"Fathers shouldn't be passive observers at their children's births. They should be the steady, informed, faith-filled presence every laboring woman deserves."
I became a father at 21 — instant and unprepared — when I met and married a woman with twins, a boy and a girl. When our marriage ended, I was given full custodial guardianship and raised those two kids largely on my own through their teenage years. Not because the law required it. Because they needed a father and I was it. That season taught me more about fatherhood than anything else ever has — that it is a choice you make every single day, not a title you inherit. I love those kids deeply, even now, through all the complications that life and time bring.
My daughter was born via emergency C-section — premature, four weeks in the NICU. I stood in that hospital helpless, unprepared, and heartbroken in ways I didn't have language for. I know what it costs a father to not know what to do in that room.
Today I am a father and stepfather to eight children ranging from 8 to 26 — four boys and four girls. It is the greatest privilege of my life. My wife is a home birth midwife, and our youngest son was born at home in a birth pool, surrounded by siblings, cousins, family, and the dogs. It was a celebration, not just a delivery. One of the greatest days we've ever known.
Since then I've supported my wife through more births than I can count — from the outside. When our youngest was a baby and still breastfeeding, I'd sit in the driveway in the car — sleeping, working, waiting — while she was inside delivering someone's child. That's the job. I've driven families to Walmart at midnight for supplies. I've taken Amish families to Taco Bell between contractions. I've been the calm driver for hospital transfers and the steady presence in the waiting room when a nervous father didn't know what came next. I love these families and would do anything for them.
These days I live on a 50-acre farm in the middle of nowhere — raising cows, chickens, turkeys, and ducks, cutting down trees, driving a tractor, and surrounded by five dogs. It's a full, active, deeply satisfying life. The kind of life that reminds you every day what you're working for and who you're responsible to.
My faith is not a backdrop to this work — it's the foundation of it. Our men's group at church is something like what you'd see in the film The Forge — a brotherhood of strong men who pray together, confide in each other, carry each other's burdens, and walk in faith side by side. That's the spirit behind the Father's Guide community. Not a forum. A brotherhood.
The Father's Guide exists because no man should walk into that room unprepared. Fatherhood is a calling. This series is built for the man who takes that seriously — from the very first day.
