'God knows a lot of stuff, but...' she said

Elbow-to-elbow in the Sentra today, questions floated forward, a merciful diversion to savor before the inevitable backseat brawl.

"Daddy, do animals go to heaven?" asked Ashyln.

"I don't know, Ashie. A lot of people think so. The Bible doesn't talk about that at all." My real hunch is that whatever is on the other side will bear little resemblance to what we know here. I suspect that we will live as we never imagined possible, more ourselves and less all about ourselves than ever. And in the midst of that mind-blowing aliveness, the presence or absence of pets will be the least of our worries, if we have any worries at all.

"Hannah's daddy says no," Melía offered. More chutzpah than I've got, that Hannah's daddy, I thought, wondering if my waffling over the pet cemetery question was more about tact or timidity.

"But he doesn't know," said Brielle. She attacked the unsubstantiated rumor as eagerly as I slap scary chain emails with Snopes-linked replies-to-all.

"God knows," Ashlyn said.

"That's right, Ashie-lu," said I.

"God knows a lot of stuff, but he doesn't want to put it all in the Bible."

No joke, Ashie.

Somewhere in late childhood I came to realize that God was bigger than my little brand of Christianity, that all that could be said of the Divine was far more than any single denomination could articulate. Sometime later it became clear that God was bigger than Christianity itself. How could anyone see a Gandhi or a Dalai Lama and say such a soul was godless? Even more recent has been my acceptance that not even a tome as remarkable as the Bible can be the final word on a Being who ignites and inhabits universes.

OK, so maybe I'm a little bit slow.

Certainly, much slower than Ashie.

'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.

'Everyone is a baby,' she said

This morning over Cheerios, Brielle was estimating God's age.

"He's a hundred," she said.

"Even older than that, sweet Brie," said I.

"Yeah, He's a thousand."

"Even older than that. Infinity."

"Yeah, He's infinity, 'cause that's the number that you can't count to."

Also at issue this morning, on the other end of the spectrum, was how old we are. I must have started it when I said, "Ashlyn, you're my sweet, good Ashie-baby."

"But I'm not a baby for real life," Ashlyn countered.

"No, you are a big girl. But you are still my baby."

Ashlyn's eyes widened. "Actually, everyone is a baby."

"Everyone?"

"Yeah! Everyone is a baby. Even you are a baby. Because we are all little--kind of little--and only God is big."

A big thought for a little Ashie-baby. One this Daddy-baby needs to remember.

'Is God resting today?' she said

Driving down the mountain toward Vacation Bible School one afternoon, Ashlyn asked,

"Is God resting today?"

"Wow. That's a great question, Ashie-love. Um, Jesus says in the Bible that God is always working--listening to us, helping us, taking care of us. God doesn't really get to rest. He works every day."

"But He did rest one day!" Ashlyn cried. She must have thought I'd forgotten.

It should be said that infant Ashlyn was our angel baby, because she actually did the only two things babies really need to do: eat and sleep. She is still rather adept at this pair of simple pleasures.

She relishes her grub with commentary worthy of the top foodie magazines (at least the ones read by preschoolers). The first time she ate kiwifuit, at age two-and-change, she said, "Yum! Kiwi tastes like canteloupe and grapes." (And it does. I'd never thought of it, but I couldn't beat that description now.)

And even though she precedes them with tormented screaming and insanity, Ashlyn is our one child who still does naps. We've long known known that her crescendo of ferocity is just the storm beform the calm. Just this week, she confessed to her appalled sisters, "I do like naps."

Ashlyn plays hard, eats well, sings loud, fights strong. And she rests.

Was she looking for divine company now on this late afernoon, Someone as passionate, alive, brilliant and busy as she, Who also knows when it's time to stop?

"Yes, Ashie, you are right. The Bible also says He rested for a whole day when he was done making everything."

Exonerated, but no more satisfied than I with the paradox in the air, she paused. "Daddy, when is He going to rest again?"

Delighted, I laughed aloud.

"Daddy! When is He going to rest again?" She was urgent now, demanding to be taken seriously. And I was taking her seriously. It was just such a beautiful question that my joy at being related to her and the depth to which she had stumped me only knew how to come out as a giddy giggle.

"I don't know, Ashlyn. I'm just laughing because that is a very good question. It is such a good question that I think I will think about it for many days before I try to answer it. That is one of the best and hardest questions I have ever heard in my whole life. I'm very proud of you for asking it."

When will God rest again?

When we stop screwing up? When life stops giving us owies? When the human experiment is finally over and we're living out its happy ending in Paradise? Or will keeping Paradise Paradise take more God-work than ever with us on board, like a parent trying to keep the house tidy with a herd of small children on the loose?

Lord, you're the God of rest. You know--the One with the easy yoke and light burden. The One who made it a rule for us to chill every seventh day. (Great idea, BTW.)

You're the God of rest. But when will you get any Yourself?

Ashlyn and I want to know.

'I wonder how God puts the baby inside,' she said

Thursday I talked Brielle into snagging a Del Taco strawberry shake to share. (This delicacy beats anything Starbucks sells and for well under three bucks.)

It didn't take excessive persuasion. But healthy girl that she is, she was helping me justify the purchase as we pulled out of the drive-through.

"Daddy, this strawberry shake is good for you--a little bit good for you."

"Well, yeah, it does have some good things in it, like protein, and calcium, and a little bit of vitamin C and fiber from the strawberries." (OK, so it is a VERY little bit of these latter--but part of the beauty of this shake truly is how many real frozen strawberries they blend in. You really must try one.)

"I know," she said.

She does, too. We often talk nutrients--and lack thereof.

"But it also has a lot of---"

"Sugar," Brielle finished my hackneyed critique for me. "Yeah." A wistful sigh.

"It has a lot of fat too," said I.

"A lot of people like to be skinny," mused Brielle.

A brief fear that our nutritional conversations had begun warping her body image poked its nose into my chest. "Yeah, they do, Brielle." I clung to matter-of-fact-ness.

She took the topic elsewhere, mercifully. "Pregnant ladies are fat and skinny."

"Verdad, niñita."

"They're skinny on top and they're fat in the middle. Because they have a baby inside their tummy."

I breathed a couple gentle laughs.

"I wonder how God puts the baby inside their tummy." (So much for merciful topic changes.)

"You wonder what?" I asked, feeling suddenly desperate.

"I know God puts the baby in their tummy, but I wonder how He does that."

I considered going there, but decided quickly that I lacked the time and preparation to do so competently. (OK, and I lacked the guts too. But honestly, if holding a cell phone to one's ear is illegal while driving, shouldn't having "the talk" with a 5-year-old be too?)

"That's pretty crazy, huh? We'll have to go to the library and get a book about that."

---

So...any great book ideas, dear friends? Seriously.

'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 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 - Trinity talk

Driving home from church yesterday, I made a comment about something Jesus could do.

From the back of the minivan, Brielle corrected me (believe it or don't): "God."

"That's right, Jesus and God."

"No--God," she insisted.

"Jesus is God," I said.

Ashlyn weighed in. "No he's not!"

I hitched up my theological pants, drew in a deep breath, and set out to explain the Trinity to 4- and 5-year-olds. "Jesus is God's Son, but he is also part of God."

"No, he's not. Jesus is not part of God. Even though they do the same work."

"Brielle, is your pointer finger your hand?"

"Yeah."

"And is your thumb your hand too?"

"Yeah."

"It's kind of like that. Your fingers are all different, but they are all part of your hand. And Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit are all God. And like you said, they help each other do the same work."

"Oh."

"Or maybe it's more like ice and water and steam. Ice is water that is frozen. And water is water that is just water. And steam is water that is evaporating. But they're all water--just in different states."

Sometimes I wonder how in the same sentence I can remember to limit my vocabulary enough to utter something like "water is water that is water," yet drop an odd homonym like "states" at the end. This is why I never taught Kindergarten.

Brielle giggled. "Not in different states!" She said "states" in that high-to-low pitch sequence that means, "You're being silly, Daddy!" (I hear that sequence often because my daughters think I am silly often--even more often than I attempt to be.)

I laughed back. "I don't mean a state like California or Texas or Alaska, but like water in a different way of being, a different circumstance, a different condition."

"Conditioner?!" she laughed. Now her twin sisters were laughing too. "Daddy, you said 'water in a different conditioner'!"

Mercifully, my Trinity lesson had ended, and on a silly note, a note of comical ambiguity. Maybe a pun is one more Godhead metaphor.

And maybe silliness is an underused path to God.

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.

Quote of the day - What did you learn?

Tuesday nights a buddy or two and I hang out at a coffee shop to catch up, read a few verses from Matthew and pray for each other. Sometimes I get home in time to hug and kiss daughters before they crash. Melía is always one of these non-sleeping beauties awake to greet me after Bible study.

"Daddy!" she squealed when through her cracked door she saw me walk down the hall.

I plopped on her bed, squeezed her tight, kissed her hair, and said, "I love you so much, Melía."

She asked:

"Daddy, what did you learn about Jesus tonight?"

"What?" I asked, incredulous.

"That's what Mommy told me, that you were learning on Jesus."

I only got a short ways into my response about the greatest commandments in Matthew 23, how the first was to love God with all my heart and soul and strength, and the second is to love my neighbor as myself.

But sitting there looking into those big blue eyes staring out from under those self-cut bangs, I think I felt--if but for a second--how good that twofold command can feel to live out.

Padre nuestro, part 3

The Lord's Prayer (in Spanish) is the last thing my kids hear from me at night -- at least the last thing before they hear, "If your foot touches the floor you're on time out. I love you. Go to sleep. I'll miss you till the morning. Do you want to go to time out? Buenas noches, Melía. OK, I'm getting it. Cow's milk or soy milk? I DID warm it! OK, I'll dry it. There. Now go to sleep. Te quiero muchísimo, preciosa. Melía! You're on time out...."

OK, so the Lord's Prayer is ONE of the things they hear from me in the last half-hour of their day.

Anyway, I was sharing what this nocturnal last rite looks like on a typical evening, and then began reflecting on what the prayer means to me as I'm saying it.

Don't let any of this lead you to believe that I am actually thinking about the prayer each night. Some nights, it registers as gibberish even more to me than to my monolingual daughters, just a familiar game-over chant tantamount to the fat lady's song. Sometimes I literally forget the words and have to rehearse and start over to get to the Amén.

But often enough, a phrase strikes a chord, a word revives a dead branch of my soul. To use Jars of Clay's verbiage, the prayer can be "shelter from the rain or the rain to wash me away." Those nights, the words come alive on me. Or something in me comes alive on them.

Sometimes not. But often enough, I reconnect with the One who taught me to pray this way just enough to keep trying.

Santificado sea tu nombre (Hallowed be your name)

Kneeling beside my daughters' beds -- or scooting back and forth between them -- I realize once in a while that this is more than an acknowledgement that God is amazingly holy. That God is holy is plain enough to them, and to me.

They could tell you that God is taller than the roof, that He can fly, that He knows everything, is everywhere and can do anything. He is strong enough to carry all of us and our sleeping loved ones to heaven, and will when the time comes.

I could tell you how much God has grown up in my mind since I had all the answers, somewhere around adolescence. Bigger than my denomination, bigger than the Bible, bigger than Christianity, He is much taller than the ceiling under which I've often kept Him.

He is holy, and wholly other. Unbound by my expectations, unlimited by my anthropomorphizing bent, unaltered by the glass through which I see Him dimly.

I get this.

But the prayer is not saying, "Yo, God. Guess what? You are one holy Deity." This would be redundant, though not totally unhelpful. We do need reminding of the basics. Often.

But the prayer does not do this. It uses "sea" (read "SAY-uh"), the subjunctive mood of the verb be, which is nearly unheard of in English. It's suggesting, wishing, lobbying in favor of the Heavenly Father's name being holy. Maybe it's something more like, "God I want your name to be holy. I wish it were holy. Would that it were holy."

Is this blasphemous? I mean, of all things that need no intercessory prayer, you'd think God's holiness would be one of them.

But want to know why I do intercede for the holiness of God's name? Because to my princesses, I bear that name. I have the radical blessing of being "father," the metaphor God was crazy enough to use for Himself throughout the New Testament.

Like I said last time, I find peace saying, "Our Father in the heavens," because it reminds me that my kids have a Father more reliable than me. But the fact remains--their relationship to their Heavenly Father hangs heavily on my portrayal of the role of "father" in their world. If the earthly father is condemning, they might assume, how much more judgmental must the omniscient One be? If earthly Daddy is prone to rage, just how scary must the Daddy in Heaven, in all His power, be on a bad day?

Father God forbid.

God of Daddyhood, with all that I am, I dream that my fatherhood might do more good than harm to the hallowed name of "father." Whatever mistakes I may make, whether indecency, bankruptcy, idocy or whatever -- just let my girls grow up knowing that being in the arms of a Father is a good thing.

I don't know why you chose "Father" to sum up Who You are to us, Lord. I'm honored and terrified by it. But tonight, I beg You: Please let Your name, the name "Father" -- as I embody it -- be holy.

Padre nuestro, part 2

Last post, I described what it looks like when I'm praying the Lord's Prayer (el Padre Nuestro) with my girls at night. This time, I want to begin sharing some of the things that have gone on in my head as I've said that prayer with them.

As a teen, I was devoutly anti-ritualistic. People repeating the Lord's Prayer in unison seemed ridiculous, and totally missed the point, I was convinced. Praying exactly the words Jesus gave his disciples seemed about as literalistic and lame as someone wearing a tunic and walking around with fisherman in an attempt to do what Jesus did. Obviously, I contended, Jesus was offering us a pattern to follow, not a liturgy to repeat.

These days, I've come to appreciate memorized prayers. After a day of work and parenting, sometimes it's nice not to have to drum up a prayer that is natural yet appropriate, heartfelt while setting a good theological example for the little listening souls.

Actually, we pray both, beginning with homemade prayers from the Mommy and the Daddy and whoever else is game. But often, the prayer that ushers in the most peace--and not just because it's the one closer to the end of the exhausting bedtime dance--is the one that comes straight from the 1960 Reina-Valera (think Spanish King James) Version of Matthew 6:9-13.

Padre nuestro, que estás en los cielos.... (Our Father, which art in heaven...)

Thank God I am not the only Daddy they have. Hard as it is to explain that I'm their father and so is God, what a relief to know my limited resources are but the hint of the aroma of the crust on the tip of the iceberg of their strength. After hours trying to love, discipline, feed, teach, referee, encourage, correct, clean up after and play with my beautiful brood of princesses, it is a grace to realize that at the end of the day, I do not have to be king.

"Our father." In these words, my wife and girls and I are on our knees together, equally childish, equally helpless to defend or make sense of ourselves. Not Brielle, Melía, Ashlyn, but it's me, oh Lord standing in the need of prayer. We all need Your Fatherhood.

With one Father, in a sense we are siblings. Sometimes the idea of being big brother to my girls seems more desirable to me even than Daddy. It allows me to love, protect and guide while acknowledging that the little ones and I have one Source. More than teacher to them, I am peer tutor, still a student, as needy as ever for wisdom from the Master.

I've always been intimidated by Bible heroes' abysmal records as fathers. (See Fathering fears, then and now.) Adam, born in perfection, raises a murderer. Noah, the one who found favor in the eyes of the Lord, ends up cursing a son and his descendants after waking up on the wrong side of the bed. David, man after God's own heart, raises one son who rapes a half-sister and another who starts a bloody rebellion against David.

I was talking through this uninspiring "cloud of witnesses" with a friend and mentor named Tracy. "I get a little freaked out realizing that most of the biggest heroes in the Bible really sucked at being fathers," I laughed nervously.

Tracy looked back at me, never missing a beat, and uttered the words that may have done more than anything else to put my heart at rest. "You're going to suck at it too, Mike." (Did he actually say that? I wondered.) "And by grace, they are going to be OK anyway."

"Padre nuestro." I am so deeply grateful that these little girls are not stuck with just this frail human father.

They have One who is in the heavens. And the old-school Spanish reminds me that it is not just "Heaven" singular, that far-away paradise where God sits on a chaise lounge with his iced tea while we suffer down in our ghetto of sin. It is "los cielos," "the heavens"--all three of them, including the sky above us and the air around us, even the breath I breathed to say this prayer. He is the Father whose kingdom is not of this world, but absolutely is in it--a kingdom within us, among us.

Our true Father is in heaven. And He is closer to us than our skin.

Thanks, Lord. I needed that.

Of faith and flying reindeers

Driving home in the minivan, still 6 weeks away from Halloween, Christmas was on my daughter's mind.

"Daddy, can Santa's reindeers really fly, for real life?"

I sensed this was the start of another high-stakes conversation, about far more than Rudolph and friends.

"That's a hard question, Brielle," I answered, wondering what skeptical kindergarteners had planted these seeds of doubt in my 5-year-old's mind. Maybe it was her 5th grade buddy? I went with an opinion poll--raw, objective data. "I know a lot of people say that Santa's reindeer fly. But other people don't believe that."

I know how to avoid taking a stand on an important issue as well as any good politician.

Quiet in the minivan.

"I've never seen Santa's reindeer fly, Brielle."

"But Daddy, you have never seen his reindeers at all."

"That's right. I haven't. So if I haven't seen them, I can't know if they can fly or not." I paused, trying to decide if this dialog should be connected at all to any larger questions. I was pretty sure it should not. But the old Bible teacher in me couldn't resist.

"Some people only believe what they can see. They don't believe anything is real except what they can see. Just like with God. Some people like you and me believe God is real even though we can't see Him. But other people don't believe in Him.

"I believe that lots of things that I can't see are real," I continued.

"Why, Daddy?"

"Well, Brie, my eyes are very small, and the world is so big--I think there must be a lot of things in such a big world that are real even if my little eyes can't see them."

"I only believe in God," Brielle said, all smiles.

"Yes, you do, my Brie. So do I."

A quarter mile of mountain road passed under our gray Odyssey as we neared home, my better sense scolding me for having a chat about faith in God at the same time we discussed the plausibility of airborne deer. But isn't it valid to compare two myths believed in and experienced joyfully by some and laughed at by others? Is faith not required for both? There would be time later to explain how the God stories we teach her are more intellectually defensible than those about St. Nick on the North Pole--not that I am ready to make that case just yet. I have years before she gets around to asking that.

On second thought, maybe I don't. Maybe I better get to the library and check out some C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, the best apologies I can find. Isn't there a kids edition of Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith?

While I questioned myself, Brielle was devising a plan of her own. "Daddy, this Christmas Eve, I'm going to go to bed in the front room on the couch. And I'm going to sleep a little bit and stay awake a little bit."

"Why, Brie?" I asked, feigning confusion. I knew where this was going.

"I'm going to find out if Santa's reindeers are real or if they are not. And then I'm going to tell all of you guys." She was very proud of this.

"That's good, my Brie," I said, appreciative of her scientific method, the show-me spirit inherited from her Missourian grandpa, but hoping she'd forget this plan by Christmas. Since she probably would not, I was also wondering what her odds of staying asleep in the front room the entire night before Christmas might be. For a second I think visions of Benadryl danced in my head.

"I'm going to find out if they really do fly or if they just walk a long ways," she announced. A beat. "My guess is that they ride from the North Pole on an airplane, and then go back to the North Pole on that airplane with Santa. And that's what I want to do."

"You want to go to the North Pole on an airplane?"

"Yes--but with my family," she said.

This was the most liberal exegesis of the Father Christmas narrative I had ever heard from her. For better or worse, the demythologizing of the sacred Santa scripture has already begun.

What will be next?

Helping Daddy

One thing I love about my children is how desperately they yearn to be helpful. I have three lovely assistants for all my screw driving, tooth brushing, seatbelt buckling, word processing, DVD cleaning, tea steeping, floor sweeping, needle raking, laundry folding, cake baking, grocery shopping, Band-Aid sticking, and doll hair trimming needs.

With all this help, it’s a wonder I manage to come up with things to do with my excess leisure time.

Or something like that.

Of course, the well-intentioned help of my dear ones proves to be a routine disaster. It costs me time, money and patience. With three little women at work, less things get done in more time generating more mess and waste than even I in all my advanced klutziness could manage on my own.

Working with their help is inefficiency on steroids.

And it is beautiful.

In one of his videos, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People author Stephen Covey relates his frustrating experience working toward delegating lawn care to his son. All he asked for were two things: green and clean. Simple as that seemed to Daddy Covey, his son consistently let things slide. Green faded to tan. Trash piled up. It was taking Covey more time and stress to supervise the job his son was doing badly than it would have taken to do it well himself.

Days into the experiment, Covey was ready to fire his new gardener. But he pulled himself aside and reviewed his real purpose in the whole process: “Raising boys, not grass.”

The young gardener kept his job.

Having my children help me makes an abomination of my proverbial lawn. I get scratched DVDs, a broken computer keyboard, eggshells in my birthday cake. I take a full 15 minutes to load the minivan while they buckle their own car seats. It takes longer still if I commit the atrocity of starting the buckling myself, because then they have to undo my work and redo it themselves. It makes me crazy.

But what am I here to raise—pretty turf or helpful souls?

I have often wondered why God lets us help Him. He could self-reveal directly to people and circumvent all our human distortions of Who He is. He could feed the world with a couple loaves of Roman Meal and a few cans of tuna instead of waiting on us to share our own loaves and fishes. He could finance mission work using some of His own cattle on His own thousand hills without relying on the fickleness of our generosity. He could realize social justice with His own omnipotent hand rather than suffering the sight of our clinging to the status quo.

It must make Him sick sometimes. You can hear His impatience in the voice of the Old Testament prophets. If I get anxious waiting for my girls to buckle their seatbelts, how much more desperate He must be for us to hurry up and do the right thing for people. He cries with all the victims of all the suffering we allow to go on. This is more than a pretty lawn we’re talking about.

If the Father wants it done right, why doesn’t He just do it Himself?

Maybe this was part of Jesus’ third temptation—bow and enjoy the convenience of having things right in the world without the hassle of having to work one by one, day by excruciating day, with people who are so slow, so stubborn, so immature. Maybe it is a temptation He has to keep fending off. Or maybe He faced it and conquered it on the day He settled on the insane decision to create people in His image.

Whatever the case, I’m sure of one thing. God is definitely much more interested in growing people—with all its steroid-size inefficiency—than in getting things done right or quickly or efficiently or any of those other things I lust for when I’m letting my children help their Daddy.

I need to learn from Him the patience that relishes baby steps in my children despite the mess they make while they are learning. I want to delight in their desire to help without regard for how unhelpful their efforts may seem. I long to celebrate what they are learning to do, even when it takes longer and turns out worse than I could have done on my own.

I am here to raise girls, not grass.

Bedside prayer

Last night I put Brielle to bed an hour late.

This is hardly an aberration. But usually it happens because they’ve fought more, kicked the pajamas off an extra time or two, gritted the teeth harder than normal through tooth-brushing time, and come up with more creative excuses to keep us waiting on them once they’re in bed.

But this time, child and parent both lost an hour of sleep just because I could not resist lingering with Brielle for the sublime conversation she had to offer.

The twins were down, and Mommy was down the mountain at her women’s Bible study, leaving just Daddy and the girl who first named me that. Kneeling by her bed, I had just told the parable of the talents, and had broken down how God shares so much good stuff with us, and wants us to use it, not bury it.

Brielle was pensive. “We use a lot of God’s stuff,” she observed.

“Verdad, Brielle. All the stuff we have is God’s, and He likes when we use it for good things,” I agreed.

“Yeah.” She laughed and stared ahead, lips pursed, her deep thinking evidenced by the tiny movements of her cheeks and jaw. “And God is even a girl too.”

I smiled. “Yeah, Brielle. God is way too big to be just a boy or just a girl. He is everything,” I chimed in, delighted that she had already surpassed most of the Christian church in her thinking on the gender of God, but wondering how.

Somehow the topic turned to the Second Coming of Christ, more popular than ever since losing two Papas and a kitty. I said something about the nonlinear growth we would experience when Jesus came and completed our ultimate transformation. Only I think I told her we would not do bad things anymore or have ouchies anymore because Jesus would do magic on us.

At this, her eyes glowed, cheeks swelling the way Ashlyn’s do when she is imagining herself to be a bride. “I can’t wait for God to do stuff to us. He might even give us wings, I think.”

“Maybe He will. Or maybe He will teach us to fly without wings, like Jesus can.” I have this irrational burden to prevent her from disillusionment if heaven’s transformations do not include wings.

Presently we were on to angels. She pointed at a spot on her pillow about six inches from where she sat. “Our angel is RIGHT-THERE,” she said, the last two words running together. She grinned—“RIGHT-THERE,” and giggled. “Our angel is right next to us and God is in our heart. And God is everywhere. God is even in my shirt.” She pulled her pajama top away from her and spoke through the neck toward her belly button. “Hi, God! Where are you? God! Where are you?” She giggled some more, and then turned back to a more sober question.

“Why is God everywhere but we can’t see Him?”

No response from Daddy beyond a mystified sigh.

“Daddy, why is God everywhere but we can’t see Him?”

I wasn’t going to get away with pleading the fifth. “I don’t know, Brielle.” I searched my heart for what I really believe about this, and realized that to this question I have no satisfying answer. Another sigh. “Maybe it’s because God is so big and strong and bright that it would scare us if we really saw Him. It would hurt our eyes. We can see God in people when they love like Jesus does. But sometimes I really do wish I could see God more right now with my eyes.”

“I think when we go to heaven God will give us eyes that are strong so we can see really bright stuff and it won’t be ouchy.”

“Sí, Brielle. I think He will. Jesus even told us that if our eyes are good, our whole body will be full of light. But if they are bad our whole body will be full of darkness.” As cool as that verse is to me, it was kind of a non sequitur here, I realized, so I didn’t bother preaching it further.

Brielle offered me another paradigm. “I think God is like electricity.”

I liked this. “You do? Why?”

“Because electricity has power and God has power.”

“Yeah, Brielle. That’s right. And even though you can’t see electricity, it works—just like God.”

“Uh-huh,” said Brielle, relieved, I’m sure, that I was catching on.

Somewhere around 10 p.m, the back door opened and Rachelle walked in. Sheepish about how late I had our daughter awake, I moved toward prayer.

Actually, we moved our prayer on to its next breath.

Birth control

If we could bottle the first twenty minutes of our children's waking hours today, we'd have a hot new birth control product on our hands.

The house is quiet. Fresh snow carpets the ground outside, powdery and delicate. Our angels sleep in heavenly peace. Rachelle and I are dressed for the day, and at 6:00, it's time to get the angels up and ready for preschool.

I decide to take a gentle approach to waking Brielle, hoping to sneak jeans on her before she is awake enough to know she's not going to get a skirt. I slide the covers up from her feet to keep her torso warm, pull off her jammies and pull on the Dora the Explorer undies. She begins a squeaking protest, barely registering on the Richter scale. On go the jeans--lacking even sparkles or flowers to atone for their nonskirthood--and she is still half asleep, only conscious enough to crescendo the squeaking a bit. Socks are next, and she only kicks a little, but is clearly building momentum.

As if it would help stem the rising tidal wave of angst I saw on the horizon, I begin sweet-talking Brielle. "I love you, big sweet Brie. Buenos días, niñita. Te quiero mucho. You get to go to school today!"

"I don't WANT to go to school!" she whines, wriggling away from the second sock.

So much for sweet talk. I change my tack from gentle to swift and pull a shirt over her head. She screams and spins over to avoid it, but I grab a wrist and poke it through the armhole, and do the same on the other side before she can pull the first arm out. I repeat the feat with the brown pullover sweater to a soundtrack of fierce screaming protest.

Awake now, she takes her vociferous petition about the inadequacy of our wardrobe choice into the bathroom, where Mommy is finishing her hair. After a couple minutes of loud fussing, I relocate her to timeout in the rocking chair in the dark front room corner. "Brielle, you do not need to fuss like that. You are on timeout until you choose to be flexible about your clothes." I walk back to the hallway. "Some little girls don't have ANY clothes to wear." I can't resist the hackneyed guilt trip.

I begin a similar process with Melía, who is always the last one asleep, and in my favor this morning, slowest to wake. I get almost her whole outfit on before she begins to stir, and she fails to begin crying until she is out of bed and walking out of the room. At that point, she makes up for lost time, beseeching Mommy to hold her, complaining of her sorry state, lamenting woes too woeful for words and only expressible by pitiful shrieks.

Ashlyn, meanwhile, begins the wrestling, squawking and thrashing the moment Rachelle begins to dress her. Always the passionate one, she puts her strong little soul into the outcry against the injustice of these predawn exercises. (Ashlyn, that is. Rachelle manages to keep her outcries under her breath for now.) She bucks and curls and beats the bed against the cruelty of being dressed for school by her mother.

The chorus of agony echoes through the house. Hell hath no fury like preschoolers being dressed for school, and the weeping and gnashing of teeth are an infernal three-part harmony. On behalf of the neighbors, I give thanks for our new double-pane windows' ability to not only keep cold out, but to keep sound in.

Back in the front room, Brielle has had enough time to calm down, but has spent it instead getting riled up. "I HATE these clothes!" she screams. I remind her at close range in my authoritative voice that she will be on timeout until she chooses to be flexible about the clothes she wears--and that she will never be off time out while she talks like that. She avoids my gaze, squirming on the rocking chair and falling out of it. She knocks over a glass pot of stylishly dead twigs.

"I'm sorry, Daddy!" she says through her torment.

"It's OK, Brielle. They didn't break. They're dead already anyway." I hope this is the break we needed, that chink in the armor of her strong will, the blue patch between thunderheads that signals the end of the storm.

It is not.

The chaos continues until it moves mercifully out into the minivan to be delivered down the mountain, a journey during which it metamorphoses into the beauty and joy that are the Bennie babes' hallmark. They pass for the next nine hours into the care of people who would never suspect that our angels greeted the day with such fury.

Only a parent gets so thoroughly chastised so early in the morning for so routine a process. "I'm only trying to love them, to get them ready to learn today! They love school once they get there! What am I supposed to do here?" I ask myself.

I make many mistakes every day. But never, until I became a father of three, was I made so audibly aware of them in the day's first twenty minutes.

This, my friends, is birth control at its finest. Candlelight, soft music and champagne notwithstanding, any prescience of this morning could stop the most ardent husband from making advances on his wife.

If I were God, looking ahead at any given day of our whiny, ungrateful lives, I'd find birth control enough to skip Day 6 of Creation. Somehow, He did not. I am glad.

I am also glad that I didn't see this morning coming back when we chose to have a family, because at the point in my journey, I would not have seen the blessings of parenthood clearly enough to take the plunge. Ignorance is bliss. It is also good for the survival of the species.

I still wonder how a God who saw it all before it happened could be wild enough a lover to bear children on a silent, snow-blanketed planet that once slept in heavenly peace.

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 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?

Father love, part 4: Affection

Suddenly, she was there. I felt the rough blanket wrapped around her tiny body on my bare forearms, the arms that were all that was holding her six-some pounds in the air--unbelievably. She was still now, breathing in, breathing out, steady in the calm that followed the storm of her emergence. Pinned against my chest, her steady stillness flowed in, swirling with my fear and overcoming it. Her impossibly blue eyes stared straight up into my soul.

It was love at first snuggle.

Since the first time I held my daughter, closeness, affection has been one of the things I most love about daddyhood. If I can hug them, it's all going to be OK. Despite the many flaws that Rachelle and I have, one thing they will not be telling their shrink as they lie on the couch someday is that their parents never hugged them or gave them any affection.

For better and for worse, my little girls have no personal space. Even touchy huggy people like my wife and I feel claustrophobia setting in when we've got three noses and six hands in the middle of our cooking, gift-wrapping, bill-paying, cleaning or writing project. There are moments when we just wish they would find a diversion that doesn't require being within inches of our every move.

But mostly, we like it. I sometimes worry that we like it too much. Tons of us have lived the childhood annoyance of that overly affectionate relative or friend whose expressions of love nearly smothered us. I would like to say that every kiss, squeeze and tickle I gave my kids were an intentional, selfless gift. But more often, I find myself hugging them just because they're so dang hugable. Sometimes the affection I give is for my sake, not for theirs, which strikes me as almost exploitative. Those hugs are probably lost on them, emotionally speaking, while they help me get through the frustrations of parenting and life. Is that OK?

I wonder how often God sends us hugs when we aren't asking for them. We're busy building our block castles, dressing our paper dolls, scribbling drawings that only a parent could love. Suddenly, uninvited, He wraps us in His love, sending a purring cat, a needed email, a familiar scent, a tree silhouetted against the setting sun, a warm breeze, a song lyric, or just the feeling we're not alone.

I am clear that God is infinitely more selfless than I am, and snuggles up to us in these ways more for our sake than for His. But can't the selfless servant-heartedness of God's affection for us peacefully coexist with the fact that He just loves to love us? Does He enjoy giving us the divine equivalent of hugs, even when they're lost on us? Isn't there something to be said for a Father whose expressions of love outshine His children's ability to appreciate them?

I hope so, because right now I feel like sneaking into the sleeping twins' room and kissing the tops of their curly heads--whether they like it or not.

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Questions I'm asking myself:

• How important is it that affection be unselfish? How unselfish should it be?
  
• To what degree is our need to give and receive affection a part of the image of God?
  

I love everybody who loves my kids

Thinking back through the holidays, I'm realizing I pretty much only like to be with people who like to be with my children.

I really hope that friends I had in the BC (Before Children) years did not have such a narrow focus, because before I had a child, I did not like anyone's children. I was not even that hot on the childhood version of myself and my brothers. While others idealized the innocence of childhood, I remembered being cruel, narcissistic, insensitive and judgmental. (Really, I was even worse in these areas then than now!)

So if you don't like being with my children, or anyone's children, and are just reading this to enhance whatever method of birth control you're currently employing, please, feel ye not bad. You've got sympathy here, my brother/sister. From there, only by the grace of God (and the instincts of parenthood) have come I.

It's just that, reviewing December, the common thread of all the people I really loved hanging out with was a genuine affection for my little girls. I never imagined myself choosing friends based on who my kids clicked with, and while that does happen, it's not what I'm talking about. I simply like all people--big or small, young or old, rich or poor, red, brown, yellow, black or white--who realize that Brielle, Melía and Ashlyn are priceless princess gifts from God, and who treat them as such. People like this are the Chosen Ones who get it, who've seen the Light, who stand in right relationship to the Truth that my girls RULE!

Can I get a witness?

No, but there really is a sort of religious fanaticism to this litmus test. Dig my daughters and you pass--well done thou good and faithful servant; here's your harp. Everyone else, weeping and gnashing of teeth for you; here's your accordion.

At first this seemed analogous to God's insistence that we love His Son, the whole "No man comes to the Father but by me" thing, which some Christians love to quote to prove that we are the only ones God really likes. (A strikingly effective way to endear people to the faith, don't you think?) And from that angle I didn't really like God or myself very much. Being so infatuated with one's begotten (even if it is the Only Begotten) that you doom all non-fans of the begotten to second-rate friendship or eternal alienation just didn't seem to be what Jesus would do.

But maybe that is the wrong angle. Maybe God's fatherly fixation is more on people loving His children--all umpteen billion of them who've ever lived. Loving Jesus is great, because it betters our odds of finding love for the Father. But surely God is more self-secure than I am and has less of a compulsive need than I do for folks to love his child.

Perhaps God and I are more alike in this way: We both have invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears in each one of our kids, and anyone who treats them as less valuable than we see them to be just doesn't fit in. We're both kind of nutty about our children; through the screaming and snot and poop, we see this beautiful perfection, this image of God, which may be more fantasy than reality. But we're passionate about that fantasy, and remember, we're nuts enough to believe that it might be real. And the more we get into our kids--the more that we give of ourselves to enrich them and show them love--the more fanatical we become about other people seeing them as we do.

Or, maybe it's just that I feel more comfortable around people who don't mind a half-full potty being brought out into the living room. I don't know.

But I do know this. My girls RULE. (Can I get an "Amen"?)

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Questions I'm asking myself:

- How can I transfer my generous Dad's eye view of my kids to some of God's snotty, poopy, screaming adult children of whom I take a more dim view?

- Why are some people able to have so much love for children without having had their own, while others, like me, don't find that love until they are parents themselves?