Sometimes I find myself praying for God to change Ivy. Not big changes, stuff like, “help her to not be grumpy,” “make her sleep well,” “help her to be happy.”
Then something hit me that I of course knew but needed to come face to face with. Ivy is just going through her motions. It’s more important for me to learn to control mine.
Ivy can be grumpy, mean, crying, not sleeping, screaming, and causing all other sorts of havoc. That’s not what matters. What matters is my patience, my learning, my growth.
I’ll say it again, Ivy’s going through her motions, and I’m learning to control mine.
There will come a point when she will be responsible for her actions and will be accountable for her behavior. How can I expect her to be great at controlling her behavior as she gets older if I haven’t mastered my own behavior yet? She will learn from my (and Beth’s) example. It makes me think of the Macklemore song called Growing Up where he says,
“I’ll be patient, one more month
You’ll wrap your fingers round my thumb
Times are changing, I know
But who am I if I’m the person you become
If I’m still growing up”
(Side note, as writing this I almostttt lost my patience as I pulled a piece of paper out of Ivy’s mouth and kept her from deleting everything I just typed. The joys of fatherhood 😊)
Back to my point, Ivy does what she does and is what she is, innocent and perfect. I’m the one that needs to change.
So, when I find myself mistakenly saying, “Heavenly Father, please comfort Ivy and make her know she is safe and watched over so she can sleep tonight,” instead I say, “Heavenly Father, give me the strength, energy, and patience, that even if Ivy doesn’t sleep a wink tonight, Ican help her know she is watched over, I can make her feel comforted, and I can have complete patience with her as she helps me to grow.”
I am eternally grateful for fatherhood and all it is teaching me.
A friend of mine wrote a book called Embrace Fatherhood. There is a part in the book where a father has lost the ability to see his new daughter due to a custody battle. Upon finding out he will get to spend a weekend with his daughter he says, “This daddy daughter thing, it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It took Brooklyn being born for me to love something far greater than myself.”
I love Beth so much, but I relate to this statement. I think it took Ivy being born for me to understand what unconditional, unbounded, uncontrollable love is. We like to think we love others more than ourselves, but do we? I think I do love Ivy more than myself. I think this is parenthood. I would do anything for her. As a part of that, I love Beth all the more for giving me this priceless gift.
This book is written from the perspective of dads in various forms of relationship disputes, dads that don’t get to see their kids.
I know this is a complicated issue, and I know there are a million different circumstances that make this very difficult. What I will say that I hope we can all agree on: good fathers that want to be in their children’s lives, that for whatever reason aren’t able to, is a great tragedy. I can’t imagine being kept away from Ivy. It would break my heart. It would be like losing a part of me.
Beth and Ivy are in Utah for a week as I write this. Don’t get me wrong, a little bit of free time and the ability to nap and relax like I used to in the old days has been really nice. At the end of the night, though, all I can think about is Ivy and Beth. I miss them so much. I miss that greatest moment every morning. I’m grateful for a picture Beth put up on my bedside table before the trip. I can’t imagine this separation from my baby being a regular occurrence.
I know this situation exists for many dads and it hurts me to think about.
Relationship disputes happen. We are human. I think it is a tragedy of our society that romantic relationships would ever come before or between the most sacred relationship in the world (alongside marriage), the relationship of a parent and their child.
Again, a complicated issue. Having not lived through it myself, I can’t say too much. But I love Ivy. I can’t imagine living without her. There are tons of dads out there right now excited that they will get a weekend to see their child. The disintegration of the family unit is devastating.
I am grateful for Beth, who I love so much. I am grateful for what Beth has given me, the greatest gift in the entire world, Ivy who I love beyond all understanding. I am sorry for any dad that has this gift taken from him.
I love Ivy and I love Beth and I don’t know what I would do without them.
We’ve been having a difficult time with Ivy’s sleeping the last couple weeks. This morning I woke up and Beth was awake. I asked if Ivy got up during the night.
Beth laughed.
Not a good sign.
Beth said yes Ivy did get up during the night. She said she was rocking Ivy and could tell that Ivy was not going to go back to sleep. So she did something drastic.
Warning: this strategy is not recommended, and we know full and well this is NOT a good idea.
Beth said she GOT IN IVY’S CRIB WITH HER. My first thoughts, it didn’t break?
I looked at Beth and said instead, “…is that ok?”
Beth responded that of course no, it’s not ideal. It’s not safe and the crib could have broken. All bad things. Like the title of the post says, Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures.
Beth continued to tell me that after a while she got out of the crib and successfully returned to our bedroom. A hero had slain the dragon. A cute little booty-up-in-the-air-dragon, but a dragon nonetheless.
She said she got into bed and Ivy started to stir and cry. Beth asked me if I remembered in the middle of the night her saying, “oh no.” Beth told me I then started patting her on her back. I vaguely remember this.
But then a miracle happened! Ivy went back to sleep. Hallelujah.
After hearing Beth’s tale, I started to meditate to prepare for the day. My mind drifted to this story as the mind is wont to do during meditation. I thought about that moment when Ivy cried and very well should have continued screaming until one of us came to get her.
A past successful night of sleep resistance. The smug face of a champion saying, “I’m the boss here,” cross-legged and all.
The coolest visual came to me as I was meditating. You see, that night was the first time in months that I slept a night without getting out of bed. MONTHS.
This is the visual that came to me. Ivy started to cry, and God said, “someone do something!” And a legion, thousands of angels came pouring out of heaven to comfort and console Ivy back to sleep. Heavenly Father was like, “give that man one full night in his bed.”
It was a true miracle and that’s the only possible explanation.
So I say, thank you Heavenly Father, I sure needed that.
I don’t have a Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, how many etceteras do I need nowadays?
I’ve really tried to follow the advice I wrote about from my first post on The Social Dilemma (Netflix). For a while I turned off suggested videos in YouTube, but I found the blank pages and the difficulty in finding what I was looking for to be too much to deal with. Instead, I only go to YouTube with a purpose and try as best as I can to watch only the video I go there to watch. As of this writing the suggested videos in my YouTube has ballooned to 273 (273 videos!) since I’ve stopped looking at suggested videos. That’s a little red 273 on my phone home screen. That’s 273 times YouTube has said, “this video is just right for you.” That is countless hours (or hours I don’t want to count) of video footage YouTube has suggested to me. Yikes. I’m going to continue to avoid those videos and see how ludicrous that 273 number can become.
I’ve also tried not to use Google which I’ve found to be way harder than I anticipated. There’s a reason Google has the best search results, and that reason is they don’t care about your privacy. With my job in IT support, I’ve found it impossible to use other search engines. I still have the Qwant extension installed in my Google Chrome but find myself searching through Google anyway.
Like YouTube, I avoid Facebook as much as I can. As I write this, checking my battery usage, Facebook is still 11% of my total battery used. When I do get on Facebook, the worst thing that can happen is I watch a video. It’s the same reason I avoid YouTube as much as possible. Facebook I find to be much worse than YouTube, at least for me. Let me explain what happens when I get on Facebook and if I watch a video:
I stumble upon a video title that I can’t avoid watching. Something like, “The reason Donovan Mitchell will never win a championship for Utah.”
Now I’m stuck.
That video ends and is followed by, “I gave $1,000,000 to a stranger on the street!”
I’m losing my free will.
Next video, “I bought 10,000 black widows and put them in my mom’s bathroom!”
I’ll emerge from a sequence of videos like the above hours later and think to myself, “what just happened?”
The above is only a slight exaggeration.
The disconcerting, uncomfortable, and completely frightening truth is – once I watch that first, then second, then third video that has clearly been sent because they know it catches my attention – it’s really difficult for me to get away. I’ll feel it happening. Like, I’ll be on minute 6 of a 9-minute video and think, “after this one I’m done.” Then as minute 8 starts to end I get this feeling, this urge. Like – I have to watch another one. I’ll feel this urge. I’ll fight it. And somehow, I end up watching another video. I may sound dramatic, but it’s truly terrifying.
Am I the only one?
Beth and I have gotten into a routine with Ivy’s sleeping where I’m usually up briefly with Ivy around 11pm and Beth is up with her briefly around 4am.
Every once in a while (not often), I wake in the morning to a 4:15am text from Beth with some video or article. I realize that, in a stupor, she was drawn to her phone. This likely happened while she was lying in bed watching the baby monitor, waiting to see if Ivy would fall back asleep so she could go to sleep.
Recently Beth took a picture of Ivy and I together on the couch. I watched Beth open Facebook to share the picture. I watched Beth somehow end up finding herself watching some video. 10 minutes later, talking to herself, Beth said something like, “what was I doing?…”
I told her she likely looked at her phone to post a picture.
“Oh yeah…” was her reply.
I’m not the only one.
Beth and I aren’t the only ones.
Back to the first sentence I wrote for this post. I am AFRAID for the youth today. How do they survive in a world where advertisers know what they want to see, then put it directly into their hand over.. and over…and over…..and over……
Something needs to be done for our youth, but I’m not sure what. It’s too easy for them to be completely enveloped in this digital world. We are frighteningly close to a Black Mirror-esc existence where kids only exist in their phones. Maybe the only way we can help our youth is leading by example.
I try to only be on my phone to read the scriptures. I’m not even great at responding to messages, as some of you know. I read physical books. I’m aware of Facebook’s and other social media companies’ pull on my attention, and I try to fight it. I think it’s important we teach our kids the same thing.
This must be the way we can help kids today. Lead by example. Read books. Show that the phone can be set aside. Go on day trips where the phone is not allowed to come. Set a requirement where there are no phones after dinner. I don’t know, anything! Something needs to be done and this is the first place to start.
Otherwise the below picture is every family’s future. And that is a sad future.
*Credit to photographer Eric Pickersgill who took these pictures depicting people with their mobile phones and devices removed from the photo.
Ivy is the first grandchild on both sides. Ivy has 13 aunts and uncles. She has two sets of grandparents who, while around her, make no qualms about her being the princess of the universe and most important thing to ever come to earth. As I watch her with family, I’m blown away by the amount of love. She is loved so much. Beth and I love her so much. See The Greatest Moment of My Life Every Day for further evidence.
I wonder how much this love positively impacts Ivy’s future. How much does it impact the person she will become?
As I watch her, something occurred to me recently. I was surrounded by this same love growing up. I wasn’t the first grandchild on either side, but I was surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and grandparents that loved and adored me. Love was poured out upon me without measure as a baby. Not only was I loved by those I could see, but I was made to know that God and so many I couldn’t see also loved and cared about me.
While watching Ivy, it occurred to me how lucky and blessed I was to be surrounded by all that love.
How much was I positively impacted by the love I was surrounded by? How much did it shape who I am today?
Not all children are given this great gift.
It was a humbling thought. It’s humbling to consider all that I’ve been given. If I ever get prideful about any good qualities I may have, I can quickly look at all the attention, direction, and love I’ve been given in my life and realize there is nothing to be prideful of. I have been afforded much.
This used to be a daunting scripture. Now it is a great responsibility, and a great blessing.
As I’ve gotten older, I have become more aware of how blessed I was to be raised with the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life. That is why I write this blog. That is why I try to talk to friends, family, coworkers, etc. about the Book of Mormon. That’s why I share my testimony of Jesus Christ.
I am grateful for The Family A Proclamation to the World for what is teaches authoritatively and without reservation about the importance of the family unit. My family unit has blessed my life in so many ways. I wish every child could be loved like I was, like I still am, like Ivy is.
God expects me to share the love I’ve been given. Not in a prideful way, but with a humble recognition of how lucky I truly am.
The two great commandments are to love and to love. When you receive love, you must give love. That’s what God asks from us.
No Coincidences 