Chuck The Geek.com

Father-ly thoughts

April 3rd, 2008 by Chuck Sharp

A few weeks ago, I heard a song on the radio called “Cinderella” by Steven Curtis Chapman. Ouch, it hurt. It’s a song like “Butterfly Kisses” that narrates the story of a dad watching his daughter grow up. He wrote it after putting his daughters to bed even though they just wanted to keep dancing in their little princess costumes. It struck a cord with me. I love my daughter more than anything. She’s the best thing that has ever happened to my wife and I. She’s the most beautiful little girl I’ve ever seen, and she’s fun and funny too. Best entertainment I’ve ever had.Lately, my wife and I have been having trouble with our daughter’s sleeping habits lately. You see, she’s teething and she gets mildly sick pretty much continuously since she started daycare. Getting her on a habitual sleep schedule is proving to be extremely hard, and she often gets up in the middle of the night and is very hard to put back to sleep. It wears very very thin on us.

You know, it’s really hard to rock a one-year-old to sleep for 20 minutes at 2am. It’s mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausting. I know we don’t have the toughest parenting job, and it could be much much worse. But still, it’s hard. A couple of nights ago, I was rocking her and she was pretty much asleep on my shoulder, and I remembered the song. I realized that these moments won’t be around for much longer. Really, it’s tiring, but it is such an honor and privilege to hold my little girl.

As the song said, I know what the prince never knew: I need to dance with Cinderella while I can, because midnight is coming far too fast.

Steven Curtis Chapman: Cinderella

Entry Filed under: Personal