Does "Life End" When You Have Kids?

Do you think your life ended when you had children?

I ask because there’s a whole group of people who believe it does… that having kids means their life is over. My friend ZUBY: (who, if you’re not following, you should) shared a tweet the other day pushing back on this idea.

This got me thinking about the parts of my life that have “ended” when the kids came and how those are the very things that gave me a “more life”. You don’t lose your life by dying to the old one. Rather… you end up getting a fuller one. Hold this thought… I’ll come back around to it.

I personally talk a lot on this topic with friends in my community and my DHT Community. I’m around a lot of young and new fathers, and this transition from SINGLE GUY > MARRIED > MARRIED WITH CHILDREN seems to be happening all around me.

I already know many of you reading this know exactly what life is like when the kids come. You’re raising one or a few of them up yourself. Let me ask again… do you think your life ended when you had children? I have certainly heard people (myself and my wife included) say our life has been anything but the same. It is certainly life altering. Is that good? or bad? The camp of people who say it’s life ending are framing it as "BAD”

More thoughts on this:

There are parts of my life that have “ended” by having children. Certain desires I once had seem to matter less, or even seem meaningless now.

I remember when my wife became pregnant with Ambrose. Crew is +12 at this time in school and sports. We had the schedule nailed down! But with Ambrose coming, I began to feel a desire within me that I didn’t have prior. I wanted to be home MORE. I wanted to be more available. To say it plainly, I wanted more time in this next season of life. And with that I started to say “no” more. To my career and extra travel. To hosting the annual DoHardThings Conference, and even turning down great opportunities that could have advanced my career. I “died” to these things. There were moments that were surely “hard” to let go of what was, but knowing what was to come had a much stronger pull on me.

Another small example is commuting to the gym 5+ days per week. 20–30 mins each way made no sense to me, I train at home now. That was a major part of my life for 10+ years—commuting to a gym that had the equipment I needed/wanted for the sport I loved (powerlifting/Strongman). Commuting to the gym and strength training TAKES A TON OF TIME. At the level I was at, to get a heavy squat or deadlift session in, I would be in the gym 2 hours on top of the commute each way. That was 3 hours+ of my day. Training from home, I can do a whole lot with that 3 hours. What I do with that time now, most days, is work out for an hour then take the family on a walk to play at the park. It’s usually a 2-hour adventure. We do this 4–5+ days per week. A little less in the winter months.

I use this term all the time: “when life gives us new data, be willing to adjust to it.” And that’s what happened in my life. Life started giving me new data, and if I would have kept on living the way I was living, I believe it would have been a very selfish decision. For those without kids, or in a similar transition to what I was in, you might read that and think “yeah, but I really love the way my life is going right now!!” Haha, yeah, same, bro! I loved the way my life WAS going prior to Ambrose coming. But I believe life, in the way God designed it, is meant for change, or to better say it… to FLOW. If you are Christian, you recognize God himself designed himself this way. I like the way Simon Tugwell frames it(worth the 5-second read):

“We are taught that if we, who are made in the image of God, would preserve our lives and our souls, we must lose them.” Jesus models this behavior on earth for us.

Here’s that thing I told you to hold on to… To say that having children is “life ending” feels like doomer energy, and simply not for me. To “die” or to “lose” parts of me for the gifts God has for me has been anything but life ending… but rather LIFE GIVING! There are certainly aspects of who I was that cannot come with me anymore. Or at least, not in this season of life. I still have personal dreams and goals, and I still go after them! Now, it is in alignment with my new data (kids/family). It is not that my dreams have gone off and died! It is rather that they have expanded and now include new things that I once never could have dreamed up. I feel in this process that my love has grown tremendously. I feel as if I have not really lost anything… and if so, I count it not as a loss but as nothing at all. For what I have now, this blessing of children, perspective, and love is far greater than what I was once clinging to.

Let me finish this with a more down-to-earth, DAY-TO-DAY perspective. It is the last point I want to make on this. I do recognize that there is another group of people who have kids right now, and you are thinking and saying, “Yeah, this is great bro, but A LOT of what I used to do I don’t do now that I have kids. Of course I love my kids and family, but there’s still things I want to do that I simply don’t because of the kids.”

...And that is where this topic gets really nuanced (like all good conversations).

The last point I’ll make is: DOING things with kids takes far more effort. We’ve done walks almost daily for a decade, and doing them with a baby and now a toddler takes us 15+ extra mins just to get out the door. I think many people’s lives do “end” in some sense when they have kids, because the effort of doing things you once did (and still might/want/should do) is harder.

I do believe and see that many parents simply “roll over.” They stop going out. They stop working out. They don’t want to take their kids out because the kids might make a scene. They vacation or take trips less because it is full-on work to make it happen with kids. They skip church because it’s easier to watch from home. Choosing to do all of this (consistently) is, in a mild sense, “life ending.” Much of your prior life or all of it, in some sense, is not happening. However, it is NOT happening because of the kids, but rather because of your lack of raising your capacity. That’s a hard line to swallow. Especially if you’ve got a BUNCH of kids. But I do not believe that God is giving you more than you can handle. What if it is YOU who are fighting against YOU? Life handed you new data… more kids, more to do in the day-to-day… and new data means you need to change. But you still haven’t died to those “old parts” of you?

You still drink too many days per week, which leads you to sleep in, which leads you to not get a workout in, which leads you to have less energy, which leads you to be short with the family, which leads to you “deserving/needing” a break and time to relax, so you sit on the back porch and have another beer in the evening, and the cycle continues.

That is just one example… change (anything) out and put “YOUR THING” there. It could be vegging out every evening on your phone to “decompress,” yet you never really feel all that good after. Those 2 hours may have been the only time for you to spend with your wife while the kids were asleep, or the only time to work out or make healthy meals for the next day.

What I’ve come to realize within my own life is that when things feel “life ending” in the sense of getting in the way of my past life… it is because I am clinging to a version of my life that God has called me to die to. On the other side of death… there is MORE life… even, I’d boldly say, BETTER LIFE.

DO HARD THINGS

With Love

Zach

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