Play With Me, Daddy

“Play with me, daddy.”

I must hear that a couple hundred times a day. Sometimes, I’m ready to play, and it’s tickle fights, wrestling matches, Avengers figures, cars and trucks until we can’t stand it any longer. Other times, I’m not so ready to play, and I try to beg off. If you’re a parent, I’m sure you can relate.

But lately, I’ve noticed something. When Jon says “Play with me”, he’s using the word play in an entire different way. In fact, it may be an entirely different word.

I hear play and I think interaction, me and him using our imaginations to create scenarios and worlds where the toys we use and the time we share transport us together into another place. But it’s a separate togetherness: we each act independently within the game, each one doing what we imagine our characters should do. I think play, and it’s really all about collective yet distinct imaginative effort. Me and him as two.

When Jon says play, it’s less about imagination or collaborative effort. It’s more about him doing what he wants to do while I sit in the same room with him. Sometimes he’ll hand me a truck and tell me where to drive it. Other times he forgets I’m even there. The only thing he really needs is for me to remain physically present; my mind can be a thousand miles away as long as he can still use my arms as bridges and my belly as a mountain. I am another toy for him to use.

It’s ugly, but sometimes I get frustrated by this kind of play. My son has some cool toys, and the idea of just running the same four trucks over my stomach for an hour and a half makes me feel a little…I dunno, bored maybe? I want to line up action figures and trucks and Lego castles and create our own fantastic battles and worlds. I understand on a deeper level what play can really be, and I want to explore that deeper level.

My son, who’s only four, doesn’t get that yet. So he’s content to play at his level, happy to have a few small toys and a daddy who will simply sit with him for as long as he needs. He doesn’t know what he’s missing because he hasn’t learned there’s anything to miss. Developmentally, he’s right on schedule and I have to stop and remind myself that, as his father, I have to work with him where he’s at and gently expand his world a little bit at a time.

I bring all this up because it’s sort of where I’m at with God right now. For a long time, I’ve been content to play at my level, which is to do what I want to do while having the security of His presence. But God’s been gently expanding my world; He’s calling me out into places of much deeper meaning and discovery, not because I’m special, but because He has something He wants to show me. I still want to play with a couple of trucks.

He wants to help me build worlds.

Like my son, I’ve been content to just do my thing. But also like my son, I’ve learned to put my hand into my daddy’s and let Him lead me into something else. It requires trust and faith that He won’t lead me into situations where I’ll be hurt; it requires me loving Him enough to surrender to something that stretches me, pushes the envelope of what I think I can do. And when I find I’m at my limit, He lovingly picks me up into His arms and lets me rest, reassuring me that we’ve done enough for the day.

Sometimes, I worry about what other people might think of what He’s teaching me. But He doesn’t. And I trust Him.

Because He loves me.

The Birthday Princess

Today is Ella’s seventh birthday, and we’ve been celebrating since this morning. She’s enjoyed some special treats throughout the day, and expects even more this weekend at her birthday party. I guess you could say we spoil her.

But we don’t see it that way.

We’re celebrating her life, which is something we don’t take for granted. Believe me when I tell you that there’s nothing on this earth that makes my heart swell like her slipping her hand into mine as we walk. Sure, the hand that’s reaching out for me has gotten bigger than I’d like to admit, and yeah, my heart breaks to think that I might only have a few more years of such unfettered, un-self-conscious love to enjoy, but it’s still overwhelming to be loved so innocently.

*****

Sometimes when I look at her, I find it hard to remember what she was like as an infant. She’s so much more herself now that’s she’s older that those early months/years seem a blur. To watch her float around the house, dancing to music only she can hear, making up words to songs that only she understands, is to watch my daughter without a filter. To see her as she really is, all the way down to her soul.

When she sits down to draw a picture now, a clear figure emerges – complete with perspective, shading, detail – and fits within a larger narrative picture. She tells you the whole story when she shows it to you, and even gives you a hint of character voices. It’s impressive.

She still sleeps like a wild animal. She’s all over the bed, arms and legs akimbo beneath the covers, breathing so deeply you would think her near comatose. Trying to wake her up on a school day is sometimes like arguing on the internet: pointless and not very productive. Then, on days when she doesn’t need to sleep late, she’s up by 6:20 and racing through the house like a deranged cat.

Talking to her has become an adventure. It’s a combination of her high-level reading skills, ever-listening ear, and decidedly animated friends that produces the first grade equivalent of a Robin Williams stand up, which is to say that she’s hysterical and full of non-sequiturs. What’s really funny is when she throws in an inflection that quite obviously came from someone else – an adult, one of her school friends, her mother – and it sounds like an entirely different person but still fully Ella. And the best part is, she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it.

*****

She looked at me this morning in the car. We were waiting for her bus to arrive, and she had this funny expression, a mix between sheer joy and hopeless confusion. Finally she looked at me, eyebrow raised and said, “You know I’m only three years away from ten, don’t you? Today I’m seven, then eight, nine, ten. I’ll be practically grown up. And then I’ll be a teenager. You can handle that, right?”

I looked at her and lied. “Sure I can handle that.”

But my heart knew it couldn’t. As much joy as there is in watching my child grow up, I can’t help but feel the tinge of sadness that comes as she passes ever farther away from the little girl she once was. I know I still have a lot more time with her before she starts hating my guts, but the weight of those days, the preciousness of them, makes me wish they could linger a bit.

And then she drops something on the floor, or accidentally spills grape juice on the freshly cleaned carpet and I wonder, “How long ’til college?”

*****

The birthday princess is growing up. The world is slowly becoming hers; I find that instead of her encountering things through my eyes or Rachel’s eyes, she’s seeing things through her own eyes more and more. And it’s a fascinating world to view, even if it sometimes gets a bit myopic (“When can I have a snack again? You said fifteen minutes fifteen minutes ago. It’s been fifteen minutes. So I can have a snack now, right? Because it’s been fifteen minutes. It has. Really. Why is your eyeball suddenly bleeding, daddy?”). Here’s to enjoying the ride through her childhood, to infinity and beyond.

Happy birthday, Princess Ella! Your mommy and daddy love you very much.

My Daughter’s Valentine

For the past couple of days my daughter, Ella, has been on a covert mission. She’s pulled her mother aside for numerous private conversations, whispered into her brother’s ear countless times, and just been furtive in general. Finally, last night, she filled me in on the CIA-level spywork.

“Daddy, this year, I’m giving you a Valentine’s Surprise.”

My heart felt a little tug. My baby girl wants to give me a Valentine? Sweet.

“So I need a dollar from you tomorrow. Do you have a dollar, Daddy?”

So much for sweet.

“Uh, sure, Ella. I can give you a dollar. No problem.”

She kissed me on the cheek. “Ok. Great, daddy! Thank you.”

And with that, she skipped off to her room. I was left to marvel at what I’ve done right as a dad to inspire such a kind gesture from my daughter. Sure, we went to the Daddy-Daughter Date Night thing that Chick-fil-A put on (and she still badgers me about the unfinished Daddy-Daughter Conversation Book we received that night); and next week, we’ll tip-toe across the gym floor at her school under the balloon-festooned banners of the Daddy-Daughter Dance (which we attended last year and I got dumped by my daughter less than 5 minutes in). But I’m thinking there has to be more.

Is it the fact that I hug her whenever I get a chance because I want her to know I love her? Is it because I constantly make up funny stories (usually involving flatulence) at her request? Is it because I find her fascinating, with her creativity and kind heartedness being a combination I’ve never seen before?

Maybe it’s because I love her mother so desperately, and tell her all the time that she’s a mini-Mommy. Or because I allow her and Jon (her brother, my son) to tackle and wrestle with me on the floor.

Or is it because I wake her up each day and get her ready for school?

Because I answer her non-stop questions?

Because I allow her to have dance parties where we just boogie down as a family?

What inspires such love in a little one? I could spend all day trying to justify why she loves me. But in the end, there’s only one answer, and it’s as mysterious as it is satisfying.

She loves me because she loves me.

There are a thousand different variables that go into that truth, but at the end of the day, my daughter chooses – out of the great well of love and compassion and kindness in her heart – to love me, flaws and all. I haven’t earned it. I haven’t deserved it. She just freely gives it.

And it’s awesome.

This morning, she asked me about the dollar again. I thought I was off the hook because her Nonna (my mom) gave her a dollar last night to help fund her Valentine’s Surprise. So when Ella came to me this morning and said, “Daddy? I need another dollar,” I instinctively reached for my wallet.

She stopped me.

“No, Daddy,” she said. “I need you to get a dollar from my piggy bank.”

“But I can just give you a dollar, Ella. It’d be easier.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “No. I want to spend my money. Besides, I have lots of dollars in my piggy bank!”

I was floored. I sometimes wonder if I spoil my children too much; we sacrifice around our house, but we don’t make huge deal out of it. Sometimes, I worry that by not drawing attention to the idea of giving, I make things to easy for them, make them feel entitled. But there she was, wanting to spend her own money to purchase a gift she didn’t really have to buy, but wanted to as an expression of love. I thought about King David’s line on sacrifices that cost nothing.

So I did the only honorable thing: I ripped the bottom off her piggy bank and fished out a dollar. She smiled and took it in her little hands and said, “Thanks, Daddy. I love you.”

She was still holding her two dollars as we waited for her bus to come. I gently took the money and put it in a pouch on her backpack. She approved. (“Good idea, Daddy. I might drop it because I can be a bit spacey sometimes.”) We sat there in my car and she reached over and patted my hand.

When the bus turned onto our street, we got out of the car and Ella said, “Daddy! Real quick: what’s your favorite smell?”

“My favorite smell?”

“Yeah. Only it has to be something like a fruit: orange, cherry, banana. Quick! Pick one.”

“Okay,” I said as the pulled pulled to a stop and I handed her her backpack. “I pick orange.”

She stopped and looked at me. “Seriously? Orange?”

“Yes. I choose orange.”

She rolled her eyes and started up the bus steps. “Orange? Who wants an Orange Smencil?”

The bus doors closed and she was gone, but my Valentine’s Surprise had been unintentionally revealed: sometime this afternoon, I will be the proud recipient of an Orange scented pencil, a pencil that she will inevitably claim as her own. But she will have bought it with her own money, of her own volition, as a way of telling me what her words and hugs and life tell me every day: she loves me.

And I love her right back. More than she’ll ever know. 

Tiny Troopers

Today we took my daughter, Ella, into Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta for a series of procedures that doctors hope will help us better understand why she gets sick so frequently. As an adult, you can understand and appreciate what tests like these will reveal; as a child, it pretty much seems like a great excuse to be poked and prodded and made wildly uncomfortable. As it is, Ella has been a great patient; in fact, the nurse that brought her up from the recovery room said, “She’s so sweet, I almost didn’t want to give her back!”

But to be perfectly honest, the day has sucked for her. She hasn’t been able to really eat (and the child is in the midst of a voracious eating phase) for the past 24 hours, and she’ll only get dinner tonight and one snack before she’s deprived of food again. Turns out, two of the three tests she’s having require no food or drink; the third test, sandwiched in between the other two, require her to do nothing but eat and drink. It’s a bizarre world.

And that third test, the one that requires her to eat and drink? It also requires her to have a tiny tube shoved up through her nose and down her throat. It measures stomach acid. And it apparently feels like something is perpetually crawling in her throat. The poor kid wants nothing more than to rip it out violently, but every time her little fingers begin to explore, Rachel and I are there to quash the idea.

So she’s biding her time, I suppose.

Spending time in a children’s hospital is a great way to both become extremely grateful and incredibly sad. Grateful, because you are surrounded by men and women who care for nothing like the health and welfare of children, and go to incredible lengths to make each and every aspect of a child’s visit memorable. To wit: when Ella got into her intake room, there was a purple and yellow superhero cape laying on the chair. The cape also had a massive rhinestone star, smack dab in the middle of the back. Ella’s eyes lit up when she saw it, and she excitedly took it off of me and proudly donned it for herself.

Yeah. You read that right. But what was I supposed to do? You don’t get a free superhero cape everyday.

The staff is also incredibly great at explaining things to kids, and know when a child can handle the particulars of a procedure and when they can’t. The nurse who came in to explain everything to me and Rachel kept watching Ella out of the corner of her eye, noticing that every time the adults went into detail about the procedure, Ella suddenly got very interested. Finally, the nurse turned to Ella and said, “I can see you’re a very smart little girl. So let me just tell you what’s going to happen today, okay?”

Ella smiled and looked at Rachel and I as if to say, See? This lady knows smart when she sees it.

Score one for the nurse.

But phenomenal care and unbelievable service can only mask the reality of the place for so long. I took a walk this afternoon to make a phone call, and I passed by room after room of very sick children. Usually the kids were accompanied by very young and very harried looking parents; moms and dads in desperate need of a shower, a break, and  financial windfall. Seeing some of these families gathered around a bed, watching movies or drinking a milkshake, you almost forget that the child is very ill. You almost feel hopeful, because the family is able to stay together.

And then you pass the room where the three month old boy swings, all alone, in a little automatic swing. Not a parent in sight, not a shred of parental evidence in the room. He swings, back and forth, and cries at the top of his lungs until a nurse comes in to soothe him, shushing him as she gently slows the swing down. She picks him up and gently puts his head in the curve of her neck, and he quiets right down, clamping his little mouth against her skin and gnawing away feverishly.

It takes maybe seven seconds to see all of that, but in that moment your stomach falls and your heart breaks and you realize: for all the good that goes on in this place on a daily basis, there’s just as much heartbreak and pain.

Down in the main lobby, two parents try and calm down their teenage son, a large boy in a wheelchair with obvious physical and mental challenges. He thrashes about, upset, screaming, and mother and father do their best to calm him, to help him settle down. Meanwhile, another father walks helplessly up and down the marbled floor as his daughter, her tiny hands bound in pink mittens, screams for some unknown reason. Family after family passes by, each one bearing the burden of sickness, each one feeling as if the weight of the world falls on their shoulders alone.

Not everyone feels overwhelmed when in the presence of that kind of beauty and pain, but I am. I had to step outside and redirect my attention to the passing cars just to keep from crying my eyes out. I so desperately wanted to be able to cure all the pain I saw; to be able to go room to room and give miraculous healing and restoration to each family.

Knowing that I can’t makes it all the worse.

In the end, being here puts Ella’s difficulties in perspective. Like everything else in life, there are always people who have it harder than you; walking past fellow fathers whose children will never be able to know their own name, much less say “I love you, dad” makes me incredibly grateful for my daughter who can hug me and tell me I’m funny. And yet pain has this way of being deeply personal; it may not be worse than someone else’s but it’s yours and it cuts. The only cure for this weird tension, it seems, is to live in it as best you can.

For me and my family, that tension will last for another 20 hours or so. Then, we get to go home and Ella can once again jump on the trampoline and practice riding her bike without training wheels. For other families that share these halls, that tension will go on until a coffin comes to rest at the bottom of a grave, most likely long before the parents think it should.

Tiny troopers, each of them, carrying big people’s burdens with aplomb. May God give them grace to continue on. And may He give the parents grace, as well.

My Struggle Against Grace

The students at my church, whom I love dearly, whom I would gladly do just about anything for (except for the typical stupid-youth-pastor stuff), have organized multiple benefit events to help my family with medical expenses. No one in my family is deathly ill, as one might think whenever the terms “benefit” and “medical expenses” are used. Rather, we’re just like a lot of American families who are besieged by medical costs in the 21st century: we make it, but just barely.

I’ve not talked about this much at all with anyone other than my wife and couple of close friends, mainly because I am ashamed that the kids believe my family is worthy of such lavish love.

Hello, my name is Jason, and I am a Christian who absolutely struggles with grace.

I am much more comfortable sacrificing. I don’t believe in a salvation that comes from works, but when it comes down to practical things, I’m quicker to work and suffer than I am to bask in unearned favor. Up until a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been able to articulate that truth; but now, thanks to the extravagant and beautiful love of a few teenagers, I’m forced to admit that I have a problem with the essential truth of the Gospel.

I’m not good enough, and yet God saved me anyway. And not just saved me, but fills me, indwells me, uses me, and loves me as His own.

To be honest, I like suffering and sacrifice because it makes a good shield against those people who aren’t gracious at all. That sounds stupid, I suppose, but there are people who constantly remind you that they don’t think you’re special, that they don’t see any reason why you should be treated better than they. In reality, their attitude has more to do with their own inherent selfishness than with my undeservedness, but the subtle slings and barbs sting all the same.

Often, people on the road to hell want nothing more than to take you with them. And so I like being able to point to my life and use my works as a defense against those who would want to remind me of my unworthiness.

But when people come alongside you and overwhelm you with love that simply cannot be justified by your life…well, that strips away those defenses. It lays you bare before God and everyone else, and it exposes you for what you are: unworthy. Imperfect. Flawed.

The human response is to either recoil from such love, or to lamely attempt to justify it. I know that’s certainly been the case for me. Before my students put their plan into motion, one of their parents came to me and asked for my permission, told me that if I didn’t offer my blessing, the kids probably wouldn’t go through with it.

I hesitated. The large part of me, the part that knows my flaws and sins and unworthiness, wanted to put and end to it right then. A simple no, and I could go on living my life comfortably uncomfortable. The justifications were plentiful: it’s a down economy; we’re not that bad off; I don’t want the kids getting hurt if people don’t respond the way they might imagine; I don’t want them to feel like they have to do this.

But at my core, in my soul, I felt a conviction that told me I couldn’t say no. That I was going to have to, as my friend Polly Sage put it, suffer in a different way: receiving a love I could never earn or repay. So I gave my blessing. And thus began one of the most powerful struggles of my soul, a statement I don’t make lightly. The only other time I have felt this conflicted was after my daughter, Ruthanne, was stillborn.

In death, most people retreat from you. There is an instinctive notion within the human heart that a person who is grieving needs space, and so people withdraw, leave you alone; they don’t look at your life or question what you do. You are anonymous in grief, and even though your soul and mind might be melting from the white-hot pain and confusion, you learn to find a desirable peace in the solitude. Your foibles and internal flaws remain yours and yours alone.

Life – love – is the opposite. It doesn’t leave you alone, it drags you onstage, warts and all, and proclaims from the top of its lungs that you are special, beloved, worthy. And it’s there, in the spotlight, that you as the object realize fully just how flawed and ugly and worthless you really are. And you feel acutely that the audience can see – if not all, at least some of – those same flaws. You can feel the eyes of judgment on you, even if those eyes are far fewer than your mind tells you. You know the truth, and yet you’re spoken of with such loving terms that you want to believe and run away all at the same time.

Folks, that’s the Gospel in a nutshell. And I’m struggling with it.

I am so blessed to have students who have listened to my incessant cries for the church to be more compassionate, less judgmental, more others-focused, more willing to help the poor and unfortunate. Not just because they are a beautiful picture of the ability of the youth of our world to shine brightly the Light of Christ, but because they are showing me that God’s love is greater, deeper, truer “than tongue or pen could ever tell; it goes beyond the farthest star and reaches to the lowest hell.” I just never expected that they would then turn that love on me.

But no one does. That’s why the persistent cry from the lips of Christ was that “God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever would believe in Him would not die, but gain everlasting life.”

Today, I understand in an entirely different way, not just that God loves me, but that inside of that love are things I cannot comprehend, much less make my peace with. I am stripped naked, shown undone, and yet He still says, “Beloved.” Not because of me, but because that’s just who He is.

The same is true for you.

May you be so blessed as to discover the terror and wonder of that love so deep.