Being a dad

     “Kid’s are great,” Cliffy said to me. He was the program director at the radio station I worked at. I was still reeling from the news that Prajna was pregnant and we had been married only a month. I didn’t know how I wanted to feel about having kids so soon. I thought it might be nice to have some time to just be a couple for awhile. But as I spread the news about our little bundle of news, all I got was congratulations. No-one would sympathize with me? Hey, I was still a kid. I just turned 26. I wasn’t ready for kids.

     But I just kept getting happy remarks. Cliffy told me don’t bounce a naked baby on your belly ‘cause you might get crapped on. But kids were great, even if they do spoil your new blue shirt.

     Did I want a kid? I guess I was going to have one whether I wanted it or not. I did get people telling me scary stories, usually involving noise, tears, or other things that come out of babies. How many diapers a day? I heard the words “…what you have to look forward to…” plenty of times. Yeah, we were going to have a baby. We wanted a family, so I accepted it. We were having a baby. This is how it would be.

     But it wasn’t. I don’t know when or how it finally dawned on me like a sunrise after a long cold night. But this is what I didn’t get for the longest time. It wasn’t about having a baby, getting a kid. It was this: I was now a dad.

     My wife getting pregnant was not about getting a kid added to my family. It was about me transforming more into the man God intended me to be. I was a dad. I am a dad.

     Being a dad means changing diapers. You will get gross stuff on you. Not to fret, it’s not as toxic as a lot of things people put into their bodies nowadays.

     Being a dad means being a target of the rage of a child. I once heard a little girl, enraged at her parents in church, whisper: “I don’t love you!” She was mostly a sweet girl who obviously was raised with lots of love to be able to hurl such a statement. Kids say what they feel at the moment, not what they might feel later.

     Being a dad means it’s no longer about you. It’s about the family with you as a part of it. And the sacrifices that are worth it? They feel the best in the end.

     Being a dad means being a role model. Whether I like it or not, my children are watching and learning, growing and imitating. I see the dry wit in more than one of my children flourishing. I also see negative character traits they’ve picked up from me.

     I am constantly trying to strengthen my relationship with God. As I do this more, I am becoming more encouraged at the underlying theme I can’t escape from in God’s Words. God loves his children. If that is modeled to me, I can do two things.

First, I can love my children the same way God loves me. It’s a love that I will never lose. I can distance myself from God (and I have) to the point where I don’t feel that love anymore. But it was always there. There was and is nothing I could do to make God stop loving me, I want my children to feel the same thing from me.

Second, I can model that love to them. I can’t control what the world will someday do to shape the lives of my children. But I want to model in them the love that they will have for their children someday. This, I do want them to learn from me.

I’ve been a dad for 20 years now and I’m still learning. There is joy in discovery as well as some anguish and pain. I have 5 living children and one gone home to be with The Lord. I won’t say waiting for me in heaven. She had her earthly fill of waiting in hospitals and is probably keeping busy.

Of my 5 children here with me, I am astounded and proud of them all. The talent, integrity, and love I see tells me that God must have a hand in the outcome as well as me. 20 years ago I was a nervous wreck about having a baby. And now I’m sure I was put on this earth to be a dad.

 

1 month-old Jamie spits up on me and Naomi can't believe Prajna wants a picture of it

Walking and Passing

Pomp and Circumstance music plays in the background.

     Greetings graduates. I see the sea of those little hats with the dangling  liripoops out there looking for all the world like you all walked here balancing books on your heads. Your eyes look excited, frightened, unsure, I don’t blame anyone for looking that way. There’s a world out there that eats naiveté for breakfast.

     I don’t pretend to know what they are teaching in schools these days. But I know what it’s like to be your age, and regardless of changing culture and technology, you are at the edge of childhood advancing forward to adulthood. You may or may not have a good idea what to do with your lives. You may or may not know how to go about it. But how many of you can honestly say that you don’t want to do something significant? You might be thinking: “What difference can I make in the world?”

     And the world might look so daunting that you would rather be back in kindergarten eating glue. It’s alright. The world is scary. You can be frightened. But here’s what you can’t do. You can’t go back. No matter how many bottles of glue you eat, you’ll never be six again.

     But here is the encouraging news. You can make a difference. It doesn’t have to mean going out into the world and discovering a marvelous cure for all known diseases or writing the Great American Novel. I want to tell you today that you can make a difference in the world just by being who you truly are.

     21 years ago when I had a friend in the hospital with a broken leg, life was scary for her. The trauma of the car accident, the pain of a broken femur and the misery of a hospital stay all weighed down on my friend. But we had another friend down the hall. She was another patient at the time recovering from abdominal surgery. We didn’t get generic “get well soon” messages or any one-upmanship for pain stories. What we got were cheerful words and smiles.

And in that two week hospital stay, one of the greatest moments was when our friend joyfully announced to us that she had finally passed gas, a significant objective following abdominal surgery. We were overjoyed with her.

My dear graduates, be yourselves and bring joy to the world with things as little as a breath of wind. You don’t need to try hard at all to be yourself. It’s how you were made. You may think that the world is like a cavernous hospital corridor, dark and wide and frightening. So do what my friend did and plod down that hall as best as you can in order to work out what needs to be passed. And when the little victories come, look for them, they will, share that joy with others.

Graduates as you rise to take your diploma, I encourage each of you to smile at the person handing it to you. Let that smile say you’ve passed something and are ready to move on.

Who's a Writer?

     I knew a guy who said he was a writer. He was just a little younger than I was and very cheerful and even enthusiastic about writing. This was 14 years ago during the last stage show I ever did. Life was turbulent at the time. We were in the last months of our lives before Naomi was diagnosed with cancer. I still thought of myself as a writer then, but I don’t think I was writing anything.

     So this kid I knew had a great attitude about his writing. He was confident and hopeful of publication. I felt proud of him and thought it was an honor to know someone who would publish someday. I am trying to remember if I was jealous at all. I don’t think I was.

     Then one evening he brought some of his work to show me. I read it over. There’s a scene in the movie Finding Nemo when Marlon the Clownfish reluctantly begins to tell a joke to an excited audience of sharks. Almost right away, it’s obvious the joke is not going to be funny and Marlon isn’t funny either. And the grins on the sharks just melt away. I didn’t see Finding Nemo for a few more years, but as I started to read this kid’s writing, I felt like those sharks.

Like Marlon the fish, this kid was not funny. The writing was not fiction, but a confused narrative that must have been funny to him. I don’t remember what it was about. The only honest feedback I gave him was that babies actually loved puréed sweet-potato. I tried to be encouraging otherwise. And he took my advice with his trademark cheerfulness. Perhaps in the 14 years he has improved. I hope so. Maybe what I admired the most was his optimism.

And here is the very honest truth: 14 years ago I wasn’t so good either. I had good ideas back then, but little talent for putting them into a decent story. But between then and now, I have read a lot of materials and books about writing, I listen to author interviews and most of all, I aim to write every day. (I usually write 3-4 times a week though.) I can look at my work from many years ago and cringe. I think that means I’m better now.

But the question still haunts me. “What if I’m just fooling myself? What if I’m really no good?” Please, if you’re reading this, don’t answer. I think that some of my blog posts absolutely shine. Some others are best swept out the door with the cobwebs and dust. But am I like that kid just fooling myself?

The reason I’m thinking about this now is that I have been trying to steadily write for about 2 years or so now. Some weeks all I’ve done is blog. While last November I wrote 77 thousand words in 30 days. That is one of my proudest accomplishments. I felt like a real writer, not when I won National Novel Writing Month, but when I would sit down to write. I knew what I was doing. I knew where the story was going and I was having a ball at it. That was what it took to make me feel like a writer.

At this very moment, it’s ten after two on a Sunday afternoon and I’m in Starbucks with a coffee at my left and an iPod on my right. The words are flowing out of me, for the most part (had to think of the verb for how the words came out). And right now, I feel like a real writer.

But I’ve taken on a new project, one I’ve fretted over, but promised myself. I started my memoir last week. I have blogged about this before. If I ever really wanted to publish, this would be it. Everything else I write is fun. It would be cool to publish, but unrealistic. Lots of good writers don’t publish. But I have one story, just one, that I want to make the effort to go all the way. That means multiple drafts, editing, perhaps finding an agent, and writing query letters. It is big league stuff.

So far, I’ve written on a few mornings. And it’s not easy. The words come out, but they don’t feel good. This isn’t fiction anymore with cloaked strangers on desert roads, spaceships whirling around a distant star or rivers turning to fire underneath a castle. This is real stuff that happened to me. Does anyone really want to hear this?

I have an opening for the story that I wrote. It was a true incident where I walked away from the cash register only to be yelled at by the cashier for leaving one year-old Jamie behind. I went and fetched Jamie and didn’t bother to explain to the indignant onlookers that of course I felt like I was missing someone, my daughter had just died a week ago. I walked around all day with the feeling that something was missing. I just was trying to ignore it when I left Jamie behind.

It’s an intriguing story and it’s completely true. I think that written well, it’s a perfect opening. The real question is can I keep it up? And can I keep writing this? It’s not real fun so far. There’s no smoke-swept battlefield with wolves and marauders. There’s only me narrating the story of my life, the time before Naomi, during, and after.  

A writer’s best friend is a crumby first draft. I can feel liberated by knowing that this doesn’t have to be perfect the first time around. But there is still anxiety here. I have taken the first steps on a perilous writing venture. I don’t know if I’m good enough to complete it. One of my favorite authors said in an interview “Write the story for yourself and let the people who need to find it, find it.” That, in addition to the crumby first draft should have me writing freely. But it’s too different. But it’s early. I’m barely out of the starting gate. I hope I can find my voice for this, which will be the tailwind. We’ll see.

The Shattered Bottle of Wishes

The twist on the old story goes like this: A man is walking down a beach when he spies an old looking bottle. The moment he picks it up, a djinn appears is a puff of blue smoke, bows and speaks:

“And what is your third wish?”

The man is startled, but has enough about him to question what became of his first two wishes. The djinn says that the man already wished his first wish, his second one was to undo it and make it all as before. Now his third and final wish remains. The man thinks for a moment, then tells the djinn his final wish.

The djinn’s face curls into a smile as he brings his hands together.

“Yes,” he says. “That was also your first wish.”

Little stories like that can provoke deep thought. I can’t help always wondering what I would wish for if I had three, or just one wish. A shoebox full of 100 dollar bills would be a good start I think. I would love to have my truck fixed. And while I am at it, have it never break again. And why not have it so that the tank never runs out of gasoline again? Could I fit that into one wish?

That’s pretty selfish to wish for that when there is so much need in the world. Three wishes could include clean water for the world’s population, and end to human trafficking and no more natural disasters ever. That would improve on a lot. I don’t know how something like that could be pulled off though. If I was a djinn I would just clap my hands and make the world disappear. No more want for anyone.

How about wishing just to make people nicer? I could wish for that. Is it ethical to transform people and just make them nicer? I don’t think it is or God would do it.

And then I bring God into this. I used to think that God was like the djinn in the bottle with unlimited wishes. Maybe it’s easy for a kid to think that God is like Santa Claus with a big bag of cool stuff for everyone who’s good. Prayer seemed like wishing for what you want. And this mindset didn’t end when I grew up.

I don’t have a grudge against the spirit-filled church that I went to when I first got back with God. But it fostered a mindset where God would answer all prayers according to my will. But here is where the djinn in the bottle vanished. Because if my prayers were not answered, then I wasn’t praying hard enough or needed to examine my own life somehow. It was encouraging to feel myself a prayer warrior and actually see prayers answered. The real tricky thing was this: Wishes were not free at all. I still had to be worthy and work for them.

But then Naomi got sick. Of course I didn’t panic when she got cancer. I thought that if enough prayer was lifted up for her, she would be well. For three and a half years I kept believing that she would be healed through the power of prayer to God. Over those years I did something else, every time I saw a falling star, I wished on it.

So then when Naomi died, I got pretty mad at God, the stars and just about everything else, including myself, big time. The magic bottle fell to the ground and burst into slicing fragments of broken hope. It took years to overcome the hurt and anguish that came from thinking that I had somehow failed. It’s still something that can drag me down once in a while. It is taking a lot of un-learning and re-learning to understand some key truths.

First, it is the human condition to believe that there must be something that one can do. That was the flaw in the wishing machine, being good enough to get a stocking full of shiny stuff. I had to work and perhaps even suffer for it. I held tight to that belief. And I have only recently come to realize that thinking that way is idolatrous. Only one person truly had to suffer. All I have to do is accept that. But it’s not for shiny stuff.

On the subject of the wishing machine, God has never been that. God put laws into place like gravity and motion. He did not create cancer. That imperfection grew out of the fall of man. And God doesn’t just clap his hands and make all cancer vanish. Just like changing bad people into good, that would violate His laws. Not to say He doesn’t. A miracle is when God does indeed by-pass the laws He made. That didn’t happen with Naomi. Was it then God’s will that she die? When God was drafting up His master plan for creation for all eternity, did he have her life cut short of her 7^th birthday, regardless of any prayer I lifted up?

And while we’re at it, was it God’s will that monstrous tornados would rip through cities and kill children? How many people prayed for their lives before they died? Did God hear them, and shrug and say: “Sorry, that’s not in the plan”?

There is a stand out word there. Shrug. People shrug when they are confused or at a loss. God cannot be portrayed like a person who doesn’t know what He’s doing. I think one of my problems with faith is that I tend to anthropomorphize God. Picture him as a djinn, Santa Claus, a wishing star or a detached force of nature, or anything like an imperfect person and I’ve got an inaccurate look at God. And when I read about who God really is, he never shrugs and says “oh well”.

Part of my unlearning and relearning is admitting I’m powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing. And I personally have to admit that I’m powerless about forces beyond my control. If I admit that, then I need to believe that God is powerful to control what does. As soon as I do that, I start to become disillusioned and wonder how a loving God can allow all of this.

But I want to believe that God is a loving God. And that is what I will pray for. Because another step in this healing process is surrendering to His will. This isn’t an empty wish made in a fairy tale. This is my passionate desire to align myself with God and understand His will for me. Against such thing there is no law.

The last wish for the man on the beach was probably something self-serving. But maybe not. Would anyone take back a wish to have God’s will done in their life? Maybe. The renewing of the mind should come first.

Here is what hints to me that this is indeed a prayer that will be answered. Denial is easy. If I could just deny all my doubts about the goodness of God and live in ignorance then it would be easy. I know how easy it is to deny things. But this is not easy. These doubts I have are hurdles that I have to overcome. But I’m praying for something now that isn’t a wish for more convenience or shiny stuff. I’m asking God to take me away from what I want and help me to do what He wants. In spite of my doubts, God will take me as I am and start that renewing.

Dissapointment at a Red Light

     Show and tell at school was usually tedious because it often meant that I had to sit through other first graders going on and on about something. But one day I didn’t even hear what the other kids shared. I was too caught up in the awesomeness of the story I had to tell. When it was my turn I went to the front of the room and launched into the story of my family visiting Phoenix.

     We went to Phoenix every month or so. My grandparents lived there and my dad had district meetings. I didn’t share that or anything about the drive down. I just told them that we had gone shopping. But the shopping wasn’t the story either.

     “And then,” I gasped to the class. “Right when we were walking out of GemCo, a great big fire truck went by! With its siren and lights on! And it was honking its horn! It was loud!”

     I’m sure my sharing was probably loud too. With my story done I went back to my seat. I didn’t notice or care if anyone was impressed. I thought it was neat. If I had been any kind of writer back then, I could have painted the picture better, with less exclamation points. It was night and the streets were wet with rain. The red lights of the fire truck blended with the red and white of the rest of the traffic. The truck sort of emerged from the rest of the lights, mostly in its noise. It blasted its horn, the kind unique to fire trucks and perhaps locomotives. But the story I told to the first grade that morning was emotional and not descriptive. I had been thrilled and needed to share that.

For most big city-dwellers, it was nothing special. But the town I lived in at the time had only a volunteer fire department and I lived on a quiet suburban street where the loudest thing was the neighbor’s Corvette. At a young age, I wanted to be a policeman only so I could drive a cool car with lights and a siren. Later on, perhaps starting from that night, I wanted to be a fireman. I didn’t care about fighting fires, squirting water or anything else like that. All I wanted to do was drive fast, have a siren and flashing lights and run red lights. How much more king of the streets was that?

Sometimes my blog is like that. I get caught up in something that maybe thrills me or just sparks my imagination. I rattle on about it and post it. Later on I look back and wonder what I was thinking. I have gone and re-written a couple of entries, making improvements, being more descriptive and trying to make better sentences. I think it’s growing as a writer.

I kind of miss the times that all it took to thrill me beyond words was a speeding fire truck. And not only thrill me, but inspire me. I wanted to do what they did.

A year or so after seeing the fire truck that night, I was riding with my dad and we approached an intersection. Out my window I heard the wail of a siren. We had a green light but my dad came to a stop anyway. I looked out my window and saw an ambulance speeding up to the intersection, where it had a red light. I bristled with excitement at the thought that they would blast through and run the red light.

The ambulance slowed, came to a quick halt, then proceeded through the intersection. My stunned heart sank. They had stopped for the red light. The disappointment I felt was crushing. I asked my dad why they had done that and he explained that they were just being safe and careful.

Careful of what? Could someone actually not hear the siren and mosey out into the path of an emergency vehicle? It was inconceivable. But yet, I saw the ambulance pause. At that moment, I didn’t want to live in a world where ambulances were not free to run red lights.

Well I pulled through that disillusionment that time. There were more significant betrayals of my innocence and trust later in my life that I am still working through today.

And then last Wednesday I was driving the family van to the bank in my hometown. Coming up to a busy intersection, I heard a siren off to my right and stopped at the green light and waited as an ambulance came up, made a complete stop and then sped on. The shock of recognition hit me. I hadn’t thought of the ambulance at the light for years and was taken back at the sight of that replay. I got to the bank minutes later and was thankful I had my notebook and pen. I wrote “the ambulance at the light” on the first blank page I found. I thought about the fire truck when I was coming out of the department store and I remembered sharing it for show and tell. Then I anxiously awaited the time I would compose my blog. I would write about the loss of innocence seeing the ambulance stop at the light.

Then as I wrote this I realized that there is another recurrence. Again, I saw something so awesome that I had to share it. I usually tell the story without being able to really gauge any reaction. I was pretty impressionable back then and thought I was less so now. But not being impressed by things does not make for a good writer.

The goal of Roadwalker isn’t just to be writing every week, but to be looking for things to write about. They’re out there, sometimes it’s a noise out the right-hand window that recaptures the picture of an old memory. And sometimes that memory brings on a string of others, and finally a realization. That kid telling the story to the first grade hasn’t changed that much.