Earlier this week a good friend of mine called me with a challenging question. He explained that he had fears of being a father because he lacked any kind of stable father figure growing up. He, knowing I just entered the realm of dad-hood, wanted my take on the issue.

Ten months ago I became a dad to Noah John Betson. I gotta tell you; this guy is awesome! I’m not talking about the clique use of awesome we all use when something subpar happens. I really mean it. He’s AWESOME! Most of you know that I’m not the funniest man alive, I usually get a laugh by accident when I fall into the word pit (It’s when you start talking and can’t stop, next thing you know you’re in a word pit unable to climb out.). I’m convinced Noah believes I’m the funniest man alive! I just hope he feels that way when I’m 40 and bald.

When Noah was born I was scared to death, like most dads. But many of my fears weren’t grounded in the present, they were in my past.

Like a lot of guys today, my father wasn’t a huge part of my childhood or teen years. He had a lot of issues he was working through, some of those issues took hold of him though. During my childhood there was a lot of drug use, when I was thirteen the drugs really took hold of his life. One day I arrived home from school to find out we (my sisters, mother, and I) were leaving our house and weren’t coming back. That was the end of any possible relationship I could have with my father, in fact it wasn’t until close to ten years later that I spoke to him.
I say all of this to simply give the backstory to what is next. Now that that’s out of the way, on to Noah again!

The moment Noah was born the fear of fatherhood set in. The typical things went through my mind like… “He’s going to puke on me,” “he better not pee on my mouth,” and “am I really going to have to change a poopy diaper?”

After those initial thoughts went through my mind I started to really worry… Thinking, “can I do this?” You see, I’ve never actually seen how fatherhood should work on a day basis.

I expressed these thoughts to friends and family and their response way genuine, but simply difficult to understand as truth.

“You’ll be fine Bill, you know what not to do!”

While that’s true, I only know one of the 320,000 ways to screw up being a dad. Sure, I understand that drugs aren’t something I should be doing. I get it, I get it very much actually.

What the 30 minute phone conversation led to was a realization for me. This friend has the ability to get me thinking! I realized: It’s okay that I worry. I may always worry about being a good dad, and truthfully I’m already freaking out about Noah being a teenager.

My friend and I may always worry, but I think that’s okay. We’ve already set ourselves apart from our fathers. He’s an amazing husband to his wife, he cares about communication, he desires to love her always. I’d like to say the same about me.

Often I let worry overtake me. With fatherhood this cannot happen, but a checkup every so often is a pretty healthy concept.

Is this something you struggle with? How do you “dad?”