'I'm wearing my birthday suit because...' she said

One morning this Christmas break, I huddled under the covers in our snow-covered home as Ashlyn pranced and bounced around the bedroom in nothing but her princess panties.

"That's my Ashie Nunga-Punga," I said. "Aren't you freezing, Ashie-Loca?"

"I'm wearing my birthday suit because it's going to be Jesus' birthday!" she explained, cheesy grin smeared across her face.

How's that for a WWJD moment?

I spend a lot of December wondering how much of our Christmas chaos might make the Birthday Boy roll over in His manger or grave--if He were still in either.

But this nunga punga thing? I think He'd kind of like it.

For a morning, a day, a season, or more if we dare, maybe He'd rather have us dance in the buff, out from under all the crusty layers we thought could hide what we thought needed hiding. Maybe He'd dig that more than all the other stuff we've come up with to honor His incarnation. Maybe when it comes to hiding the real thing, less really is more.

Maybe my barely prancing Ashie-Loca is on to something.

So happy birthday, Jesus. Here's to naked celebration that lasts even longer than your birthday party.

The day I became Daddy

Yesterday Brielle turned five. That meant she ate a cupcake for breakfast, wore her fuzzy pink “Birthday Princess” crown (not that she hasn’t worn it night and day on many other days and nights), announced, “I’m five!” to various strangers and pretty much glowed all day long.

It also meant I’ve been a daddy for a half-decade.

This is one of those things that trips me out either way I look at it. On one hand, I cannot believe that a young, free, newlywed such as myself could have been doing the parenthood thing for this enormous span of time. Nearly half of the dozen years we’ve been married, we have been married with children. In a couple months, we’ll be taking Brielle to kindergarten.

No way.

In another instant, I wonder that I have not always been a father. I think about life before Brielle, and draw a blank. What did we do for entertainment before we had live dancing girls? Where did we spend Saturday mornings before we enrolled in Cradle Roll and Tiny Tots Sabbath school classes? What cluttered my back seat before yogurt had bonded Cheerios to the upholstery?

You mean it’s only been five years? A measly seventh of my life?

On a Tuesday not unlike yesterday—a warm morning with the promise of summer vacation on the wind, the dry heat of the mountain soil injecting adventure into the air—I loaded my wife and a strange collection of baby stuff, most of which I could not name, much less use, into our white Xterra. An empty infant carseat was strapped in back (utterly devoid of Cheerios).

Rachelle was ready to have the child out of her abdomen. We had a date with our OB, who had agreed she was ripe enough to induce before the expectant grandparents left for Jamaica.

I played with the camcorder as we got into the car, readying myself to be journalist, cheerleader, Lamaze coach…and something…something else. What was it?

Oh yes, that. Somewhere in the fuzzy corners of my imagination, like a mortal trying to picture eternity in heaven—or hell—I supposed that presently, I would be a father.

We checked in, joked around on the video, and finally got down to business. Pitosin works, but works slowly, I’m convinced, on a child with a will as strong as Brielle’s. She was in no rush to say hello to the cold, cruel world, and Rachelle progressed slowly through the day and into the night.

Knowing my penchant for fainting over finger pricks and blood draws, I left the room when it was time for the epidural. We didn’t need to occupy doctors with more than one baby that night, I thought. It turned out that this was one of the hardest moments for Rachelle, and she wished I had been there.

I remember with dread leaving Rachelle’s room while she slept to correct papers and calculate grades on my laptop from about 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. The school year was over, but my least favorite part of teaching was still in my face. I have always hated the process of turning students’ thoughts, ideas, creativity and hard work into cold numbers, and then adding those numbers up to come up with one of five letters.

Here, as my wife endured holy labor, doing grades seemed especially profane.

I was just exporting all this profanity to floppy disk when the word came that Rachelle was awake and making progress. (Please pardon the Male-ese. She might put it, “I was in agony like never before, turning myself inside out and WHERE WERE YOU?!”)

The contractions came quicker and quicker, and I just wanted it to be over. I put all my energy into rubbing Rachelle’s low back so hard that it would be sore for days after she came home. Finally, the doctor was telling her to push. I was delighted. The end was in sight.

Rachelle’s pain climaxed, and my delight clashed with her torture.

But finally, a terrific cocktail of fluids and tissues began to gush from my wife. Again, I was delighted—this was almost over. I would not have to watch helplessly while Rachelle suffered anymore.

From this nasty pool emerged the most beautiful infant face I had ever seen. The severity of contrast between birth and baby added wonder to the miracle. I have come to regard that moment as a metaphor of our existence in the universe—in the midst of chaos, entropy, decay, our planet is a beautiful exception.

My Brielle. She was beautiful from the moment I saw her. Beautiful and loud.

They cleaned her off, let me cut the end off the already clipped umbilical cord and wrapped her in a hospital blanket. They put the tiny bundle in my arms, and she began to quiet down. Her blue eyes stared up at me, clear and curious, it seemed.

It was all over.

It had really begun.

Remember in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, how at the end when he sees the Whos singing even after they were ripped off, the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes? I am certain mine grew about five in that moment.

Five. I can’t believe it’s been five years already. I can’t believe it’s only been five years.

The stuff of eternity just doesn’t make sense in terms of time.

Happy birthday, sweet big Brie! Thank you for helping God grow my heart every day of your wonderful five years. I love you more than I ever imagined possible.

Hope (part 1)

For a long time, I’ve had mixed feelings about hope. It’s a sparkly idea and all, and would have made a great monosyllabic middle name for our fourth daughter had we had triplets, going nicely with the twins’ “Grace” and “Faith.”

But I have a couple beefs about the whole idea of hope.

Beef #1: People hoping for change too often are people sitting on the sidelines complaining about the status quo and waiting for someone else to alter it. Rather than saying, “I hope such-and-such occurs,” I’d rather say, “Here’s what I want and here’s what I’m doing to create it.” Victims and slaves hope. As a free person, why not act instead?

And here’s Beef #2: When I’m hoping for something better down the line, I’m probably missing out on something great right here and now. C.S. Lewis wrote in his autobiography, Surprised By Joy, that in his miserable years of boarding school, perhaps the best thing he learned about the Christian walk was to live by hope—ever looking forward to the freedom and bliss of holiday. But wasn’t every moment he spent fantasizing about what was to come a moment lost on embracing what was? Isn’t every ounce of energy I spend pining for the future an ounce lost on appreciating the present? “Hope” seems like a happy, shiny word for “procrastinating happiness.” I say, why not have it now?

My kids make me think about this whole thing. Though their lives are far less miserable than schoolboy Lewis’s was, they too live by hope, always looking forward to what is next. “When is my birthday?” asks Melía daily. “What tind bir'day party I am doing have?” She savors conversation about an event that is months away, living in regular communion with the ghosts of birthday future. We think this is cute and go with it.

I’m sure I did plenty of this as a kid. But I remember my parents reminding me how precious the present was. They told me that my childhood years were the best of my life, that if anything, our growing up was happening too fast. This kind of talk did give me a certain trepidation about the onslaught of adulthood stress, but it also taught me to seize the day, because tomorrow is not likely to be any better than today. I wonder if I am doing too little of this with my kids.

I motivate my kids through difficult circumstances with hope. But I don’t like it. Last night I took the three girls to a former student’s graduation, a boring prospect even for people with attention spans longer than a Dora the Explorer episode. We swung through the evening like Tarzan from bribery to bribery: ice cream sandwiches if they got out to the car quickly, McDonald’s if they behaved during graduation, Blue’s Clues if they refrained from fighting my pajama-donning and tooth-brushing efforts. It’s embarrassing to write about. But it worked.

Is hope just something the powers that be, whether good or evil, use to manipulate us?

I have stories to tell about my kids’ hope that are making me question my questions about the value of hope. I’ll share a few next time….

Gweppy rocks

Something amazing was seeing my wife as the mother of my children for the first time. She was the same woman I had always loved, but now the love had been given this three-dimensional quality. Not only did I love her because she loved me, but because she loved this new mysterious person we had brought into the world together.

It has been something like this watching my mom become grandmother to my girls. Early on, she was clear that she was too young to be called "Grandma," but would go by the moniker "Gweppy," a random name I made up for her as a kid. In honor of her birthday on Sunday, here are just a few reasons why my mom rocks as Grandm--as "Gweppy," that is.

• She stockpiles snails for the girls to play with whenever they come over.
• The last time we dropped the girls off for our weekend getaway, our daughters were shooing us away so they could get on with the grandparents play. This is a good sign.
• At the end of such a weekend the girls often have more clean laundry than we brought in the first place.
  
• She just got new carpet in the house and still lets our girls hang out there.
• She works her butt off playing with them.
• When we're over, she takes care of her four boys (you can't forget my Dad) and my three girls with an incredible grace.
• She builds Lincoln Log cabins.
• She still likes to color.
• She is great at puzzles.
• She feeds them squash and healthy stuff--and they like it.
• She makes Christmas incredible.
• She disciplines them.
  
• She throws a bath party every time they stay with her, which our girls ask for regardless of how recently we've bathed them.
• She and my Dad give us a great play-by-play of the girls' cute quotes and activities whenever we pick them up.
• She pulls them in the wagon till she's dizzy.
• She leaves the pop-up sprinklers strategically popped up when she knows we're coming over, so her granddaughters can push them down.
• She is low-drama to no-drama, essential among my little drama princesses.
• She knows not what it means to complain about hard work.

The list goes on. In a nutshell, she loves her family with all her heart and mind and strength and soul. And somehow, she has come up with more love the more family we've given her. For that, I love you more than ever, Gweppy.