The God of Sleepless Nights and Dirty Diapers: Subscribe to Blake’s Substack

A trusted mentor in college once told me, “I learned more about God in those first few moments of holding my son than I did in three years of seminary.” From the moment I first heard these words, I looked forward to the day I would hold my own child, with the hope that I too would experience God in some new way.

As I prepared for the birth of my first child, Finley, I suspected that this experience wasn’t necessarily unique to my mentor, but I also suspected that this learning wouldn’t end after those first few moments or even those first few days. However, for many of us, these memories and these experiences of God become lost to the sleepless nights and hectic days of caring for a newborn child. I was also lucky enough to have been given 12 weeks of paternity leave when I wouldn’t be regularly preaching or writing. The downside of this gift was that it’s often through the forced habit of preaching and writing that I notice most clearly where God is at work. Between the sleepless nights and the lack of the forced habits of reflection, there was no hope at all of me having any recollection whatsoever of either the holy or the mundane experiences to come. So, in an attempt to both raise my awareness of where God would be working and catalog whatever I noticed in those first few months, I committed to writing a weekly reflection for at least the first 12 weeks of my daughter’s life.

As Finley’s birthday approaches, I’ve started to wonder if others might find these reflections beneficial. So, I’ve decided to publish them on a Substack. I’ll post twice a week for the first two weeks. These are reflections that I wrote before Finley’s birth. Then, I’ll post one reflection a week, roughly a year after each one was written. Full disclosure: some reflections may read as the rambling thoughts of a sleep deprived dad trying to type with one hand and hold a baby with the other. Even so, I invite you to relive this journey with me. If you’re interested in doing so, or if you know of some who would, you can subscribe for free here: https://blakesinger.substack.com/subscribe, and each reflection will be sent directly to your email address. When confirming your subscription, just select ‚Äúno pledge‚Äù.

My experiences are just that, my own, and I’m confident that God shows up in as many different ways in the lives of new parents as there are new parents. But even so, I hope my experiences can bear witness to the places where I saw God. If you’re a new parent or hope to be one in the future, maybe these reflections can encourage you to be on the lookout for where God may find you as you embark on this journey. If you’ve been a parent for a while, perhaps these reflections can jog the long-lost memories of that blurry time in your life. And if you’re not a parent and you have no plans to be, maybe these reflections can be a reminder to you of the ways that God is your perfect parent and help you love the parents in your own life more fully.