(ThyBlackMan.com) ‘…but recently I’ve done some uncharacteristic things as father that if I didn’t feel as though I could report them to her, I’d really need a brother who had my back to talk out how I’d lost my temper with my five month old daughter…’
The above excerpt comes from a previous post regarding the top five reasons and advantages of brotherhood. In it, I touched on failures that fathers encounter in rearing their infant children; rather, failures that I’ve encountered. And while I was content with alluding to a circumstance where I lost my temper with my daughter, I was convicted to expose myself even more for the hopeful benefit of another father who may be reading this and carrying a burden of guilt upon his shoulders.
The conviction came over the weekend as a revelation of sorts. I was watching television when a commercial came on advocating a helpline for mothers who are experiencing postpartum depression. The thoughts and actions that stem 
from this condition are ones that leave mothers of newborns feeling as though they are deplorably defective for feeling overwhelmed by motherhood, angry at the child and with thoughts of hurting said child after delivery. First and foremost, this condition may be written up as psychological but there is a SPIRITUAL deliverance that is needed!
Those thoughts and feelings are indeed unnatural but even more so, they are supernatural – demonic seeds that are trying to implant and impregnate themselves in the minds of mothers. But this is not the most heinous act of these devilish seeds. In an attempt to destroy the family through the mother, the vilest aspect of this attack is how they will convince the mother that these feelings do not belong to some invading spiritual entity; rather, that they are her own. This is both a monumental and parental falsehood – as the devil is the father of all lies (John 8:44).
But this is not about mothers – it’s about the fathers who go largely unreported and unsupported in having such feelings. As such, I intend to willingly share the thoughts and actions I had with both of my infant children. Thoughts that, had I not confessed them to my wife, would have eaten me up on the inside with guilt and effectively hindered my fatherhood ministry of no effect. Yes – if you serve your children as you’d serve God’s children, then your parenthood is… a… ministry.
Before I confess my shortcomings, I’d like to begin with a statement of how long I’ve been yearning to be a father. In doing so, I hope that it serves as a disclaimer and sets the stage for how much I anticipated being a father; hence, establishing the love I’ve had for my children long before I knew them (and was a child myself).
I can remember wanting to be a father as early as middle school. Just so that no one gets it twisted, it wasn’t the act of making a baby that I was fixated with as much as the role of actually fathering a child. From my own father’s active role in my life to images of Heathcliff Huxtable on T.V., I had an anxiously gullible desire to be a father which meant I also desired to be married earlier than most men stereotypically care to be.
Fast forward to 2008 and the birth of my son. After four years of marriage, my wife and I entered into the next developmental stage of our individual and collective identities: we became parents. Yet and still, the joy of meeting and interacting with my baby boy was replaced by a since of bewildering guilt the first time I found myself angry at him for crying non-stop for no apparent reason. He was fed, dry and gas-free yet fed-up with being content. So much so to the point that he sat in his rocker and wailed for no other reason (to me) than to get on my nerves.
In a fit of rage, this man who had longed for fatherhood for so long lost it. I took his rocker and rocked it much harder than its design warranted and yelled back at him at the top of my lungs: mirroring his childish seven month old fit. When I’d regained my composure, I couldn’t believe what I’d done – what had manifested from within me. While I knew that foolishness is bound in the heart of a child which the rod of correction must drive from him (Proverbs 22:15), I had no scripture or prescription to reference how I’d felt and acted.
At the brink of entering into toddlerhood, I would come to overuse said rod of correction one evening when my son refused to drink milk from a sippy cup instead of a bottle and didn’t even cry as I popped him for such smug defiance. And although I didn’t beat him down in a fit of rage, I did inadvertently bruise his leg in a methodical manner. That manner came about when I would give him a chance to drink, pop him and then leave him to connect the cause and effect of the matter… which I over the course of an hour. FAIL.
When my daughter Maiyah was born five months ago, I figured the mistakes of Josiah’s untrained father would not repeat themselves as I’d grown spiritually and felt battle-tested enough to avoid such lapses in judgment. But the spiritual warfare that I was about to enter into had a completely different approach with her. Maiyah would cry at the top of her lungs for no reason much earlier and far more frequent than her older brother to the point where I tell people it literally jarred my soul loose. That’s how disturbing it felt to me – that my inner spirit seemed to be knocked off its axis.
With such new sensations came newer thoughts and violent images to commit. And I clearly knew where the source of these things were coming from. I knew how to attack them with praise and worship songs filtering through the house when she became that way and prayerful words spoken over and through both her and myself. Yet and still, one evening immediately after I prayed over us in the midst of her crying and rebuking an urge to pop her at two months of age, I did it anyway. I popped my infant daughter on her leg – nothing hard but quite premature for her age to comprehend what was going on.
These fits of frustration weren’t constant but would creep in on me for one main reason: I had exercised my authority in my household against the spiritual enemies that were set against my daughter yet they defiantly came back. So the anger that I felt was not against her but towards their not being defeated. Even so, I repeated the offense of screaming when she screamed out of sheer and total annoyance. I held her tight and close to me and shuddered hard enough to escalate her young temperament… all these things from a man who LOVES his children and desired nothing more than to be a father. All these things from a man who wrote a poem entitled “Unborn Hero” dedicated to his as-yet-unborn children in the late 90’s with lines such as:
‘…Yet I can not reach my potential while you remain nonexistent.
Just a twinkle in my eye, I await your gift: full and vivid.
Yet also your existence is still put on hold until I find my true Black queen: God’s will manifold.
My two-thirds completion, my bun and my oven…
My child and my wife, no one on earth put before them.
You represent what I am wary yet confident must happen.
Your presence will forever save my stranded thoughts from hopeless attractions.
You will truly be my hero though I will keep you in line.
Affirming your weaknesses to be my strengths to support your weeping eyes…’
If such a man as this can succumb to the exhaustion, failure and utter despondency that came out in unloving thoughts and actions against his own flesh and blood; then it can happen to you.
If it has happened to you – be encouraged and let the guilt go for the love of God and an open-minded wife can diffuse what the enemy is trying to do: undermine your headship. If he can get you to doubt and put down your mantle, then the Church will lose another brick in the upbuilding of the Kingdom.
My children know I love them and nothing will ever cause me to doubt that. My son tells me he loves me when I haven’t even said it to him yet. My daughter looks at me every morning when I come to her crib and gives me a smile that not even her mother gets. So men – fathers, if you have ever entertained such thoughts and/or actions, I hope that my exposing my failures may serve as a form of catharsis for you that begins a healing process. You are an awesome father for you were made in the image and likeness of an AWESOME GOD and the model of all TRUE FATHERHOOD.
The lines of communication have been opened to post paternal confessions of unpardonable aggression. I’m open to hear and listen without judgment as I hope you have been for me.
MomLogic – Men Depression, etc. (——
God bless.
Staff Writer; Reggie Legend
Can find more about this writer over at; http://www.steelwaterspoetry.com
Also available as a Keynote Speaker – Book him Today; Speakerwiki – Reggie Legend
