My First Father's Day

OK, technically Sunday, June 17 was my 39th Father's Day, but it was my FIRST AS A FATHER!  Since I was 16, I'd wondered if the day would ever come.  The following is the most personal thing about me, something I hid from just about everybody until a year ago when I shared it with my church family during a sermon: at age 16, I discovered that because of a birth defect, I would never have biological children.

As a junior in high school, I started the year at 5'3" tall and about 110 pounds.  I lied on my driver's license and put  5'4" and 115.  Somehow that made me feel better.  I'd never really started puberty because the only testosterone my body made was the 20% of a male's total that comes from the adrenal gland.  I was a slender, small child and for years I just thought I'd always be that way, but by the time I was 12, my 10-year old brother had passed me in size.  It was humiliating and it caused me to resent him.

After 7th grade, I refused to change in front of anyone.  I'd always loved sports and P.E. had been my favorite class of the day, but no more.  I was scared to death that someone would find out.  We moved to Portsmouth, VA the summer before my 10th grade year and for P.E. there, you were docked a point off your final grade for every day you didn't shower (in open showers) after class.  I quickly discovered that there were 90 days in a semester, and the best grade I could get was a 10, because I wasn't taking a shower in front of ANYBODY.  Awesome.  Made me miss Franklin County High School in Carnesville, GA all the more.  There, nobody cared if you went to class stinking.

Near the end of my 10th grade year, after my family had moved to SC, I convinced my parents that something was wrong with me and I started seeing doctors.  I thought having a younger brother pass me in size was humiliating, but it was NOTHING compared to the exams I was put through.  I won't post my official diagnosis to keep the content of this blog PG, but after a few months of blood work, I started taking testosterone in mid-September, 1989.  That's about the same time I was sized for my high school class ring - size 8.

All I knew was, that stuff worked!  The process that should've taken 3-4 years or more happened to me in less than a year.  SUDDENLY, and I do mean suddenly, none of my clothes or shoes fit anymore.  I developed an Adam's Apple that has given me shaving fits ever since, and the deeper voice that goes with it. Our class rings arrived around February, and I was completely shocked when my size 8 ring got stuck on my  middle knuckle.  I had to get it re-sized to a 10, and then later, to a 10.5.  In four months, I'd grown about 4 inches taller and about 40 pounds heavier.  Talk about AWESOME!

But, growing so quickly caused plenty of problems, too.  I tried out for my school's baseball team about that same time - February.  I was hitting balls harder than ever before - obviously.  I could throw harder.  There were about 30 guys trying out and up to half would get cut, so I was going all out.  And it was killing me.  Never before had physical activity caused me PAIN.  My sudden growth was too much for all my connective tissues, and each night after practice, I'd hobble to my room and ice everything down for a couple hours.  Each day at school was misery because we had 3 floors and I had classes on each.  One day before practice, I went and talked to the coach and told him the real reason I wasn't going to come back.  He told me I was going to make the team and that he could really use me, so I kept trying for a couple days.  And then I told him I just couldn't do it.  I was heartbroken.  Baseball was the only organized sport I'd ever played, I was pretty good at it, and playing high school baseball had always been a dream.
 
My growth slowed over the next year, and I graduated at 5'9" and about 175 pounds.  A few people at school actually accused me of taking steroids.  I asked them how stupid they were, because steroids don't make anybody grow 6" TALLER.  But, it was obvious that SOMETHING had happened.  I had some weights at home and used them often even though I didn't really know what I was doing, but my body-type is mesomorph and I had natural muscle.  Again, it was AWESOME!

That sounds like a happy ending, and the growth was great, but I was still dealing with the fact that I'd never have biological children.  When my doctor told me that part, I started crying.  And I didn't stop for a while.  He tried to console me with humor: "Just think, you can have all the sex you want and you won't have to worry about getting anybody pregnant!"  That didn't even make me smile.  I was a committed Christian, absolutely determined to have sex with my wife and only my wife.  My wife.

My wife was on my mind from that point on, and thinking about her scared me to death.  This is the hard part of my diagnosis, if you haven't figured it out.  I'd always loved being around children, especially babies, and they seemed to like me, too.  I just expected to have 3-4 of my own in the future.  With my wife.  But with my PROBLEM, I didn't think anybody would ever want me after they found out.  So I guarded my secret.  I absolutely HAD to tell my closest MALE friends, and a few adults (male and female) who had become mentors to me.  I went to the doctor twice a month for injections, and it grew increasingly difficult to hide all those doctor visits, or the yellow doctor's receipts that I sometimes forgot to remove from my car.  These receipts had big, dark handwriting on them that said, "Testosterone Injection."

But I hid it from girls.  The first girl I ever loved found out accidentally from a friend of ours at church.  The friend overheard it from someone I'd told.  This girlfriend, whom I wasn't even dating at the time but I PLANNED TO MARRY, called me one night and asked me to come see her after she got off work.  She needed to talk to me about "something."  We went and sat in my car and she immediately started crying and asked, "Why didn't you TELL me?"  I didn't even have to ask what it was.  I knew.  And I immediately thought, "Well, I can forget about her.  Not gonna happen now."  Before I had time to think anything else, she was telling me that it didn't matter to her, and it didn't change anything.  I was SHOCKED.  And AMAZED.  My fear turned out to be for NOTHING.  But how was I supposed to know it wouldn't matter to her?  She already had her children's NAMES picked out!  We ultimately did date for about a year, and my infertility had nothing to do with our breakup.

I decided that I didn't want to go through that awful situation again, and that the next time I was even THINKING about getting serious with a girl, I'd tell her up front.  So I did.  I told the next girl I dated early on that I had a secret, and if she found out about it, she might not want anything to do with me.  One night at a church softball game, again sitting in my car, she said she thought she knew my secret, and she guessed it right away.  I was thinking, "HOW IN THE WORLD DID YOU GET THAT FROM WHAT I SAID?  You weren't thinking "murderer," "felon," "sex-change operation," "toupee . . .???"

Two conversations, two wins for me.  I'd worried for years for nothing, so far.  But still, I was 25 years old and single, and I didn't want to be 35 years old and still single because everybody knew I couldn't have children.  So, I kept my secret to myself.

The third girl I ever got serious with already knew.  She's my wife today, but she used to be one of the students in my youth ministry.  She's always been tiny, and during her high school years, I wondered if she had a similar problem as me.  So I told her my secret and asked if she'd been examined by a doctor.  She assured me that she was OK.  I also told a few of my other students when there was an appropriate reason, with the assurance that they wouldn't tell anyone.  A couple were girls and a couple were guys, and I never INTENDED to tell them, but through some problem I was helping each deal with, my story just related and I thought it would help them.

A few years later when my future wife was no longer one of my students and I stopped seeing her as such, there were no barriers to her pursuing a relationship with me.  I didn't have to have one of those scary, intense car conversations.  Awesome!

Four years and one day after we were married, we became parents to Katherine Ava.  She was born ONE DAY before our anniversary.  We were hoping she'd be born ON our anniversary, but she had other plans.  We adopted Kate from two teenagers who put the best interests of their baby ahead of their own interests.  God led them to select us to raise their daughter.  They blessed us with a gift I was unable to give myself, or my wife.  I will forever be grateful to them.  And as long as it's in Kate's best interests, they'll always be a part of her life.

I have a big regret about my secret.  I spent most of the past 15 years PRIMARILY as a youth minister.  There are so many applications I could've made with my story, so much good I could've used it for, so many ways I could've potentially impacted more than just 4-5 lives with it.  But I was too scared.  I was selfish.  I was worried about scaring away some beautiful girl who could've been my future wife, while all that time God was working things out in ways I never would've asked for or originally wanted.  I have regrets.  But after finally being brave enough to tell my church last year, I'm no longer ashamed for people to know the truth about me.  The only reason I finally broke and told my story was because I was tired of people assuming that we were adopting because my wife was infertile.  I was tired of people asking both of us personal questions and us having to hide the truth.  I'm glad I finally got tired of it.  And I'm glad I'm no longer scared to tell the real story about why it took me so long to celebrate my first Father's Day as a father.