Breathing without Air

Being a dad is probably one of the most disconcerting parts of existence. Not every one is a dad, but many are. I did not plan to be a dad. I am sure I was there when it happened. I guess, when I think about it a little more, I did not plan any single aspect of my life. I did not plan to be here as a child. I did not plan to be here as an adult. When it gets right down to brass tacks, I did not ask for any of ‘this’. I am resigned, though, to the simple fact that I am here and that there is nothing I can do to change any of it. You might say, in a manner of speaking, that I am helpless, defenseless and completely at the mercy of God. I cannot control my leaving of this world any more than I could control my being brought into this world. Honestly, I cannot even control the every day ‘everydayness’ of every day. I can sequester myself in a cave I call a house but even then the house might collapse on my head—then what would I do?

I started by saying, ‘being a dad is probably one of the most disconcerting parts of existence.’ True, I did not choose to be a dad—this does not mean that I am unhappy that I am—just that I did not sit down and calculate what it would cost and what toll it would take on my physical and mental being to follow through with it. Being a dad takes so much out of me each day that at the end of the day I am not simply tired, I am a mere apparition of myself, a ghost, a spirit of a ghost. There is the constant worrying (who among us dads does not worry?) that gnaws at the heart and soul like a disease hungry for flesh. An accident prone son climbs a tree, a dependent son goes to a friend’s house, an independent son wanders off with a friend and is neither seen nor hear from for several minutes. Where are they? What are they doing? I know I came in with three sons, where’s the other two? How many snakes did you catch? You drank what? All these worries—it is no wonder that men become bald and women’s hair grays—all these worries add up to another day in the life. “Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from him.”

It is the little things that kids do each day that delights me. It is a little sock left in six or seven corners, under couch cushions, or crammed inside of shoes that is delightful. It is a pocket full of crayons that turn the inside of a clothes dryer all the colors of the rainbow--and then some. It is the catching of 15 or 20 small snakes, housing them inside a camping cooler, and threatening (promising) to dump them on the ‘loser’ of a game inside the house. All of these things and many more add up to a delightful day around my house. Sons are a heritage from the Lord even if we see entirely too much of ourselves in their radiant personalities and trucker like attitudes. (I know that is not fair to truckers—maybe, sailor like mouths would be better.) I was delighted to learn the other day that my eleven year old is not the only eleven year old who possesses a razor like tongue that can, and often does, slice off the deadliest vitriol and anger. A thought just occurred to me: Sons are a heritage from the Lord. I take this to mean that we should enjoy all of these tiny moments that make children children and learn with them and from them as we train them how to be us. He does not say children will be a heritage or have been or were, but are. Every waking moment of their presence, of their now, is a blessing. When we arrive at the time when is turns into then children may be something else, but for now they are a heritage, a reward. I wonder what I did to deserve such precious, priceless, princely, inestimable, and irreplaceable gifts from God? Nothing. “He has scattered his gifts abroad to the poor, his righteousness endures forever” and “God’s gifts and call are irrevocable.”

Being a dad—who can even begin to understand what it means? I became a dad when the only training I had was the 18 years I had spent accusing my dad of not knowing how to be one. To paraphrase a statement I once heard attributed to Mark Twain: When I was a child I thought my dad was the stupidest man on the planet; when I became a dad I realized that it must be hereditary. It is amazing how smart we think we are until we are put into a position designed to show us that we are not. It is humbling having to crawl back to dad, tale tucked firmly between legs, eyes red from crying, and admit that he had actually been right--especially when one is 30+ years old. It is amazing that God permits any of us to take the fresh young minds and hearts of children and shape them into something that he will ultimately use for his purposes. If I were God I would snatch all those newborns away from their parents and have them raised by angels or Mary and Joseph. Instead God allows humans to be parents. He allows us to purposely mess up His world with our ideas of parenting and child-rearing. (As an aside, I read in the news today about a atheist from California who declared himself to be ‘the best parent in the world’ because he took a lawsuit to the US Supreme Court to have the word ‘God’ struck from the Pledge of Allegiance. He lost his case. He also stated that he raises his daughter 10 days per month due to his divorce from his wife. I hope his daughter grows up to be a missionary.)

Well, I think I have rambled along for quite enough time today. These are just a few of the thoughts I have been sloshing around in my head for a while. I do not profess to being a perfect or even a good parent. All I know is that parenting is quite a tremendous responsibility. Every single ‘yes’ and ‘no’ we utter to our children shapes the future of the world. What a terrible responsibility we have to shoulder. Glad am I that God has not asked me to do it alone. Glad am I that God takes as much of the burden of raising children as we do. If I think three children is a load, I cannot imagine how God feels to be raising several billion or trillion people all at once. Wow. He is a Mighty God. “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”

Parenting apart from faith is like trying to live apart from oxygen: it is suffocating.