Post 7: Our Father's Faith

This past weekend was spent at the St. Ignatius Retreat House, located about 20 miles outside of New York City. This was the site of the River Partner’s Retreat- a one night getaway where the most committed servants of our church community get out of Manhattan to rest and recharge.

While modernity is justifiably skeptical of almost all organized religion, I view the local church as the world’s last best hope. I love my church (The River), but perhaps at an even more fundamental level, I am deeply committed to it- both its mission as well as its people. Of course, like any institution, we are far from perfect and our dysfunction manifests itself both individually and collectively. But I think the weight of my commitment rests on the sincere (though potentially misguided) belief that the Christian faith as practiced and preached at this church is as close as possible to what Jesus would be doing if He were to dwell among us today. The three pillars of our approach are to be biblically thoughtful, spiritually powerful, and culturally relevant. This basically means that we strive to be theologically/intellectually rigorous, but understand that the locus of true transformation resides not in our heads but in our hearts. We are charismatic and thus take seriously Saint Paul’s prodding to “eagerly desire the gift of prophecy”, but we would say that a person’s character is far more important than one’s spiritual gifting. We believe it is paramount to engage with the modern culture, and not withdraw from it. But we recognize that an authentic faith will ultimately be profoundly counter-cultural. At a more general level, on any matter that has historically divided people of the Christian faith, we would give a whole-hearted YES! to both sides of the debate. In my opinion, this proper blending of seemingly contradictory ideals is this most satisfying attribute of our polity.

The sociologist within me can’t help but to notice what I perceive as drastic differences between the Gospel as it is understood in my home church, and what I see in the many (most?) other congregations. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised- the history of our faith is littered with a wide variance in interpretations and practices about what it means to be true followers of Jesus. Unfortunately, the forces that lead to greater splintering of the Body have outweighed the ecumenical ones. When I see the manner in which organizations like the Christian Coalition or National Association of Evangelicals chooses to express its faith both in the private and public sphere, I do find myself scratching my head confused as to how we can both follow the same God yet come to such drastically different conclusions about what that means in real life. When I see the contra movements (like the Emergent Church) that have arisen in response to the perceived shortcomings of their “father’s church”, I continue to scratch my head, but perhaps with my right hand instead of my left. I firmly believe that each subset within the faith loves the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. At a minimum, discord is a reminder that we are on the wrong side of eternity. And if it is indeed true that one side is far closer to the Heart of God than another- then I suppose we’ll find out on the other side of eternity.

I suppose a primary hope of any Christian parent is that their children will follow in their footsteps and embrace their faith. Of course, I find myself in this camp, and I will certainly end up raising S in a “Christian home”. However, I suppose I’m not only prepared for him to seek out and explore other paths to salvation, but I find myself almost wanting him to do so. Our pastor preached yesterday on the well known parable of the Prodigal Son- some call this the entire Gospel in a parable. It’s the first time I thought about that story as a father, and it occurred to me that the father may have felt the tension of being hurt by his son’s rejection of him but simultaneously feeling its necessity. Could the son’s faith have been real if he did not squander a fortune on wine and women and find himself starving among swine? Having become born again towards the latter year’s of college, I long believed that it was important for me experience and embrace the world and all that it offers, conclude that it would leave me wanting, and thus completely own my faith.

In pushing S out into the world, I run the risk of him rejecting his father’s faith. Will he spend his early adult years among the secular humanists? Or will he find the structure of the conservative movements appealing? Or maybe he’ll be drawn to the Emergent crowd- or whatever is the hip and cool thing in 20 years. As I write this, I realize there’s another possibility- perhaps S will be the one who teaches his father new things about what it means to follow God. Throughout this, I assume that I’ll always be ahead of him, the more advanced one, the one overseeing his progress. But maybe it will be the other way around, and as spoken by the prophet Isaiah 11:6 “a little child will lead them”.

Post 6: Day 15

It’s hard to believe that only 2 weeks have gone by since S first breathed NYC air. Both the wife and I feel like we’ve been doing this for years. Overall, it seems as though we’ve been on the fortunate side as first-time parents- S eats quite well (like his father), he’s been sleeping up to 4 hours at a time during the night, and he pees and poops at appropriate intervals. Of course, I’m quite certain that tonight will be the night that S awakes every hour crying inconsolably. But the unexpected downsides have been pretty manageable so far, and life has resumed some measure of normalcy.

One of the pleasant surprises in the first two weeks has been the outpouring of affection from the extended community of friends and family to the arrival of S. This is to be somewhat expected given the collective years of waiting, but still, there’s something incredibly touching about some of the reactions we’ve seen. Foremost on my mind is my three nieces, age 10, 8, and 5. I get emails from the oldest one saying things like, “Please send me more pictures of your new baby- he’s soooooo cute. I want to put him on my screensaver for my ipod touch.” My sister tells me that they forward pictures to their friends, and they’re super proud of the arrival of their new cousin. For some reason, I had feared the opposite- I was even concerned that they might feel a certain cousin rivalry- that their auntie and uncle in NYC might not pay as much attention to them now that they have one of their own kids.

Though quite young, my sense is they too went on a journey where they passed through some liminal spaces. My nieces have basically been praying for us to have a baby- well, seemingly ever since their parents taught them the concept of prayer. The final words uttered before every meal we’ve ever had together was, “And please God help uncle and auntie have a baby”. I know the years of waiting left them confused- at one point, they asked my sister, “Why is it that some families have lots of babies, and God won’t give uncle and auntie even one?” I’m not sure how their mom responded to this, but I can’t imagine any logical attempt to answer the question being satisfactory. Alas, during their trip to NYC this past summer, the oldest one who’s a bit of a ham took my iPhone4 and began videotaping her random thoughts and musings as she strolled around the loft. There’s this one priceless moment where she stumbles upon pictures from the sonogram on the coffee table and she exclaims to her audience, “Look! here are pictures of the baby that we’ve been praying for!!!” I suppose part of their joy must come from this childlike sense that the God of the Universe heard their prayers and took the time to answer them. At the same time, the road was marked with enough hardship and disappointment over the years to give them a glimpse of what a mature, circumstance-invariant faith might look like in their own future.

I think one of the things I look most forward to in fatherhood is walking with S and teaching him how to navigate the inevitable disappointments in life. Perhaps more than anything else, I want to instill in him a heart of thankfulness and appreciation for all things- no matter how broken or messed up things appear to be both in his world and the broader world. I recognize that I’m fighting a massive headwind as cynicism/nihilism are the hallmarks of our culture. If we continue to raise him in NYC, he will no doubt be surrounded by people who were so aptly described by Louis CK in his “Everything is Amazing and Nobody’s Happy” rant on Conan several years ago. But my daily prayer when I peer into S’s eyes each day as I hold him is that he would begin to develop an ability to hear God’s voice, feel His Presence, and commune with Him as a friend. This is truly the only effective antidote that I’m aware of to resist the temptation to develop a negative worldview. I would love for him to own the great prayer captured in Habakkuk 3:17

“Though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD”

S- it is this kind of faith from your parents and others that brought about your physical life- and this same faith is the key to the abundant life as promised in John 10:10.

Post 5: The Visit

One of the joys of being a parent for 10 days is that anything seems possible for your child. The reality of limitations haven’t yet set in, and this allows me to fantasize about what my son will be doing 20 years from now.

Those who know my story are aware that aside from the Great Commission, one of my dreams is to see the United States win the World Cup. I grew up playing the Beautiful Game as a child, and there was a brief period of time when I entertained the thought of playing professionally. I surrendered this dream by my mid-teen years as I came to terms with my physical attributes were only above average, not extraordinary. But soccer was my first love, and I find myself attached to this sport and our US National Team like no other. When I feel sad, I go to youtube and watch replays of Landon Donovan’s goal in the 90th minute against Algeria that allowed the US Team to win its group and sent us through to the round of 16 in the 2010 games. I’m not sure what it is- perhaps it’s because soccer is the greatest sport in the world, and it’s the one sport where the US is clearly an underdog. But after we learned in week 18 that we were having a son, I immediately began to just dream and imagine what it would be like for my son to lead the US Men’s National Team to a World Cup title in 2030 or 2034. Hey- I figured the odds of us even making it to 4 months given our history was 1 in a big number- why not ponder him being 1 in an even bigger number?

This brings me to last week’s visit to the pediatrician. We get to the doctor’s office, and our physician is this woman named Monica who’s a nice blend of warmth and competence. She’s going through the routine battery of tests that they do for newborns, and she places my son on his tummy. Lo and behold, he flipped himself over onto his back. I didn’t think much of it, but our physician had this startled look on her face. Apparently, this is something babies do at 3 months, not 4 days. She couldn’t contain her excitement, and she remarked that she had never seen a baby do this at this age. She waves over to her colleagues about what my boy just did, and she starts to call him “the little Olympian”. She turns to the parents and asks if there’s an athletic heritage in the family. I’m sitting there with my arms folded trying my best to contain my excitement, but I mutter somewhat bashfully, “Well, I was once a soccer player”. The doctor responds, “Well, he appears to have very strong legs too.” She puts him on his belly again, and sure enough, he flips over again onto his back. I’m immediately transported to July 18th, 2030 and my son is making an overlapping run from the left wingback position in the 94th minute of a 1-1 tie between the United States and Brazil in the World Cup Final and a perfect through ball is placed by the central midfielder and S runs onto it and hits it in stride and the ball is thrust like a laser into the upper 90 just past the outstretched hands of the Brazilian keeper.

I suppose all parents do this at some level. We so desperately want our kids to experience and accomplish things that eluded us. At the same time, I warn myself that it’s very easy to become the kind of parent that tries to live his unfulfilled dreams through the children. Prior to S’s arrival, my pastor sat down with me and reminded me that my son does not belong to me, but that he really does belong to the Lord. He knows me too well. Ironically enough, he’s named after the prophet in the Old Testament who’s mother said, “I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the LORD.” I hope I have the courage and wisdom to live by those words in the coming years.

But for now, I still daydream from time to time about the summer of 2030... ;)

Post 4

Four generations of first sons.




Can you guess who's who?

Post 3

Just concluding the thoughts from prior entry...

We found ourselves in a very difficult space. The facts on the ground were sobering. We spent over 5 years of trying to get pregnant. Lots of pregnancies, but none lasting beyond 7 weeks. No answers from the doctors as to why. The clock continues ticking thus making the picture darker as the probabilities of success monotonically decrease as a function of time. At the same time, we are people of faith. And we believe in a God that Lords over nature, and the same God that parted the Red Sea and raised the dead is working in our midst today. God can still pull His ace out of the hole and do something that is entirely against the odds- in fact, my some of my co-conspirators would argue that’s His primary business.

So we decided to keep trying. In fact, we made the seemingly foolish decision in early 2009 to ditch the best that science had to offer and just go on trying naturally. I look back on that decision now, and that was about 110% the wife, and -10% me. I had few (if any) moral qualms about IVF the way some folks on the faith spectrum might, but the wife felt strongly that the natural route was right for us. She believed God gave her a promise that He would deliver a son, and that He would do so naturally. Of course, she couldn’t say when or how, but it was something she held deeply in her heart, and she was willing to go down swinging believing in that Promise.

The months marched on without any discernible change to our circumstances. On several occasions, there were incidents that would lift our spirits. There was a time in late 2009 when I woke up at 3 AM unable to sleep and found a voicemail from a missionary friend of ours halfway around the globe. She indicated that she and the orphans she cared for had just concluded their morning prayer, and that as they were praying for us, they felt that God told them that we would have a family soon. This missionary’s track record in this kind of stuff is as good as anyone we know, so hope made a rare appearance. This worked for us until the next month where the regularity of the wife’s cycle reminded us of the reality we were facing.

The calendar turned to 2010. Early in the year, I made a couple entries in my journal. I told God, “Look, I still believe You’re going to deliver on the promise that the wife believes You made. At the same time, I need to build my faith on something a little more solid than just the circumstances. I am going to picture a life without my own children, and I do believe it can be a great and fulfilling life. I leave the rest up to You.”

This seemingly simple act of surrender turned out to be quite liberating on many fronts. While I don’t know if this was the catalyst, what I do know is that within 4 weeks of that time, the wife took a pregnancy test that told her she was with child. Those 9 months were a bit harrowing at times, but overall, I would say that after we finished the first trimester, the pregnancy was actually quite easy.

Of course, now, the hard work of parenting begins.

Post 2

There isn’t much to say about S’s first 24 hours. So perhaps we should go back a bit to the beginning.

This adventure is starting almost 6 years later than we had expected. We first got pregnant at the end of 2004. Seeing that first positive pregnancy test took some of the sting off of the Red Sox comeback against the Yankees in the ALCS and subsequent World Series win. We had been married about 2.5 years, and it felt like it was time to become parents. The Career was in a good place. The Wife was ready to be a mom. The Plan was working.

The first indication that the Plan was being thwarted was the miscarriage in early 2005. I had no idea what was going on as it was happening, but the bleeding was clearly not a good sign. No biggie, the doctor’s said- some 20% of pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion, and all signs indicated that this was nature’s way of saying this child wasn’t fit for survival of the fittest. But everything else was good news- we were two relatively young and healthy people who should have no trouble getting pregnant and sustaining a pregnancy in due time. I was sad, but encouraged that there were no structural reasons that would give us trouble in the future.

But then it (miscarriage) happened again.

And again

And again

Well- you get the idea. At this point- a man of faith begins to wonder, “What’s going on?” Why is this not working for us? One alternates between the introspective (I/We must be doing something wrong) to blaming external forces (God is withholding this from us). Sadness one day, anger the next, with a healthy serving of confusion interspersed throughout.

Our next step was to do more extensive diagnostic testing, and explore getting some medical assistance. To people of means, in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is the recommended route. NYC feels like the mecca of IVF, and we checked out the various clinics to see what they offered. The wife was always at best ambivalent and sometimes even downright against this route. However, she knew how badly I wanted to be a father, and this seemed like the most expeditious path to getting there. We tried several clinics, and they were all magnificent and great at what they do. But it was not to be.

Thus I (we) entered the scariest of places. All I really wanted from life at this point was to be a father. But our prayers, and the prayers of our closest friends and some of God’s most faithful servants were not working. In addition, the cumulative knowledge gleaned from the best minds in the science of fertility yielded no signs of progress and no explanations. And worst of all, it seemed as though God was either ignoring our situation, or He was present but powerless to change the circumstances. Neither option was particularly comforting. CS Lewis, Christian apologist par excellence, writes extensively about the difficulty of going to God after the loss of his wife and particularly about this sense that No One was listening to his plight. I would often wake up at 3 AM and find my mind racing with anxiety about a childless future. My feeble attempts to convince myself that life would be OK sans children were utterly empty and powerless. I had officially entered the Dark Night of the Soul.

There were few places I could go for comfort. The only place that provided even temporary solace was to read the book of Job. I sheepishly admit that I could only feel better about things when looking at my plight in comparison to the man who experienced untold pain, especially a more righteous man. In the middle of this treatise on suffering, he states in Job 13:15

“Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him”

The words still echo in my mind to this day. Some translations say, Though He slay me, yet I will trust in Him. I had a simple choice before me- to believe that God was distant/absent/powerless, or believe that God was still on the throne and running the show. I went with option B. I had entered a new liminal space.

Post 1

This blog is entitled Liminal Space. It’s not the ideal title, but it captures what I’ll be trying to get at as I journal through my experience as a father.

The term liminal means threshold, and liminal space typically refers to those periods in our lives where we are passing from our old selves into our (hopefully) true selves. I first heard the term while reading various works of Richard Rohr- a Franciscan monk who appears to understand the male journey as well as anyone. His writings often center on what we do with our pain, and he has great insights into what it takes to turn life’s disappointments into growth edges. For Rohr, liminal spaces are those periods in our lives where we realize that our old ways just don’t work like they used to, and what we do with that realization will go a long ways to determining whether we become wise men or fools.

The blog will also be written from the perspective of someone who embraces the idea of stage 4 Christian faith. I find stage 4 faith difficult to define in a sentence, so I’ll try to give a sense of its overall attributes. Stage 4 faith is appealing to nearly everyone- versus the distinctly unappealing religiosity of rules-oriented faith. At the same time, stage 4 faith believes in all the same rules that were introduced by our father’s church, but they are embraced for a very different set of reasons. Stage 4 faith blends opposites- the concept of right-wing/left-wing, free market v. socialism, dictator v. democracy- stage 4 faith finds these categorizations insufficient. For example, the best forms of church governance give power to the congregation but also a healthy respect for a leader’s authority. The best men are often quite manly but also carry certain female attributes in spades. As Proverbs 31 teaches us, the best women have characteristics that we typically think of as masculine. The best life demands that we take responsibility for our choices as beings with free-will, but we must appreciate that our destiny is determined by factors and a God that knows way more than we do about everything. Stage 4 faith is egalitarian in principle and thus available to everyone, but few truly get there because it is costly and demands that you die in order to truly live.

With that as context, my journey of fatherhood begins. At 4:05 AM on January 31, 2011, S made his entrance into our world. They say nothing prepares you for the birth of your first child, and watching this little person decimate my wife’s body on his way out of the womb was both horrifying and beautiful. I think I had a glimpse of what God the Father felt like as He watched the brutality of His Son being crucified on the cross, but knowing that this was also the culmination of the greatest love story ever told. For me, it was the end of one journey, and the beginning of another.
I may not be terribly well prepared, but I am ready. So away we go…o away we g