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To My Fellow Parents Who, At Least Once or Twice, Have Failed At This Parenting Gig

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Photo by Nikila Jelenkovic via Unsplash

Oh, Parents,

Let me start with the honest part, the part that’s difficult for me to admit: This has been a rough week for parenting in our house. I would use the word disastrous but you might think I am exaggerating. I went to bed the other night and couldn’t sleep because of a huge parenting fail. There may be a few angelic souls out there who ace this gig, but none of them live in this house, and they probably don’t live in yours either. We are, many of us, going to have children who end up in therapy. This is not to say that we are terrible people; this is just to say that this is the world. Besides, going to therapy is one of the best things anyone can do for themselves and the ones they love, so I guess a little nudge in that direction isn’t a terrible thing.

Anyway, after a particularly disastrous day, the elephant of worry sat down on my chest and kept me awake, watching the hours. Has that every happened to you? Have you ever stretched out in bed, so tired but unable to sleep because of that monstrous weight of anxiety? Breathe in, breathe out.

Then, a realization. While I had long thought the sleepless nights and blown-out diapers were the worst that parenting had to throw at me, I saw with clarity that the most difficult part of raising these five kids is now approaching. Puberty, emotional development, leading a still-small human being into their interests and calling. What have I gotten myself into? What have I gotten these poor, five little humans into?

Midnight.

I think the thing about realizing that I will fail my kids, and experiencing one of these major failures, is that I now have such a deep humility and empathy towards other parents. My judgy-ness has fallen away like an old skin. I confess to having harbored scathing opinions towards parents, perhaps even you, who did not do things the way that I thought things should be done. Now? In the wake of these shadows?

I am so sorry for judging your parenting. We are all in this thing together, every single one of us, and we are all doing the absolute best we can with the tools we’ve been given. Some of us have been given crappier tools than others. Some have been handed an entire tool chest with 37 different sized screw drivers and 17 socket wrenches, while others, perhaps because of their own parents or perhaps because of the way this world has weighed on them, having nothing to use but a chisel. Or a measuring tape. Or a hammer.

Use your tools well, my friends, and use them creatively. I once used the prying end of hammer to turn the tiniest screw. I once used the handle of a screw driver to (kind of) bang in a nail. If your tool set is limited, consider fresh uses. Maybe kinder ones?

1am.

At this point, following that failure, I became acutely aware of the fact that I have five children. Wait. I have five children. Five children. I was overwhelmed by the variety of ways that I might screw them up. The possibilities are endless!

I know this is 1am talking. I know I am overjoyed to have five children. I know in the morning, these voices will have evaporated with the slanted lines of light drifting through the blinds.

2am.

I fell asleep at some point during this non-hour and, bless the Lord, dreamed of nothing.

3am.

16-month-old Leo woke up during the cloudy hours, those hours from three to five when sleep and waking blend into one. I followed the sounds of his crying, went and stood beside his crib. He was standing against the rail, cheeks wet with tears, so I bent down and put my arm around his little body. He stuck his head up into the crook of my neck, and we passed the time like that in the silence of a whirring fan, clinging to each other, letting each other know it would be okay. The night would end. Sleep would come. We promised each other those things were true. I kept kissing the sweet smell of his hair.

In my mind, I apologized to him in advance for all the various and inevitable ways I will screw him up and let him down, and his little arm came up around my neck at that very moment as if to say,

It’s okay, Dad. We all screw up. I forgive you in advance. Everyone is doing the best with what they got.

And then, just like that, he laid back down in his crib. I covered him with a warm blanket and went back to bed.

Oh, friends.

I hope this post is like Leo’s little arm around your neck. I hope you will accept it for what it is: an invitation to generously dole out and receive forgiveness for misdeeds past, present, and future. Or maybe it’s a little warmth on a cold night, a little assurance that you are doing enough. That you are enough.

Your Friend in This Mess Called Parenting
Shawn

 

 

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What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?

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Photo by Davide Ragusa via Unsplash

Then a Jesuit pal asked me, quite simply, What would you write if you weren’t afraid?
– Mark Karr, The Art of Memoir

When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”  John 5:6

I think a lot about this unnamed man in the Bible, a man who had been disabled for nearly four decades. I often wonder how I would respond if I was him and a man walked up to me and asked if I wanted to get well. Do I want to get well? Are you kidding me?

This experience with Jesus brings questions into my mind, deep questions about myself and the things I long for. I hesitantly turn my eyes towards my many and varied illnesses.

Do I want to overcome my addictions? Or do I enjoy the numbness they deliver?

Do I want to finish writing that book? Or am I afraid of the potential apathy?

Do I want to live a simple life? Or is all this noise keeping me comfortably distracted?

Do I want…?

Of course I do.

But then a still, small voice asks again.

…but do you really?

* * * * *

At the core of what Jesus was asking this man was this: Do you dare to imagine being recreated? Do you dare to engage in a new adventure, a new way of being? Do you dare to stand when all you have done up until now is sit and wait by the water?

Which brings me back around to the Mary Karr quote: “Then a Jesuit pal asked me, quite simply, What would you write if you weren’t afraid?”

The two questions are strikingly similar:

“Do you want to be made well?”

“What would you write if you weren’t afraid?”

* * * * *

Who would you be, who would you really be, if you dared to hope again?

It’s certainly a question worth considering during these days when fear rules most of us, when companies and individuals around us stand to profit from our insecurity, our uncertainty.

Do you want to get well?

What would you do, how would you live, if you weren’t afraid?

 

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When God Gives Shitty Gifts

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In 2009, my wife woke to a ball of anxiety about what was happening, about our business going under and all the debt weighing us down, about us having to leave a place we loved and move our family of six into my parents’ basement 150 miles away. She slid out of bed, down onto the floor, and put her face in the plush carpet.

How can this be happening? God, how can you let this happen?

She heard the closest thing she’s ever heard to an audible voice from heaven, and it echoed in her mind, one phrase reverberating and growing.

This is a gift.

When the phrase faded off into the darkness, disappearing beneath the whirring of the ceiling fan, my wife shook her head.

Well, she muttered, it’s a pretty shitty gift.

She stood up off the floor, crawled back into bed, and went to sleep.

* * * * *

This is a portion of my debut post for the collaborative site, We Are Here. You can read the entire post HERE.

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Of Baptisms, and Leaves, and a Little Boy Leading the Way

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Sam and I walk the glistening sidewalks in this city, minutes after a warm autumn rain passed through. He runs ahead, scaling the undersides of fire escapes, pulling himself up into any climbable tree. There is still a mist, and he dashes through it. He is a little boy, yes, but he is also some kind of spirit, some kind of playful force of nature.

But this force of nature reaches for my hand when we cross the street and calls me “Dad,” grins over his shoulder when I tell him to wait up.

We turn to the left where James Street runs diagonally along the cemetery, and I wonder about the people sleeping there under the ground. All those lives, dust to dust. I wonder how any of us make it from one day to the next, our lungs still filling, our hearts still beating the seconds. I wonder how we can cling to life so fiercely, even through these latter days, when the world spins chaotic and violent, when powerful men seem intent on destroying everything around them. I stare at the cemetery and I think of the weak and the poor among us.

The rain begins to fall again, first in lonely drops, then in earnest. With at least eight blocks to go, it’s clear that we are about to get very, very wet. Golden leaves pave our way.

“Through the rain!” I shout a battle cry, my walk turning into a jog, and in that moment I wonder why I don’t take my kids for walks in the rain more often.

“Dodge the puddles!” Sam shouts back, dancing on his toes all the way, as if the world is his hopscotch grid. As if skipping along on his toes will stop the rain.

* * * * *

On Sunday we stand beside the baptismal font, surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses, living and otherwise. Abra goes first, climbing up on the stone ledge and leaning over the water, her blond hair falling in wisps. I wonder what she sees in that moment through her big blue eyes, what her six-year-old mind thinks about the water and the crowd and the words.

The three small scoops of water run down over her hair (in the Name of the Father), drip down on her cheeks (and of the Son), run like tears (and of the Holy Spirit). She looks up and comes back to us, hops like Tigger, always moving. She grins the gap-toothed grin of a young girl exhilarated by life, and water, and the idea of something unseen but crucial happening there under the somber gaze of the stained glass.

Sammy is next. He pulls his shoulders up around his ears, as if this baptism is one that makes him cringe a bit. He would rather be running through the streets, baptized by the rain, than stand in a church while wearing a tie, everyone looking at him.

I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

He raises his dripping head and smiles the sheepish grin of You were right, Dad, it wasn’t that bad as well as Can you believe I’m growing up this fast? I think of rain falling on golden leaves. I think of walking with him through the city.

Finally, Leo. Little Leo. He shakes his head vigorously when Reverend Lauren offers to take him, so he and I move in over the font together. I lean forward, and for a moment it is both of us getting baptized, both of us being made new.

I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

The water runs off his head, but he doesn’t shrink back. He doesn’t even flinch. He simply stares down into the shimmering, as if down there in the clearness lies every answer to every question, if we would only give him enough time to soak them all up. And then Reverend Lauren says the words again, the words she said over all the children, words that sound like a promise oh too good, a solemn hope.

You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.

* * * * *

Sam and I keep walking, the drops hitting our faces. The leaves drift, too, stripped by the rain. Walking with him, through a day like that, a city like this, I feel marked by life, marked by a warm goodness that falls down through autumn leaves.

Maybe baptism starts in a church, guided by a pastor, observed by a gentle congregation. But I don’t think it ever stops there – I think baptism follows us down the street on a rainy autumn day, chases us through the leaves, catches us just across the street from the mechanic shop in that moment when your little boy looks up and asks you if he can jump in that puddle of glistening water, the one reflecting the golden leaves and the gray sky.

“Please, Dad? Just once?”

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Can I Love My Children Enough to Let Them Fail?

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Photo by Taylor Nicole via Unsplash.

My 12-year-old son walks the delicate line between two worlds. He is all limbs and big smiles, growing into a frame that will easily exceed mine someday very soon. We recently bought the same style of shoes, the main difference being that his are a half-size bigger than mine. He is a golden retriever in personality and at his happiest when he is making other people smile.

The line he walks is the one between childhood and adulthood. His growing body is beginning to shout “young man!” while he plays in his room with Matchbox cars and reads Minecraft books.

I sometimes play monster with the kids, wrestle them all to the ground, but when I inadvertently grab his foot in the middle of that mass of arms and legs, I am shocked. Whose foot could this possibly be? How could I have a child who belongs to this appendage?

As a child, he plans on doing and becoming things that are nearly impossible. As a child, he sees no reason these things might not come to pass, as if the only thing he has to do is wish them in order to make them so. He announces these things in casual conversation, things like, “When I play in the NBA,” or, “You know, when I’m an astronaut…”

Biting my lip in these moments is perhaps one of the hardest things I’ve had to do as a parent because I want to remind him of the astronomical odds, the one-in-a-million. I want to warn him about the fragile nature of hope, the heaviness of failure.

But, no. Truth be told, I don’t want to just warn him. I want to forbid him. I want to tell him to stop being so childish, those things will never work out. I want to ask him, What else do you want to do? Surely there is something more reasonable, more practical, more attainable.

But why? a voice asks me. Why do you feel so compelled?

I’m protecting him, I reason. I don’t want him to be disappointed.

But why? the voice insists again, and this time I have to pause and think.

Because those poignant moments of failure are too hard.

When they happened to me, those palpable failures, they shook the very foundation of who I thought I was. They threw me off kilter, and for some time afterwards I felt like I was floating through space, no way to tell the difference between up and down.

Don’t set your sights too high, I want to tell him. That way, you won’t be disappointed.

* * * * *

But is that really the kind of existence I’d want any of my children to experience, a life without trying? Without wanting? Without desiring?

I think of where I am now, as a writer. I may never write a best-seller. I may never be famous for my creative ability (as I discussed in the Letter to My Friends Who Are Not Famous). What if my dad, when I was 12, honed in on my love of stories and pulled me aside.

“Listen,” he might have said, “This whole writing thing? You need to just walk away from it. Find a nice hobby you can’t fail at. Find a dependable job you’ll never lose. Writing? The odds are too small, son. You’ll be terribly disappointed someday.”

* * * * *

Can I love my children enough to let them fail? Or, perhaps another way of asking the same question, Can I love my children enough to give them the space they need to succeed?

It’s hard to think of each of my children reaching a stage where the world tells them they’re not good enough. Maybe the best thing I can do isn’t to short-circuit that failure, but to help them realize where their true value lies: in who they are, and not in what they do.

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Your Addiction is Speaking to You

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My dad was a pastor when I was a kid, so I occasionally found myself waiting in an empty church while he finished up whatever he was working on back in his office. Sometimes I’d go to the gym and throw a ball against the wall over and over and over again. Sometimes I’d walk through the tiny, empty bookstore and stare longingly at the Chronicles of Narnia box set I would eventually by for $11.96. Sometimes I’d just sit on the curb outside.

But the times that have left me with the most poignant memories are when I would walk into the empty church sanctuary. Sanctuary. A place that provides safety or protection. I would walk on the thick carpet, up the aisle between the two sides, all the way to the front. There was a communion table there, and the pulpit, and the piano up on the stage.

I wish I could tell you I did something particularly holy in those moments, but I didn’t. I stretched out on the floor and stared up at the ceiling, and the dim light that fell through the tall windows illuminated all the little specks of dust floating through the air. I wondered about the universe and my place in it. I watched each speck, each little planet, as it came and went in and out of those beams of light, and I made up stories about them and their inhabitants.

Then, far off, from a distant galaxy, I heard my dad’s voice calling my name.

* * * * *

Seth Haines releases a new book today, Coming Clean, and in it he shares a similar experience as a young boy in Texas climbing into the mesquite trees. He writes that it was the first place he remembers hearing God speak to him, but that as he got older the reality of that voice dimmed.

This, I think, is perhaps the greatest challenge we will face as adults, and perhaps the most important: How will we rediscover that beautiful childhood imagination and belief that allowed us to hear the voice of God while sitting in the thin arms of a mesquite tree, or lying on the plush carpet of an empty church sanctuary? Where has this voice gone?

Maybe the voice hasn’t gone anywhere. Maybe the problem lies in our ability to listen, to hear.

* * * * *

Seth’s book is unique because it gives you the feeling that you are traveling right into someone’s very soul. The title might be Coming Clean, but it could just as easily be Rediscovering the Still, Small Voice. I prefer the title he chose, but I hope you won’t avoid the book because you don’t have a problem with drugs or alcohol, or because your particular brand of addiction is less vilified than its chemical cousins.

As Seth has said many times, we are, all of us, trying to come clean from something. This book will help you see what it is you’re trying to shed, and it will also show you the beauty that waits even in the shadows of recovery.

* * * * *

I think again on what I wrote earlier, that “I wish I could tell you I did something particularly holy in those moments” when I simply got down on the carpet and stared at the dust. But now I wonder if maybe that isn’t one of the holiest things we can do.

Stop. Breathe. See. Listen. Wait.

I highly recommend Coming Clean. I think it will help you do all of those things, and then some.