I first met Shopé on a Sunday morning around ten years ago at GFC. Little did I know that beyond Sunday he was an incredible artist and teacher.  He was not yet married to Marjolaine, so we (our family) were able to watch their relationship unfold!
Our friendship with Shopé and Marjolaine has been a beautiful gift. They are coming up on eight years of marriage. It’s hard to believe how fast time has gone. Our daughter Sara was a flower girl at their wedding. It was an honour for her to be involved in their special day!
Often at the Wednesday evening prayer meetings at GFC,  Shopé would pray almost in poetic prose for each person in our family. It was such a blessing to know we were prayed for so fervently. He always engaged in conversation with our boys, and that continued into a tutoring relationship with our oldest in the early years of high school. Both Marjolaine and Shopé have influenced our kids by setting a godly example through the years, and we are so grateful! Our kids love having them in our home and enjoy spending time with their three gorgeous children. Shopé is not only educated as a teacher but also continues to make waves in the music and fashion industry. You will find links in his bio. Shopé recognizes his gifts are from the Lord and intentionally puts him first and continues to adore his wife and three young children. It is an honour to call Shopé a friend and welcome him to the Seasons of Fatherhood Series today! You will be encouraged by his insights into parenting and how he is finding the balance daily. Thank you, Shopé for taking the time to share with us!

 

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mosope (Shopé) Adeyemi is a recording artist and creative entrepreneur who’s been featured on BBC Radio 1, CBC, The JUNO Awards and many other publications. He’s the founder of Culture Rich World, a fashion and lifestyle company with a vision to promote the sharing of culture across people groups. He and his wife, Marjolaine, have 3 children and are currently based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. For more, please visit https://welcome.allofshope.com/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflections of a Young Father of 3 (all under 5yrs old)!

 

“I’m 32 years old with 3 kids, all under the age of 5.” I frequently repeat this phrase in my head, almost as though the realization of it all hits me afresh each time. Very often this recurring epiphany comes accompanied with an almost vacant stare amidst a ransacked living room, ear piercing screams and violent wrestling matches taking place atop my shoulders. Yes! It’s just after dinnertime, a wonderful 2hr window before bedtime that Marjo, my wife, affectionately refers to as “Mali’s fussy time”. I would only slightly amend that title to “Mali’s fussy, Maya’s eating while doing a headstand and Mason’s day recap + final supernova-esque burst of energy Time.” I think that covers it.

 

So here I am, in many ways feeling out of my depths and Sandee asks me to write something about being a father. What do I write about? So I started jotting down some ideas and realized the best way is to outline categories of thought that shaped my perspective prior to and since the birth of my children.

 

So here we go.

 

Fears before Fatherhood

Before getting married my wife and I had discussed all the major categories of life; career, roles, location, children etc. On the matter of progeny production we reached an agreement (or so we thought) as to how many kids we wanted to have and when we wanted to start trying. 2 YEARS! We agreed to 2 years of unfettered passion and exploration before setting our sights on “being fruitful and multiplying”. I must say, those 2 years flew by much quicker than I expected. We travelled widely, went to bed late (or early depending on what you consider 5AM is), slept in and basically enjoyed what we didn’t realize at the moment was a blissful solitude. That said, even the best marriages are made up of sinful humans, so those 2 years were also very enlightening. As we approached the end of the period I began anticipating the “conversation” and recall thinking to myself, “WOW! Being just a husband is already a massive learning curve, I’m not sure I’m ready to become a father”. So no I wasn’t ready and wanted to amend our agreement. My fears were many and some included;

• Thinking we were not financially ready. 
• Thinking I wasn’t emotionally ready owing to my complete ignorance of little kids (older kids and teenagers I understand, but not a massive fan of the incoherent, drooling phase).
• Being entrepreneurially driven, my business wasn’t where I wanted it to be yet.
• Losing freedom and flexibility. As a function of the nature of owning and operating a business, freedom and flexibility have always been a top priority in how we structured our family affairs.
• I knew my remaining sinful tendencies and realized that while my children might be oblivious to them for a while, it would only be a matter of time before they began to see them. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite.
• 1,345,393 other reasons I’ll spare you from.

 

Being the gem that she is, although very disappointed my wife was gracious enough to allow me some additional time. 6 months later, tryouts began.

 

Realizations Since Fatherhood

Before getting married, I always told myself I would strive to remain honest no matter the season of life. I personally am not a fan of the cliché rosy answers some Christians tend to give when asked for advice. While they do contain truths to be remembered (i.e. God is sovereign and in control), I have often found them too flaccid, too simple, a substance-less panacea that glosses over what should be tackled with nuance, truth and grace. I say all that to answer this simple question,

 

Were my fears accurate? ABSOLUTELY! Well maybe not all 1,345,398 of them, but I certainly was right to anticipate some of them. That said, some of the fears that were founded were frankly overblown in my mind.

 

We weren’t financially ready per say, but like many other things in life by God’s grace, humans have an incredible ability to adapt. The fear of not being financially ready reared its head with each addition of a minion, yet somehow with each permutation our household income increases, as does our overall financial health. Don’t ask me how, Marjo handles the books. On the matter of not being emotionally ready, that still remains….for other people’s children. Somehow you end up loving your own kids and even sometimes finding their incoherence, drooling and stumbling sort of adorable. Who woulda known? As for the business, it’s changed, grown, adapted and is honestly in the best place it’s ever been. So while I found these fears to be in fact accurate, I will concede they were a little hyperbolized in my imagination.

 

Then there are other fears that are just realities I have come to accept. Perhaps it’s harsh to say that only a fool expects to have a child and have nothing change. I think some of that expectation is rooted in selfishness, of which I have been guilty. The blunt reality is that having a child (especially at a young age) will change your life forever. And if you hope to be a half decent parent you have to come to terms with the fact that there are some adjustments that must be made…some things that must be let go. This has been the case in my life and the life of every single responsible parent I have ever come in contact with. I refrain from speaking in absolutes, but of this point, I am certain. THINGS WILL CHANGE! YOU WILL CHANGE! YOU MUST CHANGE! I must admit that at a time, I saw this letting go of certain things as “defeat”, but no more. Quite the opposite actually. Denial is defeat. Aspiration demands adaptation.

 

So, I am no longer as free and flexible as I used to be. All engagements, trips, and meetings now need to be cross-referenced with 4 other calendars. All offers now need to be more thoroughly scrutinized. I can no longer immediately do this, or take that, or go there. Simply put, I am not as “free”.

 

But I will tell you what I am. I am wiser, I am more focused, I am about 1000X more efficient. It’s interesting now to consider how much time I wasted in the “freedom” and “flexibility” I had without kids. In hindsight, I realize that much of that time was squandered. I’m still an entrepreneur in the fast moving entertainment and fashion industries, yet somehow I am now able to get more done in a single day when compared to my life without my minions. And if I’m being honest, I have to give Mason, Maya and Mali (collectively called 3Ms) credit for this.

 

So what about those sinful tendencies I mentioned earlier? For as long as we live, the sin nature will not be altogether vanquished, that much I accept. So I pray to model a dependence on Jesus, a pursuit of holiness and a humility to acknowledge and repent of my sins, when they do inevitably become visible to 3Ms. As you can imagine, 3Ms have only refined my intentionality and drive to live in such a manner.

 

Upon these and many more realizations since my life as a father begun, there are some implications for how I consider our future as a family, which brings me to my final section. 

Considerations in Fatherhood

In as much as I accept the reality of change and adaptation in my life, I’m cautious to apply sage wisdom handed down to me prior to marriage and kids. Kids require time and attention, that said, Marjo and I are intentional to not orient our entire lives around Mason, Maya and Mali. We remind ourselves that we are only stewards of them and Lord willing, will have them in our care but for a brief moment before they venture out on their own. I believe it is our job as parents to lead and shepherd our kids, and particularly as a husband and father to prayerfully lead and shepherd my wife and by extension the family.

 

Another point of consideration I won’t expound on too much in the post (perhaps another one) is the raising my kids in light of their ethnic background. In case you haven’t stopped reading this expertly written blog post to investigate the brilliant mind behind it, here’s a quick background. I was born and raised in Nigeria, and later immigrated to Toronto at the age of 11. My ancestry is African for as far back as I can go. My wife is a French Canadian woman who’s ancestry as far as I know, hasn’t deviated much from its current iteration. That’s a long winded way of saying I’m a black man and she’s a white woman. Does this matter? Should it matter? The answers to those questions are up for debate. What isn’t up for debate however, is the fact that owing to the nature of the world, our childrens’ ethnic (and racial) makeup will likely have implications on their lives. 

 

As a Christian first, my identity starts there, but it doesn’t end there. The scriptures make it clear that God is not colour blind (Rev. 7:9). He wove ethnic diversity into the very fabric of the pinnacle of his creation – humans. So I know ethnicity (and by extension race) plays a role in our identities here on earth. To what extent is a matter of open conversation. In my life I simply try to keep the orientational hierarchy in check. Christ first, and everything else though not unimportant, comes after. I pray to assist my children in their journey of navigating how much of a role their race (owing to their ethnicity) should play into their self-identity. Quick fun story; my wife and I talk about race issues, although not in front of the kids, not yet at least. One day at the dinner table, our oldest Mason, randomly said, “I’m like Dada, Maya is like Dada, and Mali too…Mama is the only light person in the family”. May the good Lord give us wisdom!

 

When all is said and done, my biggest consideration as a father is raising them in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I pray they come to know Jesus intimately and personally as Saviour. Cute as they are, they are sinners and nothing would bring my wife and I the greatest joy than to see them bow the knee to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

 

Welp! This has turned out to be a much longer blog than I initially anticipated. Hopefully, these ramblings have been of some benefit to you.

 

As a final thought, it bears mentioning that right above the foundation of Jesus Christ is my wife Marjolaine. She has blossomed into a diamond of a wife, mother and disciple of Jesus. For all the responsibilities that come with fathering, she takes out a lot of the sting, and brings a whole lot of joy.

 

Much more can be said on the topic, but I’ll end with the following;

 

Fatherhood is tough!

Fatherhood is joy!

My ultimate hope is in the work of my Father, sending his Son for me, Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

 

Wedding Joy!

 

At the core of his being, Christ is the centre!

 

“When all is said and done, my biggest consideration as a father is raising them in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I pray they come to know Jesus intimately and personally as Saviour. Cute as they are, they are sinners and nothing would bring my wife and I the greatest joy than to see them bow the knee to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.”

– Shopé