'I will remember it again later,' she said

“While you’re sleeping, don’t forget how much I love you, Melía,” I told her.

(She hears this many nights, along with other valuable admonitions, such as, “Don’t eat yellow snow, Melía.” Some things just bear repeating.)

“I will not forget, Daddy.”

“Oh, good.”

“But if I do forget, that’s OK. Because I will remember it again later.”

This rings in my heart like an eschatological prophecy of a time of trouble. She won’t forget, she assures me. But growing daughters and flawed fathers being who we are, it won’t be long before she will.

What will get in the way of the love? I wonder. Curfew? Homework? Careless words? Wardrobe? Other men? All of the above?

But my little prophetess assures me that the time of trouble will outlast neither my love nor her knowledge of it.

Lord, when she does forget, please remind me that it’s OK. We do that. We lose sight of what we've been standing on. Things loom larger than people for a minute. Ego pounds impatiently at the front door, and Love slips out the back.

But it is OK. Later, she will remember again.

'Daddy, do you love the kitten?' she asked

Since around last Christmas, we’ve been planning on getting kittens. We delayed in part because we need another needy little being in our home like Jaws needs another swimming lesson. But since the girls are getting slightly less likely to torture, and even more slightly likely to actually care for such a critter, we finally took the plunge this summer.

So Pepper "Loveball" Bennie, sneezy orphan Siamese kitten, moved from the San Bernardino City Animal Shelter to the San Bernardino Mountains, a move up in the world both in the mile of elevation she gained and in the tonnage of love she now bears. She joins my wife and me as one of the few who know the joy and the torment of living with our three daughters.

It’s hard to know whether it is ignorance or ignoring of the signs of feline displeasure that leads kids to love a cat in ways that push the limits of the animal’s endurance. Melía holds her for durations that would try even a dog’s patience. Eager to enrich the kitty’s life with adventure on the day she arrived, Ashlyn tried throwing her for distance. Brielle still pleads not-guilty for holding her captive in the treasure chest all day yesterday while we were at the fair.

We always hurt the ones we love, don’t they say?

Maybe a week after we got Pepper, Melía asked me this:

“Daddy, do you love the kitten?”

Let me defend myself before I tell you how I answered. I’m really clear that “love” is this holiest of words that has been profaned by overuse. Call me a snob or an idealist or whatever you must. But for me, true love is a sacred act of will that I define something like M. Scott Peck does in The Road Less Traveled: “the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”

Love is God.

And if I teach my kids anything about anything, I want it to be This.

So I'm all cautious about my answer, which, I was certain, had the heinous power to distort her idea of love for eternity.

"Not as much as I love you, my Melía," I hedged, circumspect as all get-out.

"What?" she asked, appalled at how the soul of any sentient being could be anything but filled with love for her kitten. "Why don't you love our kitten, Daddy?"

"Well, it's just...." I was tempted to bust out my arsenal of words that mean love but don't mean Love, words like cathexis and affinity and like a whole bunch. But I was smart enough not to. "I do love the kitty. But it's a different kind of love than how I love you. A much smaller, much less important kind of love than I love you with, Melía, because I love you so MUCH."

Was that a sign of relief I saw on her face? "You do love our kitten, Daddy. But a diffwent kind of love."

Relieved? Yes, I think she was.

But still a little worried about my soul.

'What does love mean?" she asked

Melía tells us she loves us a lot. Scores of times each day.

And at least as often, we tell her that we love her.

We quite enjoy it, although it might get kind of nauseating after awhile if you were here listening.

"I-love-you-so-much-you-are-so-cute, pweety pie," she'll say to me, rapid-fire. Kisses--wet, wonderful and splattered all over my face--come with the deal.

"I love you so much, my mini-Melía. You are my wonderful, sweet, beautiful princess daughter."

"I love you so much, Bo-Bo." (Bo-Bo? Don't ask me.)

This kind of dance goes on throughout the day, from the first hello in the morning, to the final good-night in the evening. (And on to the five or six loving good-nights she manages after that, before we stop responding.)

But one day, in the midst of one of these syrupy sweet conversations, she asked,

"Daddy, what does 'love' mean?"

I know now that I answered way too quickly, considering that this may be the most important question in the universe. The fact that I don't even remember my answer shows how profanely hasty I was to field this holy inquiry.

But I must have said something like, "Love is sharing, and being nice and good to people, helping them, even when they are not nice to us." (Accurate, but so blasé. I should have spent days pondering it, like I'm still doing with the "When will God rest again?" question.)

What I do remember is her response: "Oh, that's fun!"

I buy that.

Is love easy? Rarely.

But when we manage to pull it off, is it fun? Absolutely, my mini-Melía.

'I love you more than you do,' she said

Melia is incredibly lovey dubby these days. She regresses into paroxysms of delight when I get home from anywhere. Before bed lately, she has been telling me, "I love you more than you do, Daddy."

I knew this was a good thing the first time I heard it, whatever she meant by it. At first I guessed she was saying that her love for me was greater than my love for myself.

True enough, I thought. Maybe her intuitive little heart had sensed my bent for self-loathing and wanted to tell me she saw a more lovable soul here than I saw in myself.

But only a few nights ago did I figure out what she was really trying to articulate.

"I love you more than you love me," Melia said.

I laughed and argued back, "You are very sweet, but I don't think so, because I love you soooo much!"

"I know, but I love you MORE than you love me." She was sticking to her guns.

And it cracked me up. "I don't know, my Melia...."

"Don't laugh, Daddy. I'm serious."

This only made me more giggly, but she was adamant now. "Don't laugh at me, Daddy! I'm serious!"

Finally, I shut up and let her love me.

'All the colors of the rainbow,' she said

If recent posts about Ashlyn's demonic outbursts have led anyone to believe she is anything less than an angel from God, please, do not be deceived. For 23 hours and some 19 minutes a day she is a dancing, shimmering dewdrop of heaven.

Just a tad messier.

Exhibit A. A couple nights ago we were fixing to bed the twins down when Ashie struck up this chorus: "I love you, Daddy! I love you all the colors of the rainbow." (A giggle here. She was serious about the message, I think, but still my silly Ashie, delighted at the funky factor of her metaphor.)

She spread her arms, looked me in the eye, and crooned, "I love you, and I want to paint you all the colors of the rainbow." (More giggles, although here she may have been speaking literally.)

I feel the love. It is wonderful. She is my Ashlyn angel, as always.

And, just in case, I am moving the markers up a shelf.

'I don't love you anymore,' she said

Ashlyn has been revisiting her terrible twos of late. Nostalgia, maybe.

Not that the terribles are even about being two. Brielle began hers around 18 months. Ashlyn's were at their nadir when she was three. Melía is mostly sweet, but at odd times over random issues, she draws her line in the sand and we all suffer needlessly.

The terribles are probably more about just being human. Pursuing the fantasy of independence. Trying to live out the myth that if we had it, we'd be happy. Sounding our angst over the torment of not being our own gods.

A couple of nights back Ashlyn was doing this expertly.

She talked a lot of trash, most of which transcended language (unless you can help me spell a prolonged shriek of rage). But the line that bounces around in my mind’s echo chamber was no more and no less than, “I don’t love you anymore.”

It was surreal hearing this from a four-year-old, let alone one throwing a two-year-old fit. Where does she get this stuff? How could such a little one take so skilled a stab at Achilles’ unsuspecting heart?

She missed, mind you. But not by much. If I had believed her, she would have had me.

“You don’t have to love me, Ashlyn. You just have to obey me,” I replied.

I believed my own words as little as I believed hers.

Indeed, she does not have to obey me. Endless options await her beyond the narrow path of Daddy’s will.

And don’t tell her this, but given the choice, I’d take love over obedience any day.

'Pretend you are God,' she said

Melía had logged a lot of hours in church programs by Saturday evening, and for a girl who loves to interact so much that she won't even watch movies, she'd been extremely good about it.

But midway through the evening, she was cradled in my arms and ready to make conversation.

"Are you God?" she whispered.

"No, silly Melía. I am not God."

"You are like God. Did you make yourself?"

"No, God and my mommy and daddy made me." (So far when I 've said this, no one has asked, "How." Mercifully.)

She decided to have some more fun with this, saying, "You are God!"

"Silly sweet Melía, I am not God."

"Pretend you are God," she conceded.

I started to kiss her all over the cheeks and hair, saying, "I love you, Melía. I love you, Melía."

"No, pretend to be God," she said again.

"I am." I went back to my face-kissing.

"No, you're not," she giggled.

"Yes, I am. This is what God is doing right now. He's loving you."

It kind of blows my mind to consider that every child makes that request of her parent. Every baby looks to his father and mother to play that impossible role. "Pretend to be God," their hearts cry out.

I think I got it right in that moment, for once. It's harder of course, to play the part of God with fidelity when the girls are screaming and fighting and whining and hair-splitting.

Is it harder for God to play Himself at the times when we're doing the same? Or is mercy-triumphing-over-judgment the only role He knows?

God, give me grace to portray You with some semblance of accuracy. May Melía know by my example that whatever else You may be doing, above all else You're loving her.

Quote of the day: I love

The other night, sitting around the little Tinkerbell dinner table, seated on her tiny Tinkerbell chair, my mini-Melía was singing. The song was simple--almost too simple to write about.

"I love Brielle! I love Ashlyn! I love Mommy! I love Daddy!"

But if that's not worth writing about, what is?

Quote of the day - Everything Valentime's

Ashlyn: We're going to celebrate Valentime's Day! Are people going to come over to our house? We need everything Valentime's day!

(I think she thinks this is a majorly celebrated holiday like Christmas. We do celebrate, but to her chagrin, there are no pipers piping or pear-tree-perching partridges here on any sort of twelve days of Valentine's.)

Daddy: You know what we need on Valentine's Day, Ashie?

Ashlyn: What?

Daddy: (attacking her cheeks) Kisses and hugs!

Ashlyn: (with wriggling protest) No, we need other things...like sharing. And caring. And not fighting.

Blessing be upon whomever brainwashed this into her--even if it was the Care Bears. The kisses and hugs are nice, but this Valentine's day, what we need even more are the love gifts that my Ashie asked for--in this Bennie family, and in the human family.

So here's to having "everything Valentime's" that we need. Sharing, caring and peace to all of you!

Love,
Mike

Quote of the day - No you're not

She'd had pancakes sprinkled with chocolate chips for breakfast. And now she was laying into the continental breakfast the church had served up: hot chocolate and chocolate doughnuts. (Ever eager to contribute to a child's joy in the Lord--and to parents' prayer life--those church folk are.)

Both breakfasts had left her with chocolate on her delightfully round cheeks, which are tempting enough to chomp into even without such sweet frosting.

"You have chocolate cheeks, Ashie Lulu! I'm going to BITE those chocolate cheeks!" I growled with ferocity and opened my mouth like a lion.

"No, you're not." She regarded my gaping jaw placidly. "Because you love me."

Alas, she's right.

But love or no love, those Ashie-cheeks can be so dang tempting.....

Quote of the day - You don't care

I'd warned Brielle that the bath would be over if she fought with Ashlyn one more time.

They fought.

I hated to do it. But I hate breaking promises even more. So I did.

I grabbed the soap, and washed her hastily. She wriggled and cried. Eager to get her out, I slapped shampoo on her hair and scrubbed it over her scalp and wet locks. It dripped into her eyes. She shook her head and screamed. And screamed.

This is what she screamed:

"You don't care about me! You don't care about me! You don't care about me!"

Except that, knowing how slow I am to get things (she has heard Mommy try to communicate with me), she helpfully repeated this something like a dozen times--for a total of three dozen.

There are two possible responses to this.

The one I normally advocate is an acknowledgment of the speaker's feelings, respecting the fact that her words reflect reality as she perceives it. One might paraphrase the child's feelings in order to validate her viewpoint and confirm that one has heard and understood her. Diplomacy.

Then there's the response I chose: "That is a lie, Brielle. And it is a mean lie. I care about you too much to let you fight your sister. I told you what would happen if you fought with Ashlyn again, and I care about you too much to tell you I'm going to do something and then not do it."

I don't know if I responded well or not. The words she spoke seemed so opposed to all that I'm about that I didn't have what it took to just leave it alone. Maybe my defensiveness made it all about me, which demonstrated her point.

But what haunts me more is the source of such talk. Really, where does she come up with this? Is she repeating what she's heard others say? If so, where has she heard this stuff? Movies? School? It's certainly not a game we play here at home.

And how much does she mean it? Is she really feeling uncared-for in this moment? Or is she already advanced enough in the way of the Guilt Jedi to be laying this on with strategic intent?

Is this just the primal cry of every heart when we've fought in the tub, the soap's in our eyes, and judgment has been passed against us? On even the best days, is it the cry of our worst fear?

Quote of the day - I love Satan

Melía was going through the motions of bedding down last night--a prelude to her hour of requests, potty breaks, talking to self and to knocked-out twin sister, playing and patiently enduring the silence before sleep sneaks in and takes her away.

With no visible provocation, she announced:

"I love God and Satan."

I was disarmed, not sure what to say. I'm not sure now what I did say. Maybe I said, "You do?"

"Yeah," she said, pleased with herself. "I love Satan!" She giggled, aware of the scandal of these words, but sticking to her guns.

Knowing Melía's heart, I sensed this declaration--dark as it may have sounded from other lips--was worth celebrating. "That's good, Melía. Do you think God loves Satan too?"

"Yes!" said Melía.

"No, He doesn't," Ashlyn protested.

"Really? I think He does love Satan. Because Satan is His child, and even though he does bad things, God loves him anyway, just like He loves us when we do bad things," I said.

"Yeah!" said Melía.

"Everyone is His child," said Ashlyn.

Amen and amen to living in a universe run by Love big enough to encircle the old friend-turned-enemy who crucified Him.

And amen to living in a house with little hearts big enough to get it.

(Click photo at top or PLAY arrow at left to see a short clip of Melía speaking for herself on the topic of God's unconditional love.)

Conversation of the day - Everybody loves God

Home late after a meeting today, the twins were jumping, crawling, hugging and kung-fu fighting all over me on the couch.

It was unmitigated delight.

Meanwhile, Brielle sat front and center before the TV, watching yet another screening of The Story of Jesus for Children. It fascinates me how absorbing this story is for her.

Right in the middle of the wrestling match on the sofa, with Jesus feeding the five thousand via DVD, Melía looked at me and said:

"I love God a lot."

"I'm so glad to hear you say that, Melía," I gushed, caught off guard by the move from hand-to-hand combat to praise. "God loves to hear it too!"

"And you love God a lot too, Daddy."

"That's right, my Melía." I was glad--relieved, actually--that she noticed. Sometimes I wonder if this reality shines through the fog of my anger, haste and general preoccupation with things mundane.

"Everyone loves God," Ashlyn chimed in.

I could not leave that alone. "Actually, Ashie, not everyone loves God."

"Why?" she asked.

"Some people don't know God and some people don't like God," I told her.

"Only bad people don't love God," said Ashlyn.

"All people are mix of bad and good, Ashlyn. It's just that...."

The tickling, elbowing and head-banging resumed before the discussion went any further. Maybe it was for the best. I often err on the side of too much information.

But even that much had begun what I know is next for my girls. The difference between facts and beliefs, knowledge and faith. The coming to terms with how often black and white end up being gray. And more troubling, the reality of hypocrisy.

It's going to be an exciting ride.

Maybe, if we'd just stick to Melía's opening statement, "I love God a lot," none of the rest would get under our skin so much.

Maybe.

Who's her Daddy?

Deep inside the hospital, in critical condition, lies the man my wife calls “Daddy.” He is not long for this world. Standing at his bedside in the ICU yesterday, I watched Rachelle spoon broth into his shaking lips, wipe his chin, hold his hand, caring for him with all she had in the dwindling hours left.

I stared at father and daughter through my dull disbelief that the end could be so near. How did we get here? Was it not just a season ago that I was bringing a pot of flowers to this man, asking for his daughter’s hand? Could it be more than a few weeks since he, having watched those flowers multiply, had teased me about the omen for our fertility?

How long ago could it have been that he fed, wiped and cared for that same girl who had stolen his heart, and who grew up to steal mine?

Suddenly she was in tears. Jolted by her sobs, yet relieved to have a job to do, I hugged her while scanning the room for Kleenex. Finally, I unwound a yard of single-ply toilet paper from the restroom marked “For Patients Only,” folding it four times before it was anything like a passable snot rag. Rachelle filled it in two seconds. I returned to the toilet for more.

As I rolled out TP—the sole offering I could give my broken-hearted soul mate—my mind fluttered. We had seen it coming. We had hoped he would take better care of himself. He knew better. We hadn’t talked about it with him all that often, knowing it would likely as not make him more stubborn in challenging fate. But he knew. In fact, it could have been ending more slowly and painfully than this. It was actually merciful. And suddenly, through my righteous rationalism, a rogue thought bored its way in: A little girl is losing her Daddy.

In the room, she was pressing her forehead into his. “I love you, Daddy,” she said.

“I love you,” his trembling mouth managed to say.

I noticed that this day would come for me. My dreams, ambitions, hoping, working and tail-chasing would someday get me the same place they get all men—on my back, dying. I could only hope that whatever my flaws—and my sons-in-law will have as easy a time seeing mine as I see his—I might raise my little girls to have half the love and goodness that this daughter of his has. I could only pray that despite all the reasons not to love me, on the day they tell me goodbye, they will choose to love me anyway.

Because Dad, whatever you have to show after your years of toil, as many or as few trophies for your work in the world, however fleeting or misunderstood your life may have seemed to you, it is enough if you have this one thing: your little girl there with her hair on your neck, declaring her love to you.

God, give him grace to feel the love that he has added to the world. May he sense through this somnolent fog just how much Rachelle loves him. May be know through her something of how much You love him.

Sermon on the throne

After church yesterday, Brielle had to go potty. So did I. So I took her into the can, laid down the tissue rump gasket, and lifted the princess onto her throne.

Seated there, she began a sermon that was impossible to sleep through. It began when she watched me spit my gum into the trash can.

“Daddy, how did you do that?”

“I just opened my mouth and the gum fell out.”

“But Daddy, why did the gum just go straight down like that?”

“Because of gravity. Gravity is what makes everything fall. It’s what makes us stick to the ground instead of floating away.”

“Why?”

“Well, everything that is anything—everything that has mass—has gravity. And that makes things pull to each other like magnets. The bigger the thing, the more gravity it has. And because our planet is so big, it pulls us to it really tight. And right now it just pulled my gum straight down.”

“Oh.”

“And because the sun is soooo big, it has even more gravity than the earth.”

“The sun has gravity too? A lot of gravity?”

“Yeah.”

“But Daddy, God has even more gravity. God has the mostest gravity in the whole entire world.” A grin broke out on her face. “He has the mostest gravity in the whole entire planets, in the whole entire universe!”

“Verdad, Brielle. That’s right, niñita.”

She was gaining momentum. “And He loves us the mostest in the whole entire world…in the whole entire universe!”

"Verdad, Brielle."

She paused to soak in this, content.

“Daddy, I love you. I love you in the whole world, in the entire planets, in the whole universe!”

Sermon complete. Amen and amen. What more could a Daddy--or anyone--hope to know?

Love ain't easy

There are plenty of songs telling us what love supposedly is.

• Love is a Many Splendoured Thing
• Love Makes the World Go 'Round
• Love Gets Me Every Time
• Love is a Rose
• Love is a Battlefield
• Love Stinks

Appealing as all these metaphors may be, this last week I've been going with the theme of Faith Hill's song, "Love Ain't Like That."

No, love, love ain't like that.
Love ain't that easy to define....

Maybe amongst the cacophony of declarations of what love is, a few hints at what it is not could be refreshing. Perhaps more than another seed planted, the overgrown forest of love definitions needs a little pruning.

My kids have begun this pruning, teaching me that love ain't about making people happy, for example. They've showed me that love ain't blind either. And today, I will try to convince you (as my lovely ladies have managed to convince me) of this shocking insight: Love ain't easy.

---

Love is not easy.

You knew that already.

But did you ever catch yourself thinking something was wrong in a love relationship because it wasn’t going smoothly? “This is too much work,” I’ve thought. “This is not fun. If I have to strain so hard, do I really love this person?”

As we anticipated Brielle's birth, Rachelle and I knew we would feed her breast milk. It was natural. It was God’s plan. It was convenient, easy, simpler than buying and toting around formula. (Ladies, why the sardonic laughter?)

Brielle was born, and within minutes my wife learned how painful and difficult nursing could be. We went to “lactation consultants,” a profession that sounded laughable to me. Who needs consultants to be able to do this simple thing that God created us to do? Women have been doing it for millennia. It is core to the survival of the species, basic to who we are as mammals. It should just flow, you know?

Why should love be any different? It's natural. It is this simple thing that God created us to to, and people have been doing it for eons. It is core to the survival of our species, basic to who we are as children of God. It should just flow, right?

Here’s what I've found "just flows": affinity, attraction, lust. Liking someone comes easy. Loving them, not so much.

M. Scott Peck separates love from “cathexis,” which explains attractions to the opposite sex, the instinct for cuddling pets and pinching babies' cheeks. Cathexis come naturally. Animals naturally want to mate. I naturally like people who like me.

And then there is love. It takes effort. It is work. It’s difficult. As core as it may be to God’s design for us, we still seem to need “lactation consultants” of sorts to help us do it right—therapists, teachers, parents, pastors, books, friends and every other resource that helps us do this very tough job of loving.

Peck goes as far as to say that real love cannot begin until cathexis is over. Again, Peck's definition of love: "the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." He says I can’t really begin the work of this sort of love until the natural attraction has faded enough to make it difficult to extend myself to nurture your spiritual growth. This could mean that right around seven years, when so many couples are “falling out of love,” thinking divorce, it might be just the right time to actually begin to love.

God shows this kind of supernatural love:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? (Matthew 5:43-47)

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:7-8)

He did not come “being nice,” trying to make us merely happy—although his love calls us to grow toward true joy.

He did not die in blind ignorance of our evil—although his death can wash it away.

His love was anything but easy—it cost him everything.

Love ain't easy. But it's worth it. Loving three preschoolers ain't easy. But they're worth it.

Crazy thing is, loving me ain't easy either. But somehow, God thinks I'm worth it too.

Love ain't blind

My kids have me enrolled in this intensive course on what love is--and is not. Yesterday, I wrote about my discovery that love is not about making people happy. Now for Lesson #2...

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Love ain't blind.

As a parent it has been bizarre and holy to experience what it's like to love a creature who is doing nothing for you. Especially those first few months, the child's contributions to your life are limited to exhaustion, noise pollution and caca. But you love her like you've never loved before.

I think love sees all the weaknesses in the beloved, but loves anyway. Liking is reasonable. Loving is unreasonable. I like you because [fill in wonderful stuff you have to offer]. I love you despite [fill in the dirty laundry scattered over the skeletons in your closet].

Even before my kids taught me this, I had an inkling of it because of God, who is love and is anything but blind. God's knowledge of me is beautiful and terrifying. And his love is beyond reason.

“The LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts.” (1 Chronicles 28:9)

"O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD." (Psalm 139:1-4)

My response to this intimate knowledge ranges from "Woo hoo!" to "Yikes." But whatever my response, it's pretty clear that our weaknesses are obvious to God. Love ain’t blind.

• “Love is patient, love is kind”—but if I could not see my children's weaknesses I wouldn’t need patience or kindness. I’d be blissfully ignorant.
• “Love is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs”—not because it fails to see them, but because it does not cling to them, because it sees so much more.
• “Love does not rejoice in evil, but rejoices in the truth”—and the truth is, we are all broken. The truth is, we hurt each other. I fail to listen. You neglect respect. We goof up. Daily. The thing with love is that we do not delight in these evils. We find no joy in scrutinizing the errors of our beloved. God, I’m convinced, does not get a kick out of being right about the fact that we do wrong.

Love would be easier if it were blind to evil. But since it's not, love must carefully chooses its focus: the common ground, the cup that is half-full, the baby steps of growth of the spirit rather than all the flaws and immaturities that still remain.

I walk around my house and I can count the messes or celebrate the neat places. In my kitchen I can whine about the dirty pots and pans in the sink or dig the smell of the homemade dinner. I can catch my kids doing wrong, or catch them being good. I can tally what is still missing in my students, or count the blessings they add to the world.

Where do my eyes of love focus when I look at my children, my wife, at myself?

Love ain't making people happy

Thirty years into life, I started to really learn about love. My kids are teaching me. The next few days I'll write about things that my kids have helped me learn that love is not.

---

Love ain't about making people happy. I should have known this just by reading the Old Testament, where a God who is love defined does all this stuff:

• God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden of their dreams.
• God promised a son to Abraham and Sarah and then made them wait till their Geritol-taking years to have and enjoy him.
• God allowed his chosen people to be in slavery in Egypt centuries before Moses delivered them.
• God led a generation of those people in 40 years of wilderness-wandering, allowing them to die off before taking them to their Promised Land.

"But that's God, Old Testament edition. It's a whole new deal when Jesus comes, right?" Wrong. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. The Bible also tells me this:

• Jesus told a man grieving his fallen father to let the dead bury their own dead, to come follow him now.
• Jesus allowed his friend Lazarus to die, knowing the pain it would cause Mary and Martha, even though he could have gone to heal him before death.
• Jesus proclaimed, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.”
• Jesus said to his buddy Peter, “Get behind me Satan!” and later, “You will deny me thrice.”
• When his friends and following wanted him on the throne in Rome, Jesus went to the cross on Golgotha.

God is love. If this is how a God of love rolls, there must be more to love than making people happy.

Part of the problem is my human disability in receiving love, that "break in the cup that holds love inside of me," as singer-songwriter David Wilcox puts it. (Complete lyrics to "Break in the Cup" are worth reading.)

"I try so hard to please you
To be the love that fills you up
I try to pour on sweet affection,
But I think you got a broken cup....

I cannot make you happy
I'm learning love and money never do
But I can pour myself out till I'm empty
Trying to be just who you want me to
I cannot make you happy
Even though our love is true
For there's a break in the cup that holds love
Inside of you."

This is a big relief to me as father. If love meant making my kids happy, what a failed, loveless father I would be! Come to our house and you'll notice at least two things: (1) we love our kids; (2) one or more of them is almost always crying, fussing, whining, pouting or otherwise displaying signs of unhappiness.

This can only make sense if love is about something much bigger than making people happy.

My freshman comp teacher at Pacific Union College, Nancy LeCourt, once said, "Love does not mean always being nice." That was her take-home from a book I read for her class called The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck. There, Peck defines love as "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth."

If I buy into this (and boy do I ever), then my job as a loving parent is not to make my kids happy. It is to extend myself to nurture the growth of their soul. This often means saying "no" to them--and to my own compulsion to please people--so they can grow.

I have a need not only to be loved, but to give love and know that it has been received. When I love expecting to make my wife or kids happy, I feel angry and rejected this inevitably does not work out. And then, hoping to avoid this, I withdraw my love.

But when I love with the intention of helping one of my girls grow, I realize that growth is difficult, a rocky road that winds its way through sorrow on its way toward joy. So if my love ain't makin' her happy, it might be just the kind of love she needs.

Hiding from good monsters

Jars of Clay's most recent album is called Good Monsters. The song is pretty cryptic, but its title reminds me of a game of hide-and-seek with my daughters.

As I count to twenty in Spanish in the front room, the kids hide throughout the dark house. When we first played the game, Brielle would hide about 3 feet from me, lying on the floor, giggling--and then hide the exact same place the next six rounds.

These days she and her twin sisters are getting better at the hiding, managing a few moments of silence as they crouch under blankets or curtains, hunker down in the tub or squeeze into one of our tiny closets.

But they still want to be found.

If I take too long looking for them (i.e. more than about 90 seconds), I hear cries of "Daddy!" If I find someone else first, the undiscovered one calls out, "Daddy, what about me?" Giggles still come from Melia when someone seeks and doesn't quite find her. I have to be judicious about how long I hunt before the fun of being hidden decays into the fear of remaining unfound.

My favorite part is the finding too. (The rare silence preceding it is a close second.) The finding is when I get to play the good monster, who attacks its victim with kisses on the tummy and bites on that ticklish part of the knees. As the beast devours its prey, the child laughs and squirms in hysterics of joy.

When the meal is over, the miracle is that both child and monster have been fed.

There is something mystical about this experience, where love plays a game that flirts with fear. Maybe kids sense the irony of the man they look to for safety playing the role of monster. Maybe feigning fright helps them tame it. I wonder.

I just hope they never tire of it.

Dear Brielle

This week I'm writing to my girls, first a letter to Ashlyn, our youngest by 5 minutes, then a letter to Melía, her twin sister. Now it's time for the big 4-year-old.

Dear Brielle,

From the blood and afterbirth, your beautiful face emerged and changed my name to "Daddy." A few minutes of cleaning later and you were in my arms staring up at me, clear-eyed and trusting, shell-shocked but at peace. You had me.

It didn't take long for us to see that you are a child who knows what she wants and assertively pursues it. Your will is strong, you "begin with the end in mind," and you are not afraid to express your preferences. At the age of a few weeks, this meant lots of screaming at odd hours for no reason apparent to us. At 18 months, it meant plenty of tantrums, time-outs and swats. But the more you mature, it is showing up as thoughtful, goal-directed behavior and increasingly reasonable negotiation.

We still have our share of conversations about the cardinal virtue of flexibility, choosing to be happy even when we don't get exactly what we want. There are still times when I remind you that you're acting picky--especially when we want you to wear pants or anything warmer than your princess dresses--but more and more you are becoming my flexible girl.

You are a born leader. Melía especially copies so much of what you do, repeating your words verbatim, requesting whatever food or clothes you're wearing, "like Brielle has." You set the tone for what your sisters are going to do. That is power; and more and more I'm trusting you to use it well.

You have a deep love for people, always excited when guests are coming over, whether you've met them or not. If you know we're going to a restaurant, you are on board as long as there's hope that friends might be there. You have always loved school, partly because it stimulates your amazing mind, but also because it's a day of being with a lot of friends.

Speaking of your amazing mind, we have never had any doubts about how bright you are. Your inquiries into ethics, theology, science and dental hygiene blow us away. You ask questions beyond your age, soak up my explanations of things like "photosynthesis" (which you can pronounce to a T), and can write down anything we spell out for you. The teacher in me delights in your curiosity and in offering answers that I hope you can understand. Sometimes your questions help me understand things with a new simplicity.

You are a princess. You want to do things right, and you want things done right. You are more fashion-conscious than I can keep up with. Function follows form in your hierarchy of needs, but your utility-oriented father hasn't given up yet on that one. You have superstar poise and charisma, knowing how to smile for the camera and put on a show for the audience.

Best of all, you are incredibly full of love. You give big hugs at random moments, snuggle during books, and tell us you love us. You make increasingly beautiful drawings--of people, houses, animals and even Martin Luther King, Jr., and then inscribe on them dedications to us. Just yesterday morning, you danced with me to James Taylor and learned the basic salsa step. Yesterday afternoon, you squeezed Ashlyn's leg and said, "I love you." At night, you say, "I love you, Daddy. Miss you till the morning."

I love you too, sweet Brie. I am so glad you are my firstborn big girl; you'll always be my baby too.