Daddy...

 I want to preface this rant by saying that I teach Econ, not English. I am very self conscience now that I work at a school, especially since my lunch table gives out the sarcasm in the same way I do! If I ever try to publish this in "boots and shovels" magazine I promise to have the English department edit this for me.

Daddy... more accurately Da-Da. That is my new title. These two syllables have done more to me than any other two syllables since "I do".

The last 3 years have been an emotional roller coaster for me. When I started teaching I started a new habit. This habit was very humbling, I had to apologize. I started apologizing to my dad, frequently. When I started to have interactions with parents, or just the fruits of their labor, I started to realize how lucky I had been to have a strict, intrusive, over-bearing, loving, caring, and committed father. I could write all day about how much my dad means to me, and I am sure I will soon enough, but today's topic is down a different track. What kind of Da-Da am I going to be? Will Emmett have the same frustrated thoughts about me during his teens? Will he ever come to realize that I love him more than he can ever imagine? That every "no" is meant as an "I love you". That every "yes" is a confirmation of my trust in him. That sometimes I will let him fall and get hurt, to make him stronger. That sometimes I will build every possible fence around him because the fall will be too far, and irrecoverable. Will I be patient when I see anger and hate in his eyes because of those fences? How will I deal with the hurt when he stubbornly breaks through that fence because he is just like his father? Will I have the strength to be his father and not his friend? Will I be able to resist living through him? Will I have to learn how to coach him? Can I be his coach and his dad without either of them suffering? These are some of the thoughts that have not left my head for 19 months. These are the thoughts that were in my head this morning at church.

This morning we had a guest speaker and I think he did a great job. I have to admit that I only caught about 50% of the sermon. He said something very early on that sent my A.D.D. into overdrive and I began to daydream. He was speaking from a passage in Luke, when Jesus was being tempted by Satan. The point he was making had something to do with identity in the Father. Not in what YOU do for the Father to earn his love, or make him happy, or what you deserve. All of these thoughts revolve around some sort of ability you have over how much God loves you. When the preacher started to talk about the Father's love, he lost me for a bit. I started to think about all the times I have thought myself too evil, dirty or unforgivable to God. All the times I have sinned and how God has to hate me for throwing His love back in His face. All the nonsense that I let interfere with my relationship with Him. Then I thought about Emmett. The kid who pees on me when I am not in the mood. The kid who poops in the bathtub. The kid who swings his plastic hammer at my face, occasional striking true! The kid who says "no" with a wicked, devious smile on his face. Obviously these are "cute" little toddler things, but they are not fun. They are not ideal. And as much as Kat and I say otherwise, he is not perfect. He is a flawed little sinner, but I love the mess out of him!!

Let me give a little background to the thoughts that my church daydream sent through my head. When Kat and I decided to start a family it was a shock. We had spent 7 years letting everyone know that we were probably not going to have kids. We didn't want them. Neither of us were really "baby people". I loved my niece, and I had some friends who had pretty cute kids, but I never saw pictures of babies and went gaga. I knowingly married a woman who had the same thoughts. We had been through enough in the pursuit of ministry that we were never going to say "never" or try to let God know what our plan was, but it was basically a never. I was going to be a youth pastor and I always said I had 30 teenagers and that was birth control enough for anyone!! I don't know if it was gradual, sudden, expected or not. I am still not clear on who brought it up the first time, but sometime after 7 years of marriage, and thousands of awkward comments and "friendly chats" from our friends and families, we decided to have a baby. *(I will always say "we" and I do not care what some of you think. I know that Kat went through labor and I didn't, but I refuse to let my role as a father be diminished to a secondary role. I know that this is not what some ladies mean when they cluck about men saying "we are pregnant", and I know that my body did not deal with the pain and discomfort, but I do know that I was there, always and for anything. It hurt me to watch any pain or discomfort that Kat went through, and I would have taken every bit of that pain if I could have. Anyways, back to my original thoughts) 

WE decided to start a family and looking back on the first 19 tiring, stress filled months I cannot believe that we ever thought about doing anything different. I have never experienced love like this before. I love my wife, obviously, and it is an amazing love when two people choose each other and walk down the road of life together, falling deeper into love all the time. However, I saw the ultrasound of my boy and I was in love. I have loved Emmett since before he had a name. He has never taken a breath without having 100% of my love. It is different than anything else, and I see now the struggles my dad and my Dad must have gone through for the last 32 years. Like I said, I will write about my dad later, but tonight I want to talk about my Dad.

 I don't think I have ever, nor could I ever have fully understood the Father's love for me until Emmett was placed into my care. I realized something this morning during my daydream, I realized that there is NOTHING that I can do, good or bad, to change the way my Father loves me. As we grow up, and become "educated", we are inundated with the idea that performance, status, earnings, success, etc. are what characterize us. In the christian life, this worldly brainwashing hinders us from embracing the enormity of God's love for us. We are missing out people, and it is OUR fault. Our fault as a church, as friends, as teachers as whatever. We are not learning or teaching the right lessons, this has to stop. We have to do better.

Let me see if I can corral my thoughts by asking you this... Do you love your kids? (if you don't have kids imagine) Of course you do, even when they piss you off. (I know that is rude language but isn't it how we feel sometimes!!) You love them when they let you down, that is why it hurts so bad. They disappoint, you love. They break the rules, you love. They move out of the state, you love! NO MATTER WHAT. If we are made in the image of our Creator, and He uses the parent-child relationship as an example of how much He cares for us, then how can we not assume the same principle applies to how much God loves us. Actually, that is a horrible understatement. We are so fallen, and so decrepit that whatever God feels for me has to make my love for Emmett look like hate. Well, maybe not hate, but definitely not love in the same category. Right? If I have loved Emmett since before he drew breath, what does that say about God loving me? If all my son has to do is pat his chest (his way of saying please) for my heart to melt, what does that say about God's love for me? If I am proud of my son for the crawling, stumbling, and falling that led to numerous bumps and bruises on the way to walking, what does that say about the way in which God watches me learn how to walk in Him? Does he get angry and call me a loser, or does he give me a "great job, you took 7 steps this time!!, now try again". Maybe I am way off the mark, and maybe I should have actually listened to the speaker this morning, but I cannot help to think that I have been serving a weak god for a long time, a god I created. A god that is a figment of my imagination. A god that I do not have to be fearful of because he is small. A god who I can understand, and therefore outsmart. I have been placing God into a box, trying to make sure that I could wrap my head around the thing that I "worship". By placing Him into this box, I have created a human version of the Almighty, and I have been missing out. I have been missing out on something that is infinite, awesome, and terrifying at the same time. Maybe, just maybe, God is trying to tell us something from the relationships He puts us in here on earth, and I think that lesson is "I LOVE YOU, and you have no freaking clue what that means yet.... but you will"