My Vision for me (and her)
by David Lloyd
As an expecting father, let’s face it, it is very hard to know what exactly lies ahead. I do, however, have a degree of personal vision. As I explore the outstretched highway of ’personal vision’ I find it easy to swerve off at a tangent into the numerous attractive oases of vanity. I find it easier to dream that I will be the perfect dad, my wife the perfect mother, and that my daughter will be the perfect baby than to imagine the imperfections and the difficult times ahead.
Lawrence of Arabia once said:
’all men dream but not equally: those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind awake to find that it was vanity but the dreamers by day are dangerous men that they may act their dreams with open eyes to make them a reality’.
I will be the first to admit that my personal vision sometimes lacks realism. This weekend I imagined that attending a birthing class at 10 am in Dulwich, meeting friends in Cambridge at 4pm and then parents-in-law in Bishop Stortford for 6.30pm would be manageable and relaxing.
The reality: a bad night’s sleep followed by a video of a screaming woman in a birthing pool, an encounter with a grumpy waiter, traffic-crippling roadworks on the A12 and thereafter much apologising to friends and family. My plans and dreams were made in my sleep and I awoke somewhere along the M11 to find that they were a little rose-tinted.
It’s not to say that plans and dreams are no good, its just that Lawrence was right, it’s one thing having big dreams and it’s another thing trying to carry them out.
My personal vision as a father is to keep open minded about who my daughter will be, to act with open eyes to help her grow in to how God intended her to be, to help her develop her gifts, to give her wisdom and to try and show her character like I have been shown. I will try to resist the temptation of vain plans and work with what is real.
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