Modeling Faith

One of the things we parents often miss is just how critical our own faith is in shaping our children. I’m not talking about making a profession of faith where you decide to align yourself with a particular denomination or a specific set of beliefs.

I’m thinking more about a radical faith that doesn‘t really make sense, faith that’s hardcore, faith that makes people around you suspect that you actually believe God will come through when all the circumstances point to a different conclusion.

I’m there right now; unemployed, not a penny of savings, quite a bit of debt. I have a family of six to support and no job in sight and it’s been like this for a while. Quite a while. We borrow money to keep eating and paying basic bills but in about two months that won’t even be an option anymore. Then what?

And what I’m really asking when I ask ‘then what?’ is ‘will God come through?’ Will God lead me to employment? Will God send a check in the mail? Or will we crash and burn?

Spiritually, the battle is intense. Everyday I feel anger, bitterness, fear, panic, depression. I am constantly tempted to let these feelings take over, to lie down and curl up in a ball of despair.

But lately I’ve been making different choices, choices which are uncharacteristic for me. I’ve been engaging in the battle. I’ve been fighting back, and I’m beginning to have this odd perception that there’s something much bigger going on here than my impoverished circumstances might suggest.

I’ve been reading the Bible like it was a message from God. To me. I’ve heard the words way too often, but never the voice behind them. Now I’m taking the sixth chapter of Ephesians seriously and pretty much every day when I feel like God has deserted me, I talk to God and I say stuff like, ‘God, I don’t even feel like you exist right now, but you’ve promised that, ‘you will never leave me or forsake me. So, in spite of how I’m feeling, in spite of how things look, I want to affirm my choice to believe you. It really is a lot like pulling out a sword and hacking away at some venomous viper before it can sink it’s fangs into your spirit and cause a kind of paralysis of the will, a surrender to your circumstances and feelings.

It’s really strange and, in a common sense sort of way, completely illogical, but the more I affirm this choice to believe in juxtaposition with my difficult circumstances, the more I actually do believe.

I’m letting my kids in on the struggle too, even though, for a long time I didn’t want them to know. I was worried about what it might do to their faith when we prayed for God to do a miracle and it didn’t happen. Now we pray and there’s anticipation among us, building slowly like an offshore wave, still small but growing.

I want my kids to be there with me when the wave breaks and God does something entirely unpredictable and amazing. I want to celebrate with them and praise God with them, but I also want them to be part of the process. I want them to see, to witness the struggle to believe, to understand that it’s not just about getting what you want from God, but more about getting God and being a part of whatever he’s doing.

Right now, I’m trying to believe Matthew 6:33 where Jesus, talking about God, says, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

I’ve been spending most of my life trying to figure out how to build my own kingdom. There have been all kinds of hopes, aspirations, plans and dreams. Some have been realized, most haven’t. I’ve always liked Matthew 6:33 because it seemed comforting. I liked the part about ‘all these things being given to me..‘ But now, in retrospect, I don’t think I’ve ever really sought God’s kingdom. Maybe I’ve dabbled a little bit here and there, but the truth is I’ve always been hell-bent on creating my own little paradise.

Now, when things are looking a bit desperate and I really need, ‘all these things’ to be given to me, I’m noticing the part about seeking God’s kingdom and I’m finding that even though I’m scared, I really want to do it. And I really want my wife and my kids to do it with me, to hold hands and jump off the cliff together, to see if God really is going to catch us.

I’ll let you know what happens.

Out Of The Blue : Thoughts on spontaneity and routine

Every evening I say good night to my children. I kiss them, I pray with them, I tell them I love them.

It’s a meaningful ritual. But it’s also a routine and I sometimes worry that it’s a tired old habit which has gradually been drained of any real meaning. My prayers aren’t relevant and fresh every night. I’m often exhausted. And then it’s all I can do to mumble something coherent. I know I’ve repeated the same prayer way to many times. I also know ‘I love you’ is not always said with a sparkle in my eye and a smile on my face because I’m preoccupied with something else.

But I pray the prayers and say the words because however they might sound to my own ears or anyone else’s, I do mean them, mean them desperately. For me, they aren’t just assembly line sentences, manufactured to fit a certain moment each evening. They’re more like my heart speaking with a really limited vocabulary.

The fact that I do this every night doesn’t make it less special than if I only did it sporadically. What makes these few mumblings so important is that they’re reliable. No matter what else happens during the day, when my kids go to bed at night, they know I love them. Those are the last words they hear from me every day.

It’s not often enough that they hear other words, alive words, words of spontaneity, life-giving, soul- affirming words.

It happened yesterday when I told my daughter that I loved her, in a serious sort of way, looking her in the eyes.

There was no ritual, it wasn’t bedtime, just out of the blue in the kitchen while she stood with the fridge door half open.

I put my arm around her and said it. I didn’t say it reassuringly or playfully. There was no one else around to make it collective, less intense. Just her and me and the weight of my words hanging in the silence between us.

And she took them.

I know she did because she smiled and looked very pleased and hugged me back.

I didn‘t plan this encounter. But I chose it, chose it in a split second, chose to let my heart speak. It was spontaneous and different than routine because it was surprising.

But no less important.

We need both. We need routine because it’s predictable, secure and reassuring. Whatever order exists on the surface of our lives is usually there because of routine. Routine reminds us of important things we need to remember every day. The voice of spontaneity is wild and unpredictable. It reminds us of what is yet undiscovered, in ourselves and in other people. It reminds us of what may still be possible. In spite of all the smooth immovable walls of pseudo-security surrounding our hearts, there are unguarded moments when something beautiful squeezes through a wayward crack and escapes. It goes against all of our training, but whenever this happens, we should look the other way and let the prisoner fly.

Attachment Parenting, Good or Bad?

Recently someone asked me to write down my thoughts on attachment parenting. At first, I wasn’t sure what to say. I mean, I feel pretty attached to my kids and I think they’re kind of attached to me. In fact, for the most part, we really like each other. But a decade ago when they were little enough to be strapped to my back without herniating a disc, I’d never heard of attachment parenting. In fact, I don’t think I was even aware of parenting model options from which I could choose. I’m not saying they weren’t there, just that I wasn’t aware of them.

We had friends who wore their babies on their backs or fronts and had home births and family beds and, in retrospect, I guess they were doing attachment parenting. But I didn’t know that at the time. I thought these friends were alternative and natural, and that held a certain appeal.

But sometimes I thought they were too extreme, like they didn’t understand when enough was enough. I mean it was cool to be pushing the boundaries of conventional parenting guidelines, to have fresh ideas, a new approach, but their system seemed so loose and insecure, with boundaries that could expand and contract to the point of being unrecognizable, of having no shape or definition, like one of those giant soap bubbles.

They would sometimes walk around looking like soap bubbles, all filmy-eyed and droopy because baby had had another rough night or because they were afraid to fall asleep and roll over on the baby. And then, in this exhausted state, they would strap said infant to their weary body, breastfeed perpetually and drag themselves through the day while trying to keep grumpiness and impatience at bay. I actually kind of admired their tenacity.

At the time, we were more into setting boundaries. This can be challenging to do with an infant, but we did the typical non-attachment thing and tried to establish a feeding and napping schedule which I’m pretty sure had very little to do with parenting and a lot to do with survival. We were exhausted and always desperate for more sleep, so we set up a schedule and tried to stick to it.

I guess we did have a parenting rationale for this decision. I don’t think it was conscious at the time, but I think the decision to enforce our schedule instead of letting baby determine the schedule was driven by an underlying belief. We believed that children needed to be taught respect for their parents and that unquestioning obedience was not only necessary, but our right. We saw it as a prerequisite for good parent/child relationships. We established boundaries and rules and did our best to be consistent and enforce them. We believed that deep down the children wanted and needed this, that they wanted to know we were in control because that’s what would make them feel secure. We weren’t consciously thinking about teaching our infant respect, but I think deep down we were feeling like maybe there was a battle of wills going on here and we didn’t want to lose.

We violated quite a few attachment parenting principles. There was a point where we let each of our kids cry at night and didn’t pick them up. After a few nights they stopped. We never noticed that they were less happy or trusting after this. Our interaction with them didn’t seem any different. They seemed just as responsive and communicative. We thought we were doing the right thing. But I still catch myself worrying about it sometimes, wondering if we made a choice which caused irreparable emotional damage.

We didn’t continue breastfeeding until they were two or three or four either. A couple of the kids weaned themselves fairly early, the others didn’t so we made the decision for them.

So the question is, ten years down the road, how are the kids? Did we do the right thing or were we severely misguided? Here are a few observations.

One thing we’ve noticed is that our friends and other parents our age who wholeheartedly embraced the attachment parenting model when we didn’t, have kids that are very similar to our own. What I mean is, they are facing all the same issues and dilemmas in their attempt to parent teen-agers as we are. There are varying degrees of rebelliousness, struggles to communicate effectively, insecurity, low self-esteem, wanting both independence and approval.

When I was a young parent, I considered myself somewhat of an expert on parenting. The truth was I knew precisely nothing about parenting and since no one told me otherwise, I continued in this delusion for quite some time. I believed in the whole ‘love must be tough’ thing because it seemed so counter-cultural and heroic to be defending the last bastion of parenting truth in enemy territory. I blasted a few people with my dogmatic assertions about parenting and now I wish I hadn’t. Because now I know how little I knew and how thoroughly unjesus-like my attitudes and motivations really were. I wish I had been really humble and willing to admit my ignorance and my limitations because I would have learned a lot from people who had already been parents and people like my attachment parenting friends who had a different perspective than me.

I think we’d all be a lot better off if we took this approach as young parents, if we opened ourselves to something other than whatever comes naturally. What came naturally to me wasn’t the attachment model. For other parents, nothing could be more natural. What I’m saying is this. Good parenting has a lot less to do with which parenting model you adopt and a lot more to do with the spiritual condition of your heart.

When your heart is humble, open, listening, you are in a position for God to speak to you because, more than anything else, that is what we parents need. We need wisdom from God. We need to hear his voice.

When we decide to follow a certain system or a certain model of anything, we invariably move away from God. I know it sounds simplistic, but I think he wants us to follow him, not a model. I think he wants us to learn to hear his voice, to cultivate deep dependence on him for every decision we make.

I know it’s a lot easier not to do this. I know from experience. When we’re unsure about how to respond to one of our children, we tend to simply fall back on whatever parenting model we’ve adopted, consciously or unconsciously, and let that model tell us what we should do. It’s completely understandable.

But as great as some parenting models might be, none of them are right about everything. They can’t be. We’re all human and we’re all flawed and all of our systems and programs and models are flawed too.

So it comes down to this. We parents need to beg God to give us his love, wisdom and insight for each one of our children. We parents need to seek a real relationship with God that will allow us to hear his voice and recognize it. I’m talking about a real hard-core relationship, one that’s all about love and passion and commitment.

More than anything else, this is our mission as parents; to be in this radical relationship with God, to hear his voice and respond to it, to live in the truth of it. Otherwise we’re surely condemned to the limitations of the systems and the models we create.

I’ve come to really like some of the things that attachment parenting is all about. Things like giving your kids lots of hugs and kisses and cuddles, things like spending as much time with your kids as possible because you really want to know them and want them to know you, the huge focus on relationships, the move away from what is artificial and embracing what is natural. I love all of this stuff. I really do! I think it’s good.

But I know when it’s all said and done and my last child walks out the door, that even if I had completely embraced every aspect of the attachment parenting model, I’d still be standing here wondering about certain things, thinking I should have done something differently, wishing for another chance. I know this because we live in a broken world and we’re broken people and we live broken lives and no one escapes this.

Our only real hope lies in the transforming power of Jesus which somehow, mysteriously, turns us into people, into parents, through whom the grace, the love and the compassion of God Himself can flow.

One more thought.

There’s something about balance, seeing the good and the bad on both sides of the line, resisting the urge to join one of the clubs and pick up an identity. It’s hard to be balanced. We’re kind of addicted to imbalance because we so desperately want something to define us, something tangible, explainable, something other than God. So we join a party and toe the party line. We really like telling people that we’re democrats or republicans, Bears fans or Anglicans. We want to say ‘we’re doing attachment parenting’ or ‘we’re the parents and we’re in control.’ But living in Christ is always about tension, resisting our desire for labels and dogma and closed definitions, allowing ourselves to be defined by God.

Wormwood Exposed: The lies we believe and the truth behind them

Lie of the week: I am a terrible parent
Like most really destructive lies, this one is easy to believe because just beneath the surface is a little kernel of truth. In this case the truth is: I am not a perfect parent. Making the leap from I’m not a perfect parent to I’m a terrible parent may not seem huge but choosing to believe one as opposed to the other can actually mean the difference between becoming a better parent and never changing at all.

This is because the little voice in my head that tells me I’m a terrible parent is not just a thought by itself. Thoughts are always accompanied by feelings, images and associations, some of which can leave us devastated and paralyzed.

I am a terrible parent is not just an isolated thought which randomly pops into my head. It’s a thought which is always connected to defeating feelings of self-pity, despair, depression and even self-hatred. It’s a thought which can seem so horribly final because it tries to define me. It’s a thought which wants me to resign myself to the sad but inevitable truth that ’a terrible parent’ is just who I am and there’s nothing I can do about it. All the images of my ‘terrible’ parenting come flooding into my mind as reinforcement of my hopeless position and I’m left feeling like I have no case to argue and I must simply accept this pronouncement as absolute truth.

If I want to become a better parent, I need to recognize this voice as a lie while still embracing the truth behind it.

Accepting that I am not a perfect parent, that I am a parent who needs to be transformed into something which right now I can only aspire to, is a genuine recognition of my limitations. But it is also an affirmation of possibility because it admits that I need help.

If I’m willing to make the choice to ask for help then I’ve stepped into the realm where learning and growth can occur and transformation is a real possibility. Although I’m not a perfect parent, I can, with God’s help, begin to learn, grow and change.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”
James 1:5 The Bible

Good, Better, Best…, Which kind of parent are you?

Good parents are always responsible. They make sure their kids are dressed warmly when it’s cold out. They are obsessed with safety and always check to see that the seat belts and the bike helmet are fastened securely. They spend extra time teaching their children to look both ways, to not talk to strangers, to chew food slowly so no one chokes. They pay attention to their kids and take an interest in their lives.

They understand the value of opportunity and want their kids to take advantage of as many opportunities as possible. Involvement in sports, music, dance are seen as invaluable exposure and hopefully a way to gauge areas of strength and weakness.

Good parents want their kids to perform well and will go to great lengths to provide extra assistance in the development of a particular skill because they want their kids to feel good about themselves. Developing their child’s self-esteem is probably somewhere near the top of their list of priorities. They really go out of their way to do a lot more than the bare minimum.

Good parents also see the value of education. If there is anywhere they want their kids to perform, it’s in the classroom. They support teachers efforts and encourage their children to work hard at school. They also check to make sure homework is being done and are more than happy to help with school projects or act as tutors to their kids when necessary.

Above all, good parents want their children to be happy and successful. Making the most of opportunities, working hard in school and performing well are seen as the necessary ingredients to achieve this happiness and success.

Better parents are similar to good parents, but a little more focused on character development. They aren’t worried as much about their child’s athletic or scholastic achievements as they are about the sort of person their child is becoming. Qualities like generosity, kindness, compassion, helpfulness and respect mean a lot more than a first place trophy in soccer.

Better parents spend more time talking to their kids and looking for opportunities to teach and instill these qualities. This means that other opportunities, though they might be good, don’t take precedence. These parents might choose to allow only one extra-curricular activity instead of three or four. This is because they understand the importance of time spent together as a family and the opportunities for teaching and guiding their children that can only occur when they are together. Better parents will say no to good things to protect their time together with their children.

Although they understand the value of formal education, they see their own role as parent/teacher as equally valuable, if not more important. Excessive demands placed on their kids in terms of homework or other school involvement can be frustrating. Better parents want to prepare their children to give something to the world, not just to maximize on their ability to take what they can for themselves, and they know this takes time.

Best parents have one primary goal and that is to lead their children on a journey toward God.

They understand that it’s only in relationship with God that ultimate happiness, contentment, meaning and purpose can exist. And they want this for their children.
They know through their own experience, or intuitively, that everything which makes life worth living, every bit of peace, joy, and love, every surprise, every celebration, every adventure, every discovery, every success originates and finds it’s expression in God. These parents have a purpose, a mission really, to introduce their children to God and the possibility of actually having a relationship with Him.
Everything they do, is a means to that end.

Best parents also understand that they themselves are children, that God is their father and that they are on their own journey towards God. They are leading their children, but still walking the path together.

Best parents are often thinking outside of the box. They feel free to be imaginative and creative because they have a strong sense of possibility as they anticipate God’s involvement in their lives and in the lives of their children.