You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'parenting' category.
In six months I’ll be a new dad again, and my thoughts have returned to what kind of parent I think I’m becoming. This is the fundamental question, more important to me than that of what kind of world we are bringing a new human into; we’re choosing to focus on what kind of human being will be visited upon our world. And the logical follow-up question to “who is my child becoming,” is “what are we modeling?” I’m intrigued as I meditate on this theme that I feel less equipped to parent than I did with the introduction of Gabriel, our almost-three year-old. Maybe its because I grossly underestimated the task (or was it that I grossly overestimated my abilities?), but I feel like the advent of this fresh progeny I am more sober about what’s important, thus more involved in the introspective process of spiritual preparation for a child. I’m sure the time will come when we’ll busy ourselves with paint swatches and name combinations and baby showers, etc., but I am thoroughly immersed at the moment in what it means to be a Dad.
Mark Scandrette, a local artist and spiritual director, writes in his blog about the importance of creating spaces for rites of passage to take place as he unpacks a recent experience with his own son who is in the process of becoming a man. And the two realities cannot really be separated in a healthy way – these realities of fatherhood and manhood. The father invests his very life, from genetic code to wise counsel to friendship and camaraderie, until the point at which the boy becomes a man and replaces him. This transactions is strangely lacking in our youth-crazed world where men, like Peter Pan, refuse to mature into adulthood and experience all the relational and societal complications that result.
A friend of mine named David asked me today what kind of legacy I wish to impart on the next generation. Immediately I think of my son and the mystery child on the way and ask myself if my legacy will be limited to the realm of good intentions, or if I will truly become the kind of man they will want to follow into significance. In other words, can I live the kind of life that will help draw them into the fullness of their own potential? I know some things, like that I want my son to be unashamed and secure in his sexuality. I know I him to be secure enough that he doesn’t have to hide behind empty machismo or bullying tactics, but instead can invest his energy into a deep and authentic respect for self and others. I want him to love his mom and treat women with equity and honor. There’s a lot more that I am completely clueless about, like how to be vulnerable about my own broken humanness when he wakes up to the reality of my mortality. Or what to do when my expectations get in the way of my ability to love and accept him. Or a million other things that come with each new developmental stage or shift in circumstance.
This journey into parenthood is a long march into significance. We don’t get a certificate and a plaque on the baby’s arrival; that legacy instead has to be etched out slowly in the granite, into a lifetime of relationship. My prayer now is that I can learn this time more quickly than I learned the first time around.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: parenting
My recent life, in bullet points:
- We’re having another O’Hara.
- I’ve been up late nights reading and blogging, and my right eye has been twitching for the last week and a half. Dr. advises me to sleep more and stay off caffeine. Herbal tea, anyone?
- I helped with an elaborate April Fool’s prank on my pastor/boss that included a forged letter from Tony Jones of Emergent Village. More on that later.
- This morning I was clearing the dishes and Gabe started this conversation with me:
Gabe: “daddy, where’s your coffee?”
Me: “It’s tea, son; and I drank it. It’s in my tummy.”
Gabe: “where’s the baby in your tummy?”
Me: “I don’t have a baby in my tummy. Only mommy has a baby in her tummy.”
Gabe: “Where’s mommy?”
Me: “She’s sleeping. You know how sometimes when we play together and then mommy and daddy get tired? Well the baby inside mommy is making her very tired.”
Gabe: “Okay.”
Nature calls.
You open the bathroom door and sit down to face your son’s plastic little training potty. You brought no reading material for this existential exercise, just you and your thoughts and your digestive system in all its glory. And then, out of the corner of your eye, you see it: the Thomas interactive sounds book. You quickly look away, but it’s too late. The thought has already taken root in your mind. With the stealth of a Bengal Tiger, you reach across what seems like an endless expanse of potpourri-laden 
interior decor and pick up the cryptic writings. Then, in a moment of temporary insanity, you entertain the fleeting thought of pressing one of the little buttons on the activity pad, the kind that make steam engine sounds and talk to you through the tiny but prominent speaker. What if somebody hears you? What will they think?
Your finger comes to rest on the button. You hesitate, take a deep breath, and push it down, sealing your fate. Then reality hits you like a ton of bricks: you could have used a fake-out flush. But by then, it’s too late. Train sounds fill the acoustic air with stereophonic grandeur, and with the train has left any shred of bathroom dignity you may have had when you entered that hallowed chamber.
O Dr. Yasdi
You are my son’s dentist.
With stand-up comedy
You sit in your swivel chair,
Armed with a shiny dental scraper
Disarming the manchild,
He falls into your lap
Like a cloud or a pillow.
He lets you floss his teeth,
This amazes me.
He gets a shiny coin
To play in the arcade,
He chooses
The super bouncy ball -
I want to be a child
So you can be my dentist.
Originally posted at Sequoyah Community Church
Yesterday was my 29th birthday, which would make today the first of my 30th year. And today, I feel different – partly in the way all of us feel different with the knowledge of our impending geriatric transformation, but also I feel different because parenting has re-framed so much of how I understand the universe.
As a point of explanation, my dad was 30 years old when I was born. I’ve been thinking about that little piece of trivia for the last week or so. The birth of a child has a way of wrecking the rhythms of our pre-child worlds. I wonder what it was like for my own father, who was unaccustomed to 2 a.m. feedings and dirty diapers, to suddenly be immersed in that reality. I wonder how it tweaked his sense of responsibility, and legacy, and just plain normalcy.
In a sense, parenthood has a way of carving a path for parents to become functioning adults. At least the potential exists for that to occur. Happily, I feel like that’s what’s going on in my own spiritual formation. I was sharing with Pastor Cori the other day, I feel like I’m just now wrapping up an extended period of adolescence. Gabriel has a lot to do with that.
Sometimes I think we get it mixed up in our heads about who’s teaching whom. I mean, I understand that God has called and equipped people who are called to serve the body of Christ in leadership capacities. That’s important. But on another level, in the day-to-day, learning to follow Jesus arena that all of us go through without the directed guidance of the clergy, in that place where we learn to possess everything God has called us to become, it’s a free-for-all in a sense. God uses all kinds of things to shape us: traffic jams test our patience, illness tests our capacity to trust in God’s healing, work tests our sanity, the fast food drive through tests our resolve, and kids… well, kids do all of the above.
What would life be like if we realized that in the process of making followers of Jesus out of our children, it’s not just teacher/learner, but it’s also co-learning? What would we start to shift in our schedules, our words, and our attitudes, if we viewed parenthood not only as a vital responsibility (which it is), but also as a part of our own spiritual formation?
