The Second Arrow, the First Yes

Yesterday

I believe yesterday will be one of those memories that refuses to fade.

Charlotte... our second child, our second daughter, and our second arrow... became the first of our children to desire baptism and move forward with it.

She was nervous.

I could see it in her.

Confidence does not always mean the absence of fear. Sometimes confidence is what steps forward while fear is still trying to negotiate.

Charlotte has always carried what we jokingly call “Charlotte confidence.” She is competitive. She wants gold, not silver. She feels deeply, moves decisively, and has always seemed especially connected to me. She can read my emotions before I explain them. She follows my lead, listens to my direction, and receives my correction in a way that feels different from anyone else.

Yesterday, surrounded by our entire family and the church body, that confidence carried her into the water.

I watched her take the step.

For everyone else, the moment lasted only a few minutes. For me, years passed in front of my eyes.

I did not see only the young girl standing there ready to be baptized.

I saw a snowy January morning in Downers Grove, Illinois. I saw ice on the roads, unanswered questions, a midwife too far away, a doula speaking through a phone, Danielle trusting me more than I trusted myself, and a baby arriving much faster than anyone planned.

Before Charlotte ever stepped into the water by choice, she entered this world directly into my hands.

The Second Arrow

Psalm 127 describes children as arrows in the hand of a warrior.

I have come back to that picture repeatedly as Danielle and I have built our family. An arrow is entrusted, not possessed. It is protected, shaped, aimed, and eventually released. A parent can influence its preparation, but the arrow was never created to remain permanently clutched in the hand.

Madison was our first arrow. She made us parents. She gave us our first experience of loving a child, losing sleep, questioning everything, and discovering that raising another human being will reveal weaknesses you never knew we had.

Then came Charlotte.

She was the second arrow, but she became the child of many firsts.

Being second has never kept Charlotte from going first.

A Snowy January in Downers Grove

After Madison was born, Danielle and I made the conscious decision that our next child would be delivered at home.

It sounded peaceful when we talked about it ahead of time.

We did not yet know what the process would actually look like, so we surrounded ourselves with people who did. We hired midwives and doulas. We asked questions. We prepared. We tried to remove as much uncertainty as possible from an experience that, by definition, could not be completely controlled.

I often say that God answers Danielle’s prayers faster and more frequently than mine. I also joke that when I want one thing and Danielle wants another, we compromise and do what she wants. Happy wife, happy life... or however that line goes.

That home birth was something Danielle wanted, believed in, and approached with a confidence that helped calm me and lead me.

We had decided to keep the gender a surprise. Life does not offer many genuine surprises anymore. Information is constantly available, predictions are immediate, and almost everything can be scheduled, tracked, photographed, or revealed ahead of time. We wanted to leave one thing unopened until the moment it arrived.

As the due date moved closer, however, a different realization began to loom over me.

Are we really going to do this?

Danielle’s confidence was reassuring. Mine was still developing.

During our final preparation meeting, Danielle looked at the doula and said something like, “Can you train Waldon in case he needs to deliver?”

My eyes got big.

Deep down, I knew she was right. I would rather have knowledge I never needed than need knowledge I had refused to learn. Growing up on a ranch had taught me that preparation often feels unnecessary right up until the moment it becomes essential.

When something living needs help, there is not always time to locate a professional, read a manual, or wait for perfect conditions.

So I paid attention.

I learned what I could.

I did not know that the backup plan was about to become the plan.

Forty Minutes

Madison’s delivery had taken about twenty-four hours.

It was exhausting. I often joke that it might have been harder on me than it was on Danielle. That statement has never received the agreement or laughter I believe it deserves, but I continue to stand by the comedy of it.

Because our first experience had taken so long, some part of me expected the second delivery to give us plenty of time.

Charlotte had a different plan.

The morning of her birth, Danielle woke before I did. She knew she was in labor and immediately began putting the plan into motion. Her parents would come get Madison. The birth team would make its way to the house. We would use everything we had prepared.

Then the weather interfered.

It had snowed the night before. The roads around Downers Grove were icy. Our midwife was approximately an hour and a half away before adding the conditions. Our doula was roughly thirty-five minutes away if traffic cooperated.

Charlotte went from water break to baby in arms in about forty minutes.

The people who were supposed to be in the room could not arrive before she did. She beat them all.

There are moments when fear gets to make a presentation but does not get to cast the deciding vote. This was one of them. I did not have the luxury of remaining nervous. The situation placed responsibility directly in front of me, and responsibility required action.

I had been around many animal births while growing up on the ranch. That did not make me a midwife, and it did not make delivering my own daughter ordinary. But it gave me a practical familiarity with birth, urgency, and the need to remain calm when another life depends on what happens next.

I combined that background with what we had practiced only weeks earlier.

I cleaned my hands. We put the doula on speakerphone. I followed the directions I had been given. I checked for the cord. I guided the baby out. I cleared the membrane away from the baby’s airway.

Then I waited for the cry.

Waiting has never been one of my strongest spiritual gifts.

My impatience took over, so I rubbed her and gave the baby a small, love tap on the bottom, willing her to make a sound. Then I heard it.

The cry.

The sound told me she was here.

It Is a Baby

In the rush and emotion of the delivery, Danielle’s parents arrived while holding Madison. They heard a newborn crying inside the house. Their timing was nearly exact.

Someone called out, “What is it?”

I yelled back, “A baby!”

I had not checked.

We had kept the gender a surprise for months, and when the surprise finally arrived, I was so focused on the fact that the child was alive and breathing that I forgot there was another question to answer.

I looked.

“It’s a girl!”

I think! The cord was still attached and was playing ticks on me. But ultimately... our second daughter had arrived.

I had spent months wondering whether I could handle a home birth and minutes doing what the moment required. Knowledge had become action. Preparation had become presence. Fear had been crowded out by responsibility.

That was the first day I held Charlotte.

I still joke that after that rush of adrenaline, I spent the rest of the day shaking in the corner. It was pretty intense.

Years later, standing in church, I realized that the memory had never left my hands.

A Child of Firsts

Families naturally tell stories about each child.

The stories become part of the language of the home: the first one to walk, the one who never slept, the one who climbed everything, the one who said the funniest thing, the one who arrived before anyone was ready.

We joke that Charlotte’s attachment to me began because I delivered her. We joke that she listens to my correction because her first experience with Dad included that tap that encouraged her first cry.

The jokes carry affection, but behind them is something real. Charlotte and I share a connection that feels as though it began in the urgency of that morning. I was one of the first people she encountered. She entered the world into her father’s hands, and I entered a new understanding of fatherhood through hers.

But I need to be careful with the phrase “child of firsts.”

First does not mean favored.

It does not mean more spiritual, more loved, or more important than her siblings.

A family is not a podium.

Our children are not competing for the gold medal of parental affection.

Each arrow carries a different design, timing, strength, and assignment.

The fact that one moves first in a particular area does not mean the others are late.

It simply means that Charlotte has repeatedly been the child through whom our family encounters something for the first time.

Yesterday, she did it again.

Church at the Fireplace

As Charlotte prepared to be baptized, another memory flashed in front of me.

When she was younger, she would get herself fully dressed... makeup, heels, dress and purse, gather the family, grab her Bible, and climb onto the hearth of our fireplace in Downers Grove. Then she would lead church.

She did not need a stage crew.

She did not need a microphone, a worship team, a sign-up form, or an audience beyond the people already living in the house. She had a Bible, a fireplace, siblings she could recruit, and enough confidence to begin.

Looking back, those little services were more than cute performances. They were early evidence that she was paying attention. She saw that worship mattered. She understood that Scripture was meant to be opened. She noticed that faith gathered people together.

Children imitate before they fully understand.

That truth should humble every parent.

Deuteronomy 6 tells God’s people to keep His words on their hearts and teach them diligently to their children... when sitting at home, walking along the road, lying down, and getting up. The picture is not of faith being confined to one weekly event. It is faith becoming part of the ordinary rhythm of a household.

Our children are watching what we place at the center of our lives.

They hear what we say about God, but they also notice what we trust when pressure comes, how we respond when we fail, whether we repent, what we celebrate, and where our attention goes when no one is performing for a crowd.

I cannot take credit for everything God has placed in Charlotte’s heart.

Danielle and I did not manufacture her faith. We cannot become the Holy Spirit for our children. But we have tried to build a home in which knowing, worshiping, questioning, trusting, and obeying God are normal parts of life.

Yesterday, the little girl who once led church from the fireplace stepped into the water for herself.

The First Yes

Baptism is full of visible action: a person steps forward, enters the water, is lowered beneath it, and rises again. The church watches. Family gathers. Photographs are taken. People applaud.

But the deepest part of the moment cannot be photographed.

Baptism is not merely water touching a body. It is an act of obedience, a public identification with Jesus, and a visible declaration of an inward faith.

Romans 6 connects baptism with the death and resurrection of Christ: buried with Him and raised to walk in newness of life. Jesus commanded His disciples to make disciples and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Christians across traditions explain some parts of baptism differently, its timing, its mode, and its precise relationship to salvation and church membership. I do not need to solve every denominational disagreement to say what yesterday meant in our family.

Charlotte chose to identify herself publicly with Jesus.

She did something no parent could do for her.

I could teach her Scripture. I could bring her to church. I could answer questions, model prayer, confess my failures, and show her why grace matters so much to me. I could encourage her, protect her, correct her, and stand close enough for her to feel supported.

But I could not give her my faith.

I could receive Charlotte into my hands at birth. I could stand beside her at baptism. But I could not choose Christ for her.

Yesterday was her yes.

Not a Finish Line

The word baptized can sound complete.

The event has a beginning and an end.

Clothes get wet.

A declaration is made.

The person rises from the water, the congregation celebrates, and eventually everyone goes home.

But baptism is not a spiritual graduation ceremony.

It is not proof that a person will never struggle, doubt, sin, wander, or need correction. It is not a finish line reached by someone who has mastered faith. It is an early act of public obedience in a life that will require many more acts of obedience.

Charlotte will still have questions.

She will still face pressure.

She will eventually encounter moments when following Jesus costs more than getting wet in front of people who love her. Faith will have to move from the supportive environment of a church celebration into classrooms, friendships, disappointments, temptations, decisions, relationships, work, family, and every private place where applause cannot follow.

That does not diminish yesterday.

It explains why yesterday matters.

She publicly named the direction of her life before she could see every road that direction would require her to walk.

Four Days

Watching Charlotte rise from the water made me think about four days in the life of each of my daughters that I hope to witness and remember.

The day she is born.

The day she is baptized.

The day she is married—especially the first dance between a father and his daughter.

The day she gives birth to a child of her own, if that becomes part of her story.

Birth. Baptism. Covenant. Legacy.

Those four days came to me as milestones—not guarantees and not demands I am placing on any daughter.

Marriage and motherhood are not obligations they must fulfill to complete a life.

Their worth will never depend on whether those days arrive in the form I imagined. Their lives belong to God, and His assignments for them are His to reveal.

Still, the thought stopped me.

Charlotte has already marked two of those days.

It feels impossible. I can still remember the ice outside our Downers Grove home and the weight of a newborn in my hands. Now I have watched that child walk into baptism under the power of her own legs and the conviction of her own heart.

Half of the four moments I had just imagined were already memories.

That realization made the speed of life feel almost physical.

Life Does Not Need Help Moving Faster

Life has no problem moving quickly.

I have spent much of mine trying to make it move even faster. I am wired for urgency, action, problem-solving, growth, and the next result. I see a destination and immediately begin looking for the shortest path between here and there. That wiring has helped me accomplish things. It has also caused me to miss things that were happening at the speed they were supposed to happen.

I have been thinking about how to build a time machine.

I am joking... mostly.

What I really want is not to travel backward. I want to stop arriving mentally at the next season before the current one is finished. I want to resist turning childhood into a countdown. I want to stop treating ordinary days as the hallway between the moments important enough to photograph.

The four days matter because they reveal change.

But a relationship is built in all the days between them.

The birth matters, but so do the nights of crying, the first laugh, the scraped knees, the questions, the car rides, and the mornings when nothing historic happens.

The baptism matters, but so do family prayers, hard conversations, quiet doubts, opened Bibles, apologies, worship from the fireplace, and the daily choices that will teach her how to continue walking with Christ.

The wedding may matter, but so will every conversation that helps her understand covenant, character, boundaries, forgiveness, and unconditional love before anyone asks for her hand.

The birth of a grandchild may matter, but so will every ordinary day in which she learns what it means to steward another person without trying to control them.

The milestone receives the photograph. Presence builds the person.

The Best Present Is Presence

The older I get, the more I realize that the best present is presence.

Not money.

Not another object.

Not a perfectly planned experience designed primarily to produce content.

Presence.

Attention that is not divided. Listening that is not merely waiting for a chance to speak. Time that is not given resentfully while the mind remains somewhere else. A father whose body, mind, heart, and spirit are all in the same room.

I have been physically present and mentally absent before. I know what it is to sit near the people I love while fear, regret, work, ambition, or an imagined future carries the rest of me somewhere else. My children do not only need my location. They need access to me.

Slowing life down does not require stopping the clock. It requires returning to the moment the clock is already measuring.

Sometimes that means doing one thing at a time. It means putting down the phone, saying no to an obligation that steals energy from a greater responsibility, walking more slowly, breathing before reacting, and allowing a small experience to become a real memory rather than content that disappears into a camera roll.

But presence is not the final destination either.

The best present I can give my children is my presence. But even my presence has a purpose: to help them recognize the presence of God for themselves.

I will not always be in the room.

I could be separated from them by work, distance, consequences, illness, death, or the ordinary process of children becoming adults. If their faith depends entirely on their father’s physical availability, then I have made myself too central to a story that belongs to God.

My role is not to make them permanently dependent on me.

It is to help prepare them to trust Him.

What a Father Cannot Do

Fatherhood carries enough responsibility to make a man feel powerful and helpless at the same time.

I can provide a home, but I cannot prevent every storm.

I can teach truth, but I cannot force belief.

I can establish boundaries, but I cannot make every choice.

I can pray over an arrow, but I cannot fly in its place.

There is a temptation in parenting to treat a child’s visible faithfulness as proof of our success and a child’s struggle as proof of our failure. Both conclusions assume more control than parents actually possess.

Charlotte’s baptism was not my trophy.

It was not evidence that Danielle and I have perfected parenting.

It did not place her above her siblings or allow us to measure anyone else’s spiritual timeline against hers.

Baptism belongs to the person being baptized and to the Christ with whom that person is identifying.

My joy was not the joy of a coach whose athlete had won me a medal.

It was the joy of a father who had been allowed to witness a daughter take a step toward God.

The water did not tell me that my work was complete.

It reminded me what my work is for.

The Hands Must Open

At birth, my job was to catch her.

At baptism, my job was to witness her.

One required my hands to hold on. The other required my hands to begin opening.

That is the tension inside the image of children as arrows. We spend years holding them close enough to shape and protect them, knowing that faithful stewardship eventually requires release. We do not release them because we love them less. We release them because love was never supposed to become possession.

Charlotte is still young. She is not leaving our home tomorrow. There is much teaching, correction, laughter, growth, protection, and ordinary life ahead of us. But baptism gave me a glimpse of the direction of fatherhood.

Every faithful yes she gives to God will make her more fully His, not more permanently mine.

That should not threaten a father.

It should fulfill him.

When She Rose

When Charlotte came up from the water, the room saw a baptism.

I saw a life in motion.

I saw the infant whose first cry I had anxiously waited to hear. I saw the little girl standing on the fireplace hearth with a Bible in her hands. I saw the competitive daughter gathering courage and stepping forward while nervous. I saw two of those four imagined days now living behind us, preserved as memory rather than possibility.

And I realized I do not need a time machine.

Going backward would only give me another chance to miss the moment while worrying about the next one.

What I need is the discipline to be here.

Here for the questions after baptism.

Here for the ordinary Tuesdays.

Here for the victories that will never be announced from a platform.

Here for the mistakes that will require truth and grace.

Here long enough to show her that following Jesus is not a single dramatic decision but a life of daily surrender.

Yesterday, the second arrow went first again.

She stepped into the water carrying nerves, faith, and Super Charlotte confidence. She was lowered beneath the surface and raised again before the people who love her.

I did not deliver her this time.

I simply had the gift of being present while she declared whose she was.

Scripture for the Field

Primary — Romans 6:3–4

Paul connects baptism with participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Going beneath the water pictures burial with Christ; rising from it pictures the call to walk in newness of life. The emphasis is not on creating a perfect religious moment. It is on receiving a new identity that begins producing a new way of living.

Foundation — Matthew 28:18–20

Jesus sends His disciples to make disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything He commanded. Baptism is therefore not detached from discipleship. It belongs at the beginning of a continuing life of learning and obedience.

Prayer

Father,

Thank You for entrusting our children to us without pretending that they belong to us.

Thank You for Charlotte, for the day she entered our home and for the day she stepped into the water. Protect the faith growing within her. Teach her to recognize Your voice, trust Your character, obey Your Word, and return quickly when she wanders.

Give Danielle and me the wisdom to lead without controlling, protect without possessing, correct without shaming, and remain present without making ourselves the center.

Help us build a home where faith is lived honestly... where questions are welcome, repentance is normal, grace is visible, and Jesus receives the credit.

Slow me down enough to notice the life happening in front of me. Keep me from sacrificing ordinary days while waiting for landmark ones. Prepare my hands to hold each arrow faithfully and to open when You call each one forward.

Let yesterday’s public yes become a lifetime of daily obedience.

In Jesus’ name, amen.