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.

Fathering fears, then and now

Before I had kids, I was scared of many things. Here are the top six fears I nursed:

1. My children will grow up to be mass murderers.
2. Even if they aren't mass murderers, my choice to give new souls existence will lead to the world being worse in other ways, such as overpopulation.
3. I will "screw my kids up" with my own imperfections.
4. If Bible greats such as David, Jacob, Abraham, Adam and even Creator God Himself had such lousy records as dads (think Absalom's rebellion, Joseph's brothers selling him as a slave, Ishmael and mom having to flee, Cain killing Abel, Adam and Eve finding the only junk food in an otherwise perfect garden), then I am SOL (Surely Out of Luck).
5. My relationship with my wife will be over once the kids come.
6. I will no longer have a life.

A few years into parenthood, I feel a little less melodramatic about these fears, but most are still there in altered form. These days, the fears above look more like this:

1. While my paranoia that they'll be homicidal has pretty much tapered off (and what's more, we parents beat the infanticidal temptations of those sleepless nights), I do still fear that my kids will pick up a habit of killing people with unkind words, gossip and contempt.
2. I believe now that by grace, my children will actually make the world better than it could have been without them. I continue to fear that growing up in a materialistic society will give them a sense of attachment and entitlement to more than their share of resources, that they will be wasteful and careless.
3. I am grateful for the ways that grace has diluted the "sins of the fathers" in my generation, and hopeful that the weaknesses I pass on to my kids will be watered down even more. Still, I abhor the thought of my girls apologizing some day to their kids for their anger, moodiness, pessimism, procrastination, criticism, messy house, etc. with the explanation, "Sorry, but it's something I learned from your grandpa."
4. When Rachelle and I were expecting Brielle, I expressed fear #4 to my friend, Tracy Gunneman, like this. "When I look to the Bible for hope as a future father, I keep seeing that all these spiritual giants really sucked as parents." Tracy's inspired response? "And you know what, Mike? You're going to suck at it too." Beat. I giggled, checking to be sure I'd heard him right. He nodded. "But by God's grace, they're going to be OK." This prophetic utterance was the breach in the dam of my parenting perfectionism. Nothing goes perfectly, not then, not now, not ever. But God still does His thing. And it's going to be OK. (I do still fear that Ashlyn will take after Great-grandma Eve and eat poisonous fruit.)
   
5. Did you ever have a friend move away, and somehow you created more quality time and intentional communication than when they lived across town? Kids have been like that move to Rachelle and me. We have to plan more carefully, but we actually have weekly date nights and quarterly overnight getaways, things that we never got around to before the kids came. The luxury cruise ship of convenient time together has gone the way of the Titanic, so we cling to these couple times as our life raft of intimacy, and it's cozier here. What's more, the common focus of our kids brings us together with a less egocentric focus than before kids. Rachelle's commitment to our couplehood as top priority has all but eliminated this old fear.
6. I have redefined, "have a life." My old definition was pretty narrow, anyhow. I'm actually just scared of what sort of life I might have lived had I limited myself with all these fears.

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Questions I'm asking myself:

• If "perfect love casts out all fear" (1 John 4:18), to what extent does the persistence of these fears reveal a lack of love in me? To what extent might these fears interfere with my love of my family?
• But it seems like responsible parents must be somewhat fearful. Doesn't God fear what might become of us? To what extent should I seek to purge my heart of fears for my kids?