By Brennen Schmertmann
Fatherhood in Real Time
Today I want to share a story — a personal story about my father and myself. The year is 2011, the summer after my freshman year of college. I am in my room pacing back and forth in tears. The night before my girlfriend and I had had a huge fight, ending in her storming out of my parents’ house and leaving. My mind was racing, flooded with five years of sins that I had forgotten about or shoved deep down to ignore.
At the time, I thought I was having a mental breakdown but now I know it was a gift. God gifted me a particular grace to see myself, as I truly was — how I looked in the eyes of my heavenly Father. My pride was shattered and my life upended — and the pain was unbearable. At that very moment, my father walked by and saw me. Concerned, he asked if everything was okay and I said “no.” We hopped in his car and took a two-hour drive that would change the course of my life.
That drive was like going to confession for me. I unloaded five years of sins on that man and he listened silently the whole time. He let me talk and get everything off my chest. I must have talked nonstop for almost an hour and a half. At the end of it all he said, “It’s okay. Everything is going to be fine.”
At that moment, I experienced overwhelming catharsis. That, and the advice he gave me afterwards, was exactly what I needed to hear; it changed my life. From that point, I started going back to church, got involved at the St. Stephen the Witness Catholic student center at the University of Northern Iowa, and eventually married a wonderful Catholic woman with whom I have five children. All of this was possible because I had a strong, virtuous father in my home. He is, by far, the single greatest influence in my life; without him in my life, I don’t know where I would have ended up.
Fatherhood is a unique role that has the tremendous potential to influence the course of a child’s future. I had the great fortune of the example set by my father. (A great mother, too but, like I said, we are discussing fatherhood.)
My father’s philosophical talks, unwelcome in my teenage years, imbued the wisdom that formed me into the man I am today. I often remember that story. I think about how my life could have so easily been different if my father and I didn’t have a solid relationship that had been built over 19 years.
I think about the relationships I am forging with my children and wonder if I am building the bonds that will allow us to have conversations that help them in their lives. I pray I won’t need to have the same conversations I had with my dad but life has many unforeseen challenges. Our children need the presence of strong fathers to help guide them through those obstacles.
One thing I have come to realize in my seven short years of fatherhood is that a father’s strength and example inspires the same in his children. Children are more likely to go to church if the father goes to church. Children are more likely to do drugs, drink underage, commit crimes, go to jail, drop out of school and join gangs without a father in the home. God gave fathers a unique strength to help lead their families closer to God. Fatherhood is full of joys as well as challenges. If I can be one-tenth of the father my dad has been to me, I will call that a gift to my children.
(Brennen Schmertmann attends St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Davenport.)
