Sticky hands, endless questions, and my thinning hair

September 7, 2024

To respond to our children with calmness rather than a raised voice is to reflect the patience of our Heavenly Father, who endures our countless failings with infinite grace.

There’s a moment that every father knows, though few of us will admit it in polite company. It’s that instant when your child, blissfully unaware of the constraints of time, patience, or the stress of everyday life, asks for the fifteenth time why the sky is blue, why the grass is green, or why Daddy’s hair is disappearing. It’s a question delivered with wide eyes and an innocence that makes you wish you could freeze time, if only for a moment. But instead of freezing time, you find yourself teetering on the edge of erupting.

If we’re honest, the patience required for fatherhood is something like a spiritual marathon with no end in sight. You’re not just asked to run. You’re asked to run while carrying a small, sticky, loud child who always asks, “Why?” even when the question doesn’t make sense in context. And as you struggle to explain for the fifth time that, no, we cannot have ice cream for dinner, you realize that the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 wasn’t listed in that order by accident. Love has its rightful place at the front of the line, but patience— Well, patience has its own unique importance.

The Bible is rather clear about the need for patience. Proverbs 19:11 reminds us, “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” In the context of fatherhood, those offenses might include juice spilled on freshly ironed pants, the sudden and inexplicable wail that comes precisely when you’re trying to focus on an important task, or the relentless questions that seem designed to stretch your brain to its outermost limits. Yet, it is to a father’s glory, we’re told, to overlook these small offenses. To respond with calmness rather than a raised voice is, in a very real sense, to reflect the patience of our Heavenly Father, who endures our countless failings with infinite grace.

But let’s be candid. For many of us, patience doesn’t come naturally. We’re not born with it, and it certainly doesn’t develop by accident. Instead, it is forged in the crucible of small, daily interactions. It grows out of those moments when you want to say, “Because I said so!” but instead choose to kneel down to your child’s level and offer an explanation—however tired you might be. It’s in these seemingly insignificant times that we’re training our children, not just in the ways of life but in the way of the Lord.

Of course, none of this is easy. I once heard someone say that fatherhood is like sanctification on steroids. It’s the process by which God chips away at our rough edges, refining us with every tantrum, every interrupted night of sleep, and every day that feels longer than the last. And just when you think you’ve got it all under control, just when you’ve finally answered all the “Whys?” for the day, a new one pops up. It’s like living in an endless episode of “Jeopardy!” where the questions keep coming, and the stakes feel impossibly high.

I often think about Psalm 103: “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Ps 103:13, 14). This verse is both a comfort and a challenge. It comforts me to know that God understands my frailty, my tendency to snap when I shouldn’t, and to lose my patience when I’m tired. But it also challenges me to show the same compassion to my children that God shows to me. After all, if God can be patient with me—with all my flaws and failures for so many years—then surely, I should be patient with my own little ones.

So, here’s to all the fathers out there who are running this marathon, who are learning day by day, moment by moment, that patience is more than a virtue. It’s a necessity. It’s a daily decision to choose grace over frustration and love over anger. It’s a reminder that our children, for all their curiosity and energy, are not just a test of our patience but a gift that helps us grow in ways we never imagined.

Perhaps in the process, we’ll discover that patience isn’t just something we give to our children. It’s something God is giving to us through the sticky hands and endless questions.

Sticky hands, endless questions, and my thinning hair

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