and without any insurance and my wife is six months pregnant? As our final date came near, we moved without any hope of a job. We moved into my friend’s converted attic in the middle of the Texas summer. As the new school year approached and I was signed up for five in-person classes, I was still not finding a job. My wife found a couple of babysitting gigs, but nothing. As the time approached, I knew that going to class in person was not an option. I was going to have to work some form of low paying jobs to pay the bills and I would not be able to go in person. After about a month, God provided a job with a small tax firm. Then a few weeks later, I got an offer to work for a large health care corporation. A month after the start of this, our first baby was born.

This transition was hard and difficult for a variety of stressful reasons. Because I was so new, I did not have time to take off to be with our new baby and my wife. But this baby that we waited so long for was finally here. She was the sweetest thing and was competing for my joy. She was not a good sleeper, but she was a great baby.

We wanted to have two kids pretty close together and so about seventeen months later, our second child was born. This time a boy. When this child was born, I had been in my job for eighteen months and I had gone through twelve different bosses. The job was terrible and I hated it. I made some great friends and I had some flexibility to still do my school work or even go to a class at night. I saw others doing well and getting promoted and enjoying their jobs, but I was miserable.

Others at school knew exactly why they were there and what God was calling them to (a church plant in an inner-city, a pastor in a rural area, some form of evangelism or children’s ministry), but there I was having absolutely no idea what God was calling me to. I knew I was supposed to be in seminary, but I did not know what for. God, in His infinite wisdom, was not telling me that. To this day, I still do not know. But, then again, it does not matter that I know because He does.

So there I was with one beautiful baby about one and a half, another on the way, and I was in a miserable job that beat me up terribly at times and doing two classes a semester. Life was extremely tough during this time. There was little to no me time and not too many enjoyable days.

When I got done with work and did the hour-long commute back to my home, I would eat dinner and hang out briefly with my wife and baby, but then I would go do schoolwork for the next two hours, then I would go back around 9 PM and hang out with my wife for a bit and try to relax or watch a show. On the weekends, I was essentially locked in a room from 10-5 all day to catch up on all my school work.

A storm was brewing and I did not know it. An attack was about to happen that I was unprepared for and never even considered.

Our second child was born and my world changed. The enemy attacked and changed my life forever. Working 40+ hours a week in a miserable environment was affecting me in ways I did not know. Having obligations with school and timelines that were stressful and took up so much time, and having this new family with little sleep was combining to create this “perfect storm.”

Suddenly, I felt a feeling I never felt before toward my second child. I felt a hate in me that had never been there before. I had a frustration and anger that boiled up and was on all the time. I did not know what to do or where to turn. I was praying constantly and no answers were coming. The help I begged God for was not happening. I was getting worse and the anger was getting worse. Happiness and joy were long-lost friends that I did not know and had not seen in a long time. My life was overcome with depression.

But this was not a normal depression, this was different. I have battled depression before in my life but this was different. After some intense research of trying to figure out this new enemy and what to do to combat it, I was able to put a name to it. A name I never heard of and something I never knew existed. It was called male postpartum depression. And every rejection from this baby amplified it. It was not there with my first child, but was there with my second. With our first child, my wife struggled with postpartum depression and I was “fine.” but this time, with our second, the roles were reversed. I knew nothing about the opponent I was facing. This depression as we will discuss more next time affects 1 in 10 new dads but can be as high as 25%. Researchers are hard-pressed to put a number on it because it is very under-reported. Men try to “suck it up” or “just deal with it” and do not get the help they need. Most men do not discuss it which adds to the complexity of reporting statistics. It can even show up in the devastating outbursts that we see in headlines of dads hurting these babies.

Over the next three years, even with a job change and graduating from school, the depression remained. Not to the degree that it had once been, but it was still there. The first two years of my son’s life were filled with my greatest challenge. The job change helped take some of the misery away. Graduating from seminary and not having the intense demands helped. But I could tell the anger and rage and frustration remained and would show itself at times.

Once he was born, I noticed how things changed. And boy, did they change rapidly. My feelings toward him changed. What should have been a joyous time was filled with feelings of outright hate and spite and anger. As time went on and he grew, we drifted apart. I wanted nothing to do with him and he wanted nothing to do with me. He did not feel comfortable with me or even like me in the slightest. I know and understand he was a baby and babies can be irrational, but in my head that was all messed up, I took his rejection extremely personally. On the flip side, I also gave him no reason to really want to be with me or like me.

In this darkest period of my life, while learning to be a dad, I was failing miserably every single day. My failures mounted. My guilt was insurmountable. My pain about how I was feeling towards him was overwhelming. I truly felt like I was drowning. There was no hope. No joy. No way out. At least that is the way I felt and sometimes allowed myself to feel that way.

It was also hard because I felt like I was alone. I tried to relay how I was feeling to others and while they empathized, they could not sympathize. Many people said, “just give it time, and you will get over it.” Or something like, “The boy will stop rejecting you when he gets older so you just have to deal with it for now.” But things were not getting better and only getting worse.

During this darkness, God the Father opened my eyes to how awesome and wonderful of a Father He is. He showed me what it means to forgive, to be gracious, to give and show mercy and grace, and most of all to love. I found myself loving this child on a conditional type of love. If he did x or did not do y, I loved him. But when he did the opposite, my love changed. When rejection happened, my love faded away. My son moved on quickly and seemed to love and forgive better than I could. God showed me what unconditional love was and is. The Father taught me so much through this child about how we act and disobey Him, yet the Father handles it in a way that is loving, gracious, and kind. It does not mean (and I don’t mean) we do not face discipline. We saw that in Hebrews and throughout the Bible about how God’s discipline is for our good.

Here is what I am saying: I was there treating my kid with harshness and a lack of grace while begging God to treat me with grace, and mercy, love, and kindness. The same kindness and love I was begging for, I was unable to share or show.

God was showing me what a true Father was and how a great dad should be. He was showing me abundant grace, mercy, kindness, love, and gentleness (among many more). He was showing me through my failures how to handle discipline or disobedience. I cannot tell you how many times after a failure I would start praying and repenting and all the sudden the Spirit would convict me (I realize there is sort of a fine line here in briefly mentioning the Spirit’s convictions and Satan constantly accusing which I also was dealing with). Here I was before the throne of grace and God was showing me grace, yet I just went through several minutes of showing no grace. Not even a speck of grace was in my body while I lived in the flesh during those moments.

While this depression was one of the worst things I went through for this prolonged period of time, I cannot express how much God taught me about Himself. My life up to this point was already vying for the crown of the worst sinner (1 Tim 1:15), but after this depression, I had to be on the leaderboard for worst of the worst. Yet God continued to love me. This also brought me so close to God and maybe it was because I was praying to Him all the time. I cannot tell you how many times I asked for this depression to be taken away, but it was multiple times a day.

I could hear God so clearly during this horrible time. He showed me what a parent was supposed to be. He showed me what a leader and a shepherd were supposed to be. He taught me more about Himself during this time than the four years in seminary did. Even in my darkest failures and darkest times, He was there. He would not let me face this alone. That does not mean there were no times or days where I did not feel alone. But somehow, God would still pursue me and bring me back.

I was so unworthy of any of His love or grace. I found myself even more and more unworthy with each passing day, yet He still wanted me to be a part of His family. Here I am in my dark period of not loving this baby that cannot help itself, yet God loved me and wanted me. In my sin, I came to realize that the baby had a reason for his behavior. He was a baby and didn’t know any better. Oppositely, I did know better and I was acting worse than him.

So through this all, God led me to this point. I believe one of the purposes of this terrible disease was to write a book to help others. Maybe it was more cathartic for me to describe what was going on and how God revealed Himself to me, but I believe this book (God, Fatherhood, and Male Postpartum Depression) will help anyone going through the pain of depression, but more importantly, just know more about God the Father. So here it is, my book on male postpartum depression, on depression in general, and how God revealed His perfect fatherly attributes through this. This book is my attempt to help anyone who is going through struggles, especially depression and even more specifically male postpartum depression. But this book will help anyone dealing with struggles. My goal is to bring it back to an awareness of God, an awe of God, and worshiping God through all of the pain and turmoil.

One of my favorite books is Tozer’s “Knowledge of the Holy” and a second favorite is Packer’s “Knowing God”. Both were extremely transformational for me. They both focus on the attributes of God and that is what I wanted to do here. I brought it all back to our perfect heavenly Father and all of His fatherly attributes.

I hope you enjoy this work (God, Fatherhood, and male postpartum depression: Finding the Perfect Father from an Imperfect Dad) and it brings a closeness to God as we study Him.

God, Fatherhood, and Male Postpartum Depression encourages the dad struggling with male postpartum depression (and all struggling with depression) to recognize the symptoms, understand the spiritual warfare aspect, and find healing by focusing on and knowing the Perfect Father. In the end, I went through the dark valley of depression, was made aware of my sin and sin nature, saw how I needed God in every way, and was made more aware of how perfect our Father in heaven is and what grace truly is.