When People Call Your Son Your Grandson: 50Plus Fatherhood Lessons on Timing, Perception, and Reality

I have lost count of how many times people have looked at my son and asked, with genuine certainty, “Is that your grandson?”

It happened again recently. We were out as a family when someone pointed at him and said, “Your child’s child.” We replied calmly: “No. He is our son, our first son.” Fifteen years into our marriage, that sentence has become a familiar correction.

Another day, I visited a school to see the principal. My son was with me. The principal smiled and said, “Oh, you came with your grandson.” I responded, as I always do: “No. He is my son, my first son.”

After the second or third time, I stopped reacting emotionally and started thinking philosophically: why do people reach that conclusion so quickly?

The answer is not mysterious. It is appearance and probability. I am 56 this year. My wife is in her late 40s. By common biological and social expectations, we are old enough to be grandparents. Their assessment is not necessarily insulting. In fact, by ordinary arithmetic, it is understandable.

But here is the deeper lesson:

Human assessment can be reasonable and still not be your reality.

People interpret the world using patterns, what is typical, what is frequent, what is statistically likely. That is how the mind creates order. They see, they calculate, they conclude. And yes, they are entitled to their conclusions.

But entitlement does not make a conclusion sovereign.

Because there are two things that must never be confused:

• People’s perception of us
• The reality of who we are

If we cannot separate those two, we will spend our life negotiating our identity with spectators.

I cannot turn my son into my grandson to satisfy an assumption. I cannot begin to introduce myself as a grandparent because society has decided what my age “should” mean. I am not raising a grandchild. I am raising my child.

And this is where my reflection deepens into the spiritual and philosophical.

Timing, Delay, Denial, and the Discipline of Meaning

This journey of raising my first child in my twilight years has forced me to confront the language we use around God and time, especially the popular phrases we repeat without examining.

People often say, “Delay is not denial.” I understand what they mean. But I no longer treat that statement as a blanket truth that covers every situation.

Here is the clearer frame I have learned:

God does not operate by human impatience. God operates by appointed time.

When I do not receive what I desire when I desire it, that is not automatically a “delay” in the way the human ego defines delay. It may simply be that my timetable was never the timetable.

And when I do not receive what I desire at the moment I demand it, that is not automatically “denial” either. It may be design. It may be ordering. It may be mercy. It may be preparation. It may be purpose.

So I hold this conviction firmly now:

The categories “delay” and “denial” are often human labels for a divine schedule we do not understand.

Not everything late is delayed.
Not everything withheld is denied.
Not everything slow is wrong.

Sometimes, what we call “late” is simply not yet, because “yet” is not governed by our anxiety but by God’s sequence.

That is why Scripture confronts cultural impatience so directly.

Elizabeth and Zechariah were married, yet the child came in old age, not because heaven forgot them, but because John’s arrival was tied to an assignment, and that assignment was tied to a larger story.

Hannah waited, and Samuel arrived at an appointed time, because his life was not merely a domestic answer; it was a national instrument.

Their lives preach a doctrine modern culture hates:

Marriage does not command timing. Desire does not command destiny.

The Limits of Comparison: Why We Never Have Enough Data

This season has also taught me something that is both humbling and liberating:

We will never have enough data to judge our lives accurately by comparison.

We compare:

• our lives to other people’s lives,
• our present to our past,
• our present to our future,
• our expectations to our outcomes,

and we assume the comparison is fair.

But it is not.

Because comparison always suffers from missing information. We do not know the full context behind another person’s timeline. We do not know the invisible delays they were spared. We do not know the unseen costs of their visible achievements. We do not know what God prevented. We do not know what God postponed. We do not know what God permitted.

And even about ourselves, we do not have full data:

• We do not fully know what our past was protecting us from,
• We do not fully know what our present is preparing us for,
• We do not fully know what our future is demanding of us.

So the mature posture is not arrogance. It is submission, submission to the truth that there are governing variables beyond our measurement.

This is why faith matters to me, not as decoration, but as orientation.

I once read a leadership insight that stayed with me. Someone was asked what his leadership philosophy was. He said, in effect: “Mine is not like the eagle. It is like the bat. I fly with limited sight, but I follow the One who knows the way.”

That is not weakness. That is wisdom.

Because God did not consult me before creating me. God did not consult me before ordering the world. It would be foolhardy to assume I can navigate life purely by my own calculations.

Parenting as the Highest School of Becoming

And this brings me back to fatherhood.

Parenting, especially at 50+, is not merely raising a child. Parenting is being remade while raising a child. It is the daily confrontation of ego. It is the retraining of patience. It is the discipline of presence.

The greatest shock is not the child. The greatest shock is the mirror the child becomes.

This is why I do not treat life and parenting as separate subjects. I have learned what I now state as a principle:

The way we do one thing is the way we do everything.

If we handle misperception poorly, we will handle leadership poorly.
If we handle waiting poorly, we will handle marriage poorly.
If we handle uncertainty poorly, we will handle parenting poorly.

Life itself is preparation. Life itself is training. Life itself is the apprenticeship of becoming, so that when a role arrives (father, husband, leader, builder), we have the internal structure to stand.

So yes, people may say “grandson.”

But I have stopped wrestling with perception. I simply return to reality:

This is my son.
This is my season.
This is my assignment.

And I am learning that to live well, we must carry two truths at once:

• people will assess us, often correctly by their data,
• but our lives is not governed by their data.

It is governed by purpose, timing, and the wisdom of God.

Question: When people’s assessment of you conflicts with your reality, do you become defensive, or do you become clear?

Do have an INSPIRED week ahead with the families.