Life As We Know It

Eight weeks...

Exactly eight weeks until our baby girl arrives! No, not in the mail or by stork. Just like the "proof is in the pudding," I can say, "the baby is in the belly." And you know, it's been all this time, but honestly - the impact of what is about to happen hasn't fully hit us yet. Everyone keeps saying this one distinctive phrase: "life as you know it is about to change." Duh. I'm not sure if they intend to say that to encourage us, or to let it loom ominously over our foreboding heads, but either way it's daunting. I think we are still dumbfounded in a way. I mean, we're not in denial or anything - we're super excited! But since it wasn't a planned pregnancy, I can say this: we are elated that this joy is coming into our lives, and we've dreamt of it for so long - yet at the same time, it's like the feelings we expected to feel haven't caught up to us yet. We've run really far ahead of them.

The antsy feeling waiting for the little blue + on the tester. The friends at our side to cheer our good news. The sheer feeling of intentionality with something so meaningful to us, something we wanted to get the conditions just right for...all these didn't happen. Nonetheless, I've realized that it probably never would have happened if we were waiting for all the "perfect" conditions. If we waited until everything lined up and fell into place as we envisioned it to, we would be childless for a long while! A great artist named Warren Barfield said it best in a song of his called The Right Time:

When we got the news, it was like God saying
"I knew better than to wait on you..."
If you're waiting for the right time
The right time will fly right by you
Always planning, never moving
Always praying, never doing
It ain't living if you're just spending your life
Waiting for the right time

Check out this amazing song on YouTube -

















Let me be clear: there's no stale taste in our mouth. How could there be, we're getting the one thing we've been preparing our hearts for since long before we entered adulthood - our prized and precious child. The fruit of our love. We've had absolutely no problem wrapping our heads around the who, what, where, and why- we've just had to adjust to the when of our little joy coming into our lives and the how we experienced the news vs. how we thought we would.

But you know what I've come to learn through this experience? Preconceived notions are overrated. I dreamed of being the perfect example of a Godly father, someone who listens to their children every time and executes sound judgement with wisdom and compassion. But from what other parents have told me, that's pretty unrealistic! Let me tell ya, I'm going to do my best to be that father, but much to my chagrin, I'm going to screw up sometimes. I know there may be times when I'll be frank with them when I should've listened. I know there may be times when I will need to assert my wisdom, but instead I will opt to leave things unsaid like a coward...or I may assert it too often and become the father no one listens to or respects.

That's the beauty of it all, though. No one has ever gotten fatherhood perfect but God himself. That's why one of his nicknames is "The Perfect Father." I'm glad I'm not trying to live up to the job description of "perfect father"- that's a lot of pressure! If I go into this expecting perfection out of myself, I will be sorely mistaken and end up disappointed in myself pretty quickly. One of my favorite bands, Shane and Shane, got it right in a recent song of theirs, The One You Need:

I wish that I could be your everything
Be the one to give you all the things you need
Sometimes I'm gonna let you down
But there's someone if you just believe
He'll be your hero like he's always been for me
Darling, Jesus is the one you need...

Check out this tear-jerker on YouTube --->

















The closer the time comes, the more I realize that God has been equipping both me and Jodi in very specific ways all our lives, and that my disillusioned expectations, if pandered to, will subtly set me up for some major insecurities. All I can hope to be is a Godly model of a father to my children and raise them to know Jesus for who he is. The rest is going to fluctuate with the circumstances, but I can resolve to be intentional about sharing my faith with them. I can be intentional about valuing their formation above the things that bite at my time. I can be intentional about raising them well, not trying to raise them perfectly. That's how people become resentful many times - from being raised in a home with unreal expectations, or none at all.

So if life as we know it is about to change, I can say without a doubt..."I'm ready." Not ready in the ways I thought I'd be, but who is? Who will ever be? I'm glad the goggles we see life through now is about to change. The way we define what "life" is. Life as we know it is about to be exchanged for a very different life...a very welcome other kind of life.

Last Ditch

So it's the final minute, and the team you're head-coaching is fighting for the lead in game 7 of the NBA Finals. You're down by four, so a comeback is possible...but the other team has been holding your team at bay all game, quashing your every strategy. It's down to the wire, and the five you've got on the floor haven't been cutting the mustard. You need a Savior. You need someone who will step up to the pressure with fierce finesse, clever on offense and relentless on defense. You need a proven champion. So you look down your bench line and study the string of athletes at your disposal. Two stand out from the restless lot: Michael Jordan is one of them. Your mind is tossed. Your palms are greasy. You're straining for a sign, but you make up your mind in a flustered climax of indecision: you choose the other player, who just so happens to be none other than the great...Steve Urkel.

Needless to say, this is a bit ridiculous, yes? I mean c'mon, a toss-up between a 6-time NBA champion & Hall of Famer...and a jeans-and-suspenders Geek Hall of Famer? Is this a tough decision at all? But relating to many people's view of God, the Urkel decision is pretty logical.

This daydream started a couple weeks back when I was at work. I overheard a woman's phone conversation as she passed by. All I caught was a well-used expression in our culture, said with a half-hearted sigh: "Well, I don't know what else to do, I'll just pray for ya." Yeah sure, pray for 'em. Might as well, right? Wouldn't hurt. Eh, who knows, maybe something good will come of it...probably not, but hey, at least ya tried, huh? - sound like the viewpoint of someone you know?...or maybe your own?

As I heard this woman's flippant comment, it struck me - this is an epidemic view of prayer. So many people pray like it's a last-ditch effort, the backup plan to your backup plan's backup plan. How did prayer get reduced to the understudy's third cousin twice-removed? I think the answer people would give the most is this: "I dunno, it just seems like God doesn't really respond every time, especially when I need him most."

Our opinion of prayer has dwindled to mediocrity because of this - we are hesitant to give the important things to a God that sometimes feels distant. And that's understandable. We wouldn't entrust our criminal charges and impending court date to an attorney on an extended vacation, would we? That's what a lot of people have come to believe in God as - someone who is powerful enough to take care of business, but lacks the reason or motivation to attend to the lowly peons of this Earth.

It's hard to change someone's mind about this because every opinion like this stems from personal experience. "Where was God when my mom was on her deathbed?" "Where was God when I filed for divorce?" "Where was God when the eviction papers came?" "Where was God when my kid turned into a street thug?" It's a hard issue to address, simply because there are so many emotions tied to this subject, so many "been-there-done-that's" in play. So when I say "there's hope in prayer," even now you may have felt a twinge, a subtle dismissing notion or an unspoken longing of "if that were only true..."

I'm no expert on prayer, but I do know this: God did not intend any part of our relationship with him to be stressful or burdensome. If it is, there's a hitch in your giddy-up. That's why Jesus himself said "I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." If we have trouble trusting God by talking with him and handing him our burdens, our relationship with him is basically built on a self-serving basis. Sound like an unfair assumption? You're right, I don't mean to assume what God means to you. But here's what I do mean: if you struggle with approaching God, you may have the notion that God exists to make sure your life is perfect (enter buzzword - "blessed"). 

Here's some news for you - good news, actually: God does not exist to make sure your life goes peachy-keen. "How is that good news, Shane?" In the assumption that God is our personal genie, we miss the fact that God is a loving Father. Who would you rather have in your life a genie or a loving Father? Depending on your answer to that question, some red flags might be shooting up concerning your view of God. The difference between a "your wish is my command" genie and a "my command is good for you" loving Father is that a good parent exercises unconditional love. That includes "tough love" and "constructive love." Being loving isn't always walks in the park and ice cream cones. Sometimes a good parent shows he loves his child most through not allowing his child to participate in activities that could compromise the child's integrity. Or sometimes a parent's love is best displayed when letting the child figure out the facts of life for himself instead of spelling everything out for him. Or maybe the best way a parent could show their unconditional love is by saying no, so as not to enable their child's downfall or addiction. Or maybe some of the best proof of a parent's love for their child is to let them walk away, making room for them to arrive at the realization that true love was always waiting for them back home.

We are so spoiled when it comes to God. If he doesn't bend to our every whim, we throw a tantrum and stomp off in disgust, shaking an angry fist and threatening to never speak to him again. So it really is good news that God doesn't conform to our idea of what's right. If he did, we would have a marionette divinity, playing God from our positions as puppeteers. That would be messed up, let me tell ya. The world is a broken place, but to think everything should go the way we feel it should would often make for an even more mess-up world. 

Granted, we do have the ability to envision what's best on an honest scale. We're not totally depraved. We can imagine and expect what would actually be ideal. And guess what? God put that ability in us. We all have a vision of heaven set deep within us. At the core of our humanity is still Adam and Eve, the ones who experienced what God intended humanity to live in: paradise. We are all still looking for paradise in this fallen state of humanity, but we never find it outside of the source of paradise itself - the Creator - do we? We wander the earth like Adam and Eve banished from the garden (for their own good, by the way), looking for what's right in the world and blaming God when things don't turn up daisies...all while wiping the juices of the forbidden fruit from our lips. We are guilty as guilty gets, and our view of what the perfect Father God "should and shouldn't do" does not come with his welcome, just as a still-maturing, hormone-frenzied teen doesn't always win his father's agreement on what is best for the teen - and the entire family for that matter.

So if God has been your last-ditch effort, maybe it's time to ask why. If praying and talking with him about your beautiful, messy life seems to be a contrived, last-resort response, maybe it's time to rethink your prayer life - and more foundationally, your view of who God is. Believe it or not, God's track record is a lot more trust-worthy than any Steve Urkel you could substitute him with. All the other options on the bench might seem productive, but why settle when you can call on the one who made you, who knows your inmost being? Who would you trust to give you valuable life counsel: a friend you met at that one party a few months ago, or the loving parent who raised you and knows you inside and out? I'm sure the one with the most intimate knowledge of who you are would be the best choice, wouldn't you? So try it out - keep calm and talk to Jesus...and post a comment below to let me know how it goes!