of sin and self.

Every parent knows the feeling.

The first time I drove on ice the feeling of helplessness disconnected me from my ability to act.  Few times before had I experienced this feeling of a lack of control; definitely never quite on this scale.  Though I spun the wheel the opposite way, me and my little SUV continued to slide into unavoidable disaster.  My knuckles whitened even more, my jaw tightened together as my eyes squinted and brow curled at the sight of another car - all braced for impact.  I came to sudden halt as my tires spun and slid sideways, undeterred into a curb.  Luckily, the curb came before the car, and it was enough.  Of course, I waved and smiled at the other car then slowly moving through the intersection because that’s what inexperienced people who feel the heat of embarrassment do amidst the frantic pulsing of their heart narrowly escaping calamity.

As a parent, I’m growing a bit more accustomed to this feeling.  To be quite forthright, there are many times strength and confidence and experience give way to helplessness.  No matter how much effort I give, we slide out of control toward unavoidable disaster.  My frustration boils over and spills out in the midst of our tense words leaving us even more undone.  And there we stand worlds apart, all on our own, our hearts still pulsing - one the transgressor, the other the transgressed.  Our hearts are one in the same.  They reek of sin and self, of defending and demanding, of wanting control and satisfaction.

Parenting is an art of improved loses.  Those like me who scurry around to gather the pieces breaking busy themselves with falsities such as good, better and perfect, while others who lose well lock sites on tomorrow and refuse little wins in the name of being right and in control.  The key here is tomorrow must contain a hope more promising than a tidy, well-adjusted family.  This is where the Gospel must invade your parenting, eradicating sin and displacing self.

Truth: in you, what your child needs cannot be found.  Only in the truth of the Gospel will your kids find real life.

The polarizing feeling of not understanding your child and not able to connect with your child visits every parental relationship.  No one escapes the mystery of a child growing into their own, still your child but stretching into person and filling their own skin even more.  It’s mired in damnable and divine.  The sentimentalist in me wants to keep them close and controlled, but my responsibility founded in the Gospel is to lead them into tomorrow and then push.

My responsibility informs my action in the moment, or afterward.  It is in that understanding of tomorrow being dependent on my needed guidance in my child’s life today where my head clears from helplessness and fortitude is reclaimed.

rust, bone and other worthlessness.

day above all others

when hearts bleed no more

     and cries are silenced by everything

     and faces are known.

in time, all will be seen as worthless thieves to Your glory.

hands known will release their grasp

     and men will know

the gods of the people are empty,

the semblance of our raised hearts.

     a lie formed by our hearts wanting happy without holy.

     a lust for rust and bone,

for what can be had now.

a diseased want always opposed to that day above all others.

all this, sloped to confession,

to lean us to You.

the emptiness we cannot resolve

hidden in our hurts that won't relent.

found in Your grace, a hunting love undeterred by sin.

In these little, forgotten moments.

We look like the happiest faces you’ve ever seen.

Countless pictures script a story, spanning time and different adventures, of us happy – always pulling each other close and smiling, ever smiling.  We are, mostly, until we’re not, and then smiles disappear, patience that holds our poses suddenly evades us and we are not okay anymore.  Hear this – we are not okay.

We fight, choose selfishly, antagonize each other, say hurtful things, and then hang apart in broken moments.  Pieces apart pulling together, that is who we are.  There are as many as 1,300 new blended families everyday in the United States, however as many as 60-70% of blended families end in ruin due to stress and continual unresolved disagreements.

We’re a family from different paths come together, pushing against relational gravity to warm in our new day sun.

Family is not an easy aspiration on any level, for family means togetherness founded in love, not proximity.  Being in the same space, in the same frame, does not teach us togetherness.  Amazing vacations and unforgettable adventures does not knit our hearts tighter.  Love does – not a love native to our own hearts, but a Love flooding our hearts in our weakest.  It is the polarization of our selfishness and God’s ready love that teaches us what love truly is.  What draws us back in close to each other again following a splintering argument, stabbing word or piercing disregard is the desire to belong to each other, which is a teaching love showing us a better way together.  We’re not a family because we live under one roof; we’re a family because of what happens in little forgotten moments between countless happy pictures.

Even now, in the midst of our tree house cabin stay adventure, it will be those happy memories of cave exploring, hammocks, kayaks, late movies and cousin games that will tell a story good enough to outlive the tension our blended family struggled to move through early in this vacation day.  These little abrasive moments, roughed in selfishness, hold all promise and opportunity to teach us.  They may be forgotten, but they will continue to be forging.  Deeper into life together, down the road where we learn to trust each other better in offense, all we will know is the strength in roots intertwined – a family indeed.

Yes, it’ll be the mosaic of these little forgotten moments displaying the truest of all pictures, of us together in thin and thick.

lent, going more than giving.

IN THE ABSENCE OF ME, I meet You more.  Small diminished pockets of my heart hold the glory of eternity in my forfeit – my giving, my dying and disappearing – when the heaps of spoil pulled close around my heart burn away in the heat of Your unturned love.  We meet on hallowed ground You’ve equaled, not of my giving or sacrifice trite and incomplete.  Even beyond a scandalous love, You bid me come to peace that I could never discover on my own.

Lent is just this – giving in response to God’s ultimate compassion.  This season delivers an invitation to all who might come and die within their hearts to all things crowding thought and affections, all owned things honoring and satisfying only the heart.  In simple words, lent is removing important stuff from our heart so that God’s love has more room to grow deep within us.

So it’s subtraction, but also addition.

What will you give up is but a whisper in comparison to, What will you add?

It is imperative to us both as parents that we teach our daughters the importance of why we do the things we do, not merely do these things because we do these things.  Celebrate traditions laced in meaning and those celebrations give way to life development.  Our daughters ask why and we tell them.  This does two things:  it informs our children about the meaning of what we do and it ensures that we know why it is we do what we do.  Just as stories are lifeless until you read them with meaning having immersed yourself into the emotion of the words, not only the form of them, routine behavior is also meaningless until we subscribe to its meaning and embrace it in heart.

A question constantly asked within my heart is, ‘how can I show my children the way?’  The answer that echoes in return is profound – ‘go the way.’

A single word.

I tend to often think in terms of endings, of movies, of stories, of days and so on.  Maybe I’m a realist or just good at closing doors.  Either way, the ending of something always holds an intrigue in my mind.

As a father, gaining sight of far off when my days dim and time as defined certainty swallows youth once emboldened holds all ability to speak directly to the here and now.  Then meets now in future grace.

If I had one word to leave my daughters, only a single word before my end, what would I say? The word would need to be substantive, something they could feed on and smell of home.  Later in life, if they fumbled a bit, frayed by circumstance or ruined by choice, that word would need to take them back to the start.  We all run headlong in the direction of desire chasing fancy and building much about ourselves in careers and identity.  I could only imagine the same draw will pull on their growing hearts in this world.  With this constantly in mind, of my ending and their continuing, the word needs to deceptively clever - I think, inverted and counter-intuitive.  It needs to turn tables when hedged bets and sure things are quickly faltering so as to save them in times of trouble and endings to soon.

What from my life could be hung on one word?  What could I leave them with that would be bigger than our parting, more than our eyes catching each other one last time and the rush of memories flooding?

Do I have anything now?

I have my faith, but it’s twisty and they may get tangled.  They will need their own decision of faith and love of Christ, not mine to be rooted down with.  Of course, there’s grace, but it can be such a big blanket of a word that they may struggle to understand in youth and miss as an adult.  Yes, there’s love, but it’s ethereal in the way we treat it, often maligning it with selfish emotion.

Then I thought of forgiveness.

The one word to leave them with that could lead them into a future now, reset them in a moment grown too thin, re-architect brokenness from a day already spent and define all other words wrought in misunderstanding.  There in the end, one word left to hang all good memories, all teaching, all mistakes, all failings and all experiences on - forgiveness.  And so now in the spying forward around the corner of years to come, I can dig into the earth of their hearts and drop into it a seed that promises to give life always, even beyond my days.  Forgiveness would always properly weigh words like faith, grace and love, and certainly bend their faces upward to God.