by Jon Zirkle
After a few years of waiting to adopt a child, my wife and I received an e-mail on a Sunday afternoon that changed our lives. Hours before folks at church asked me for updates about our adoption. I didn’t have much to say. After an afternoon nap, I awoke to hear my wife tell me we got an e-mail from our adoption agency titled “new adoption case—mother in labor.”
Before she had read the full e-mail aloud, we got a text from our adoption agency. This mom was choosing between us and just one other couple. We were e-mailed four questions to answer as soon as possible. After hitting send, we got a call minutes later.
“The mom read your answers, and she is choosing you two. Can you buy plane tickets and fly out here tomorrow?”
We said yes, and the rest is history still unfolding.
This wild adoption story is our lived reality. It’s far too fresh and too personal to share all details. However, there is witness to bear. Far from home, we’ve encountered the love of Christ and the gifts of the Spirit around every corner—in Uber rides to and from the hospital, in free meals from Ronald McDonald house, and in the holy and vulnerable conversations with nurses, doctors, hospital volunteers, and other new parents facing uncertainty. My wife and I have sudden situations where we are asked about our faith commitments, including with random strangers and a birth mother. I’m frequently in situations where I ponder gender and how masculinity gets expressed, experienced, and tested—in talking with other men (including total strangers) about fatherhood, being one of many fathers experiencing the stress of sudden and difficult births, and in being a new dad with a male baby boy spending many hours a day in a hospital wing filled with babies, young moms, and a female-majority nursing staff. I’m learning to be a man in new ways. And I’m learning to be a dad.
My wife and I joke that I’m in ‘Dad School’. I’m an enrolled student, living the lessons and drinking from a firehose while doggy paddling. Many males throughout the US and Canada, throughout MCUSA and MC Canada, and all over the world are also going through ‘Dad School’ too or will be in the future. But many of us don’t have male friends, don’t have a men’s group, don’t have a positive father figure or male family member, and don’t have faith for guidance and support during the testing experiences of Dad School. On the other side of that coin, there are many boys in need of love and support from a dad or father figure. The tiny baby boy in many hands is one of them. We all do.
Father’s Day may have been celebrated back in June, but being a father is an experience and an honor that many of us will practice daily for much of our lives. But being a father is not like a once-a-week Sunday worship service and not once-a-year holiday. Fatherhood is an ongoing commitment. In trying to practice Anabaptist faith, being a father will be shaped by trying to follow in the ways of Jesus, being rooted in community, and actively participating in reconciliation. My journey as a father is just beginning, yet I am confident that I will need help from male peers, role models, family members, and my faith community along the way. Being in a men’s group, having male friendships where I can be honest about what’s hard and what’s beautiful, and being in spaces where I am accountable to respecting women and supporting mothers suddenly feels more important than ever before.
I look at this new baby boy and hope I will try my best to be a good father. I hope we can navigate this crazy life together as a team. I hope I can continue learning from him what it means to come to Jesus as a child. And I hope I can model for him my attempts at serving God and being a co-creator in the peaceable kin-dom where all of God’s people and all of creation is cared for and respected.
To all the fathers, grandfathers, uncles, male mentors, and stand-in male father figures out there, thank you for taking part in the life of a child. It will be hard, we will mess up, and there is much joy and reward to experience regardless. It’s holy work. Let’s join together to walk the Good Road with each other. Visit www.mennonitemen.org/joinmen and reach out to Mennonite Men for resources and ideas of how to join with other men on this journey.