Wonderings of a Parent Part 2

My wife and daughter were recently brought into the Church, so I am very happy in that aspect. However, this causes me to ponder on things from a whole new perspective.

Before I was the only Orthodox parent, now there are two of us, and my wife and I don't always see eye to eye. That aside we both have agreed on a particular way to raise our daughter, the details of which I will not bore you, but let us just say that we both agree that Church was always a part of our planned upbringing.

Before it was usually just me doing my prayers in the morning and the evening with my daughter occasionally joining me, but now I feel that it is my duty and my obligation to make sure that the family has prayer time set aside in the mornings and the evenings before my daughter goes to bed. I know I should have been doing this before, but I am trying to make sure that this happens now, especially since we are all Orthodox now.

I had a lot to learn after my last deployment about being a father, even more so the father that my daughter needs me to be. As so of you may or may not know, my daughter is a special needs child - so special that the doctors don't even know fully what is wrong with her. That makes the task of being a father even more daunting.

But now there is a new aspect to this whole parenting thing. I always tried to instill in my little one the importance of going to Church, and saying our prayers, but I did not place too much emphasis on her doing things the correct way as she gets very... um... wiggly and she was not Orthodox (mom did protest much to making her stay still for prayers). However, she is Orthodox now - as is her mother - so I need to teach her all those things such as staying still for prayers and at church and how to cross herself properly (when she gets it kind of right she does it the Roman way... *sigh*).

This task is big, huge, intimidating, and quite possibly the hardest thing I will ever do in my life. It is made harder still by the fact that I have so many Protestant things that I grew up with that I need to get rid of (such as shooing the tykes off to Sunday School in place of services). Am I up to the task of raising my child in the way that she should go?

Lately, while perusing my favorite forum I came across a link to another site that is set up specifically for Orthodox Parents. They have a few interesting articles to read, but unfortunately the site is not visited or contributed to that much. It is a great concept and I hope that the site builds up a good following where other Orthodox parents can exchange stories and helpful hints.

It is really a daunting thing to consider that I want to raise my child in a Christian house while the rest of the world is shunning Christianity more and more every day, especially as the Orthodox faith is so unknown in America that community support can be hard to come by as the parishioners do not always live close together.

The friends that we do have are great! I love them and how much they adore my daughter, but I hate the fact that we almost have to go out of our ways to see each other outside of the Church.

Any way, that is just my ramblings. I know that everything will turn out as it should, it's just hard sometimes as a parent to accept how things can change. It is really hard to try to prepare for any situation so we will not be taken unaware - but surprises always happen. I just pray (continually) that I will be the father my daughter needs me to be for her.