Cherishing Every Stage: What a Painting Taught Me About Fatherhood

Some works of art speak to us because they capture something we have already been trying to say. When I encountered a painting that traced a girl’s life through a progression of shoes, it gave visual form to a thought that had filled my mind since our daughter joined our family: every stage would pass more quickly than I expected, and I wanted to cherish each one.

Originally published November 3, 2021. Substantially revised and expanded July 2026.

A Long-Awaited Change

In the summer of 2021, our family welcomed a baby girl after more than a decade of trying to expand our family. Her arrival felt miraculous, and it changed the rhythm of our home almost immediately.

After raising two boys, we suddenly found ourselves beginning another journey with a daughter. The differences were not only in clothes, toys, or nursery colors. Her arrival made me think differently about time. We had already watched our sons pass through stages that once seemed permanent—first words, first school days, changing interests, growing independence. I knew from experience that the baby stage would not last, even while sleepless nights sometimes made it feel endless.

A Life Suggested by Shoes

The painting’s sequence of shoes suggested an entire life without showing a face. Baby shoes gave way to the footwear of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and eventually another generation. Each pair represented a stage that would arrive, remain briefly, and then become memory.

Our daughter was wearing baby shoes then, but the painting invited me to imagine the years ahead. She would learn to walk, choose her own clothes, begin school, discover talents, face disappointments, develop convictions, and become someone whose future I could support but not control. Someday, she might build a family of her own.

The Temptation to Look Ahead

Parents spend much of their time preparing for what comes next. We teach children to speak, read, work, serve, make decisions, and care for themselves. That preparation is necessary, but it can make the present feel like a hallway leading toward a more important room.

There is always another milestone ahead: sleeping through the night, walking, kindergarten, baptism, graduation, a mission, college, work, marriage, or whatever path a child ultimately chooses. A family can become so focused on the next transition that it fails to recognize the ordinary beauty of the current one.

Cherishing Does Not Mean Idealizing

To cherish a stage does not mean pretending it is easy. Babies cry. Toddlers test boundaries. School years bring schedules and struggles. Teenagers need growing freedom at the same time parents still feel responsible for protecting them.

Real gratitude includes the difficult parts. It says, “This is tiring, complicated, and sometimes frightening—and it is also temporary and precious.” The goal is not to manufacture constant sentimentality. It is to remain awake to the life occurring inside the work.

What I Wanted to Remember

• Take photographs, but also put the camera down and participate.
• Record the funny phrases and small habits that will otherwise disappear.
• Notice growth without rushing a child toward the next stage.
• Let older children know their current lives matter as much as their earliest milestones did.
• Accept that loving a stage includes allowing it to end.
• Trust that each new season can bring gifts that were invisible from the previous one.

The artwork became meaningful not because it predicted exactly who our daughter would become, but because it reminded me that her life would unfold through many versions of herself. My responsibility was not to hold her forever in baby shoes. It was to love the child in front of me, prepare her for the road ahead, and remain grateful for the privilege of walking beside her.