A letter to my four-day old son

By Steve Beard

On the afternoon of July 19, 1996, Steve and Michelle Beard became the incredibly proud and happy parents of John Paul Beard, their first-born son.

Dear John Paul,

I realize that it will be quite a while before you are able to read this on your own, but I did want to take a few moments to tell you what you mean to me. As of this moment, I have only known you for four days and already you have changed my life.

Your birth has allowed me to experience a love that I have never expressed before. I feel a bit like an astronomer who one day looked through his telescope and happened upon a previously undiscovered galaxy. The joyful elation, the newness of the moment, the surprise of the emotion.

You mean so much more to me than a galaxy. Never before have I felt the love that I have for you. Quite simply, it is indescribable. Love, after all, is very hard to explain, even for the poets. It is laughter mixed with tears and it has the power to take your breath away. It can cause your heart to skip a beat and catapult your spirit to soar with splendid joy. It is an emotion that leads you to sit at the edge of your seat and simultaneously relax in a blanket of lighthearted contentment.

Last night, you and I stayed up really, really late to watch the U.S. Women’s Volleyball team beat Denmark in the Olympics because you were far too young to know that we sleep at night and play during the day (rather than vice-versa). I rocked you while your mom was trying to catch up on sleep. There was no place I’d rather have been than with you—watching out for you and loving on you. I know there will be times when I will prefer sleep to your company, but I will never treasure anything more than your love.

Novelist Graham Green once wrote: "There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets in the future." I think the same could be said of adulthood. At the moment of your birth, a door in my heart opened wide and ushered in the future through you.

I have been reading Ken Gire’s book Windows of the Soul: Experiencing God in New Ways (Zondervan) aloud to your mom for the last several weeks while we lay in bed at the end of a day. In the chapter we read last night, he wrote: "We skip down the hallways of our youth, you and I, stopping now and then to catch our breath. And every now and then we catch something else. A glimpse of the future. Our future. A glimpse we caught when we came across a window suddenly flung open in front of us, its gossamer curtains lifted by a breeze redolent with the future, filling our lungs with refreshing air and our heart with hopeful dreams."

You have become the new window in our soul. God has used you to refresh us and grant us hope for the future.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. As we walk the streets and see below us those delightful bulbous heads, three times too big for the body…we ought always primarily to remember that within every one of these heads there is a new universe, as new as it was on the seventh day of creation. In each of those orbs there is a new system of stars, new grass, new cities, a new sea."

Your mom and I agreed that we would sing "Jesus Loves Me" to you in the birthing room. Everyone had cleared out and it was just the three of us. God was also there. Your mom and I could not sing the song. We cried instead. You were the most precious thing in our lives. Eventually, your mom sang it out. I was never able.

In my place, God sang over you. The Bible says: "The Lord God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing" (Zephaniah 3:17). The word "rejoice" in that verse means literally to spin wildly in circles. That is what God is doing over you and that is one of the reasons why that is your mom’s favorite verse.

After you were safe in your mom’s arms at the hospital, I drove home in a torrential storm to grab some overnight things I had forgotten. The trip took me twice as long as usual. I cried the entire way home and back. I cannot explain it, but I thanked God for letting me experience the previously unknown joy and love that you brought into my life.

All of this is to simply to say that you were wanted and we are so glad that you have arrived. Your mom and I have an intense and wonderful love between us. It causes us to act goofy when no one else is around. It is the kind of love that gives you the strength to cry even when you want to act strong. Now, we want to share that love with you. We know that we will make our fair share of mistakes but we will always love you. You are our son. You are our gift from God.

Steve Beard is the editor of Good News magazine. This article first appeared in the September/October 1996 issue of Good News magazine.