Essay 7: Cages

A short post today. Homework beckons.

I’ve written recently about Benjamin’s amusement and fascination with the great outdoors. When nothing else will soothe, Nature answers the call.

I don’t think it’d be an overstatement or an oversimplification to say that I’ve spoiled him. I’ve ruined him with the beauty of Nature. We’ve noticed that in those places where he used to be content, he is learning that an outward, audible expression of listlessness will garner him a trip outside. To look, to admire, to stare, to absorb.

And so either he used to be content just to lie back pensive, or he never was and he’s simply learned to express it.

And he’s learned quite accurately, because Daddy really is quick to rush him outside.

I was remarking about this to a friend. A stranger, really. It was our first meeting. And he has several kids.

“It’s the weirdest thing,” he declared. “I find myself walking these moonlit street here in The Village at 2 in the morning with our youngest. She’ll do the same thing. She’ll get… ornery. As soon as we step outside, it stops.”

I’m glad to know I’m not alone in my discovery.

And what it really all comes down to is this- we were not created to be permanently indoors. God created man and then he placed him in a Garden- a garden that He made first.

It’s quite beautiful, that first chapter of Genesis. And because we’re not reading it in the original Hebrew, a lot of the poetry and symmetry is lost on us. Let me explain.

If we were to chart the days of Creation out themselves, we’d see a great symmetry. It’d look like this:

Day 1: Heaven and earth                       Day 4: Sun, moon, stars

Day 2: Water and sky                             Day 5: Fish and birds

Day 3: Land and vegetation                 Day 6: Animals and man

Did you catch it- the order to it all? There’s a great organization by the great Organizer. The first three days, God creates places, and then in the next three, He creates the things that go in those places.

Do you see it?

On Day 1, God created the heavens. On Day 4, He created the things that go in the heavens- He created the sun, moon, and stars. On Day 2, He created water and sky. On Day 5, He created the things that go in the water and sky- namely, birds and fish. On Day 3 He created land, and on Day 6 He created what goes on the land, man and animals.

A great symmetry, not lost on the original hearers of this oral tradition. But lost on us today. Each day’s created space aligns with what was created to go in that space. It’s as if God created a flower pot, a tea pot, and a water pot, then went back and created a flower for the flower pot, a tea bag for the tea pot, and water for the water pot.

Perfect congruence. Perfect symmetry. Perfect organization.

Our God is not a God of chaos.

And there are literally hundreds and hundreds of these little tidbits all present in the first chapter of Genesis. Far too much to write here. I cannot tell you how often people ask me how I can spend so much time studying the Scriptures without tiring of it. The answer is that it doesn’t tire of me. It never gives into my relentless pursuit because I’m no match for it. I’m no threat to it. The more I look, the more there is to be discovered. I’ll never exhaust it. It, however, will exhaust me.

Back to Benjamin.

If the symmetry present in the first chapter of Genesis is accurate, and it is, then that means just like fish were created for the sea, birds for the sky, the luminaries for the heavens, then people were created for life outside.

The first chapter of Genesis serves as the headline; the second as the news story. The first chapter tells THAT He created; the second tells HOW.

In Genesis 2, we read that God “formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (7). It goes on: “Now the Lord had created a garden in the east, in Eden; and there He put the man he had formed” (8).

Man was created for the Garden.

Birds for the sky, luminaries for the heavens, birds for the sea, and man for the Garden.

Is it any wonder that Benjamin prefers to be outside? Is it any wonder that the simple act of going through the threshold of our door soothes him? That crossing from indoor to outdoor makes gives him peace?

This is where he was created to be.

And so we see in Benjamin a great truth. In infancy, before the marks of the Fall, before the pangs of death, before the stains of sin or the imprint of nature or nurture, we witness something too young and too pure and too innocent to be the result of anything we’ve done. On his clean slate, his blank canvas, we see that man was created for outside.

It makes you wonder why we spend so much time in cages.

So many of us wander through our lives like caged animals, caught before our prime, tranquilized into accepting this imprisonment, domesticated into liking it, all the while we rage against it, wondering why we’re so unhappy.

We work jobs we hate. So that we can pay for things we don’t need. So that we can feel we’ve made it. So that we can convince people who don’t care that we’re worth something. So that we can convince ourselves that this was all worth something.

We live indoors. And we die young. We live ordinary lives and complain about not being happy. We miss our purposes and our callings and trade both of these for lies- for jobs that don’t matter and dreams that don’t fulfill. All the while freedom calls from outside the bars, “Die to yourselves, die to the lie. Get outside. DO something.”

But our cages have their advantages. There’s safety. Monotony. Predictions and expectations. It’s a cage and so while it steals freedom, it offers protection.

But we were created for life outside the cage. We were created for a Garden.

Sin has the exceptional ability to convince you you’re free from within the cage. It’s pretty ingenious, actually. If you never know you’re a slave, you’ll likely never yearn for freedom. And Christ offers freedom, a life not tied to the cage. He offers to spring the locks and set you free. Sure, there are risks. Maybe it’s not as safe as inside the cage from the cage’s standards, except He says He’s with you and He’s all powerful and He’ll protect you. But I digress.

I’m spiritualizing this when I only set out to say something purely physical…

So many of us walk around listless. Tired. Unhappy. Lazy. Bloated. Unfulfilled. Not doing ANYTHING that matters.

It seems worth mentioning that we weren’t created for our cubicles. We were created to be outside, enjoying what God made. And if materialism and sin have made you a slave to the cage, chances are it’s the root of your unhappiness.

Benjamin is proof you were meant to get outside.

So get outside.

Essay 5: Cry Baby

Benjamin cries.

I wish I could lie to you and tell you that weren’t the case, but that’d be dishonest. And you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

All babies cry. Just like all babies poop, pee, eat. You know.

And he’s the most chill baby I think I’ve ever been around, content to simply explore whatever setting he’s in with wide-eyed wonderment, his gaze panning the room like he’s filming some sort of internal documentary. And he never tires of this. Everything is new to him and thus exciting, and now that he can turn his own head, he’ll do it till Jesus returns.

But every now and then…

He cries. As his parents we’ve learned the most common culprits –hunger, dirty diaper, fighting sleep. He’ll actually rage against sleep in full blown opposition just to sit awake longer to examine the room, maybe learn more about its unique characteristics. (Which is ironic because we’ll fight sleep just to watch him.)

Amazing little bugger…

These cries though, man they do something to you. It is the absolute worst sound I have ever heard. And I’ve discovered something. It isn’t because the sound in itself is so bad –I mean, nails on a chalkboard, scraping ice, out-of-tune instruments, Nancy Grace’s voice –all of these are much worse. But it’s the fact that he’s my son. He’s my son and he’s unhappy and he’s crying and it kills me.

I cannot describe to you what happens to me as his father when this nonsense begins. I’d rip off my arms to make it end. Not because it’s annoying, not because it’s infuriating, not because it’s frustrating.

Because it hurts.

As his father, it pains me to hear anything unpleasant come out of his mouth. Any noise that sounds disagreeable and my heart suddenly begins to hurt. It literally aches inside of me, the kind of ache that one can continue on with functionally, but is still the slow leak on the boat of your day nonetheless.

And all you want to do is plug that hole.

On the contrary, nothing does my heart better than to see him smile, to hear him laugh, to watch him delight. (As I write this, he is literally smiling in his sleep!)

Often this will follow a feeding. He’ll get his little tummy full, and for the next hour or so he is quite active. He’s all smiles, looking around the room grinning, making cheerful noises, laughing. He labors to produce these deep noises from somewhere far down inside of him, and then he expresses them outward with a full movement of his entire body. The noises are indiscernible as far as speech goes, but it’s obvious he’s mimicking some patterns of expression and speech and syllables he’s heard coming from the mouths of Mama and Daddy. And we love it.

No matter what I’m doing, if I am within a reasonable radius of cheerful Benjamin, then as soon as the show begins I am there. This is highly unlike me by the way –I have a terribly undistractable, focused mind. If I am in the zone with something, few things can take me out of it. If I’m writing an email, reading, working on homework, etc., it’s not that I will not allow myself to be interrupted; it’s just that few interruptions are strong enough or loud enough to breach my relentless focus. That’s not to sound arrogant, I simply get into a certain place when I concentrate that’s hard to get me out of.

Ask my wife.

But when Benjamin begins his jolly display, my world stops. Everything gets placed on pause. On hold. And no matter where I am or where I was, now I’m there. Watching, Smiling. Interacting. Playing. And whether he does it for two minutes or two hours, I am completely at his whim. I’m a slave to his beck and call.

This little give and take between Benjamin and me has taught me a lot about my Father. My heavenly Father. I’ve told you before, I look for glimpses of Him in all of this. I search my new relationship with my son for sightings of Him and a change in my own perspective.

And so Benjamin has been teaching me.

This is a particular instance in which he has been convicting me. I’ll explain.

I can tend towards the critical. I wouldn’t say that I’m unusually critical; I’m simply able to notice and then announce when certain things can be better. I am not filled with melancholy, but I do seem to have a large amount of criticism able to be produced by my tongue at any particular moment.

In fact, my mouth can be quick to criticize. Not to somebody or in their presence or even within earshot, but my wife gets the pleasure of receiving many of my perceived areas for improvement. I tend to smile in that particular moment that causes these internal critiques, and then verbalize them later to my wife, often with a certain degree of outrage and aggravation.

What’s worse is that we live in a cyber culture conducive to the personalities of passive agressives like me. If you have a Facebook account, you know what I’m talking about! We can air out our aggravations for the entire world to see, if we want. Misery loves company, and now more than ever we have the wherewithal to maximize that company all over the world wide web. If I’m upset about something, if I’m annoyed, if I have a complaint, I can simultaneously let 500 friends know at once. My wife can read of my displeasure as soon and as quickly as my Muslim friend in Bangladesh whom I’ve never met!

Like striking a match in a dry forest, I can spread my bad attitude like a fire.

So what of it?

James tells us over and over in the New Testament to guard our tongues. In fact, he even compares it to the way a small spark can burn down an entire forest. He tells us how big of an impact such a small member of our bodies can have, and that it seems counterintuitive to him that the same organ can be used both to praise God but also mutter ugly, malicious negativity.

How can the same instrument be used to present to God an offering He is worthy of, and then five minutes later to make the most horrid, unpleasant, displeasing observations and remarks?

I wonder if my view of the noises Benjamin makes has any relation to the noises my Father hears me make.

When Benjamin expresses pleasantries, I am blessed. When he cries, it tears me apart.

I wonder if it’s the same with God –if, when I walk around with a smile on my face, laughing, enjoying, appreciating, if it blesses Him. And, conversely, if I walk around criticizing, complaining, feeling anxious, if it displeases Him.

Could this be why we’re told to rejoice? Could it be that it blesses both God and us? That, even more than putting us in a good mood, it puts Him in one?

If He feels the way about my smiles that I feel about Benjamin’s?

If He stops what He’s doing and all of Heaven to peer down and enjoy my pleasure, for as long as it may last?

And if my melancholy breaks His heart?

I know this sort of analogy is filled with kinds of theological holes that make the deepest theologians shudder, but let them shudder. I think there’s something to it.

When I smile, when I laugh, when I look at the world around me and, instead of critiquing it, I appreciate it, enjoy it, take it in and let it wash over me and show my Creator that I am happy to be alive and placed in this world that He made, I believe that that blesses Him, perhaps more than any of my audible praises ever could.

Because it’s the difference between saying and doing, or claiming and being. When it’s genuine. And that expresses something our lips never could.

And so here and now I commit myself to not complain. About anything. I don’t want to be the smudge on my Father’s perfect day. I don’t want to be the slow leak on the boat of His mercy. I want to praise Him with my attitude, all of it.

And if you catch me reneging on this, make my son cry. And then ask me how it feels.

(Actually, don’t do that. But you get my point.)

Essay 4: Wonderment

Benjamin and I have a new thing. We like to go for walks. It seems that a couple times a day he gets bored with the same old surroundings, and nothing will adequately satisfy him into a blissful temperament.

Which is where I step in.

I stand him up on my left arm, his chest pressed against mine, and we walk. It doesn’t matter where. It never does. He holds his wobbly head up (he can do that now) and, eyes as big as half dollars, he takes the world in with a sense of awe and wonderment. Every color, every sight, every shape, he struggles to turn his head from left to right, up and down, striving to take it all in.

And I just watch.

It’s the most amazing thing –the single most amazing thing I’ve ever been a part of, watching him absorb this new world of beauty and magic and amazement, curiously focusing on the littlest things that in my hurry and adulthood I’d never normally give a second thought, before adjusting his scope to take in the larger marvels.

Silently, with the most awe-filled expressions, big curious eyes and a gaping mouth, he examines, studies, soaks it all in. And it melts my heart.

It makes me wonder if that’s why God made it all –to watch our expressions. To see our responses. To stand back and watch us be blessed by it. The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of his hands. And when you and I stand back and, in silent awe and amazement, take the time to enjoy it, to study it, to take it all in, I’d bet He just kind of stands back and watches, blessed by our wonder and curiosity. Blessed by our enjoyment of it all.

So the next time you’re outside, the next time you’re walking around a boring old cul-de-sac, the next time you get bored with the same old surroundings, look at your world through the eyes of a child. Marvel at its beauty. Stand in awe of its wonderment. Let it enchant you.

It blesses Him.

After all, He made it for you.

Essay 3: Perspectives

It’s amazing the perspective that fatherhood gives you.

I’m not saying that everybody should rush out and start a family. Nor am I giving unlimited license to limitlessly procreate for reasons of panoramic expansion, the quest for context in spirituality leading downward into hedonism.

But as one who has never enjoyed a father, I can tell you that being one puts a different spin on things.

Early in the days of Hannah’s pregnancy, I was daily struck with the thought that I loved that fetus. I loved that cluster of cells and nerves. I loved the tadpole swimming gleefully inside of her.

Any disruption, any disturbance, any fluctuation in the wellbeing of that mass and our worlds would stop on a dime. And I soon discovered that my feelings towards this swirling bundle far exceeded the “love” with which I speak of music or cheeseburgers or football.

I would lay down and die for this one.

My suspicions were only confirmed and then strengthened when I actually met the little bugger. I remember, while Hannah was barely pregnant, out jogging one day when the thought struck me, “I’d trade my life to see his actualize, if I had to.”

(I didn’t necessarily want to, nor did I know yet that he was actually a he. But you get my point.)

But then when he was born, all those feelings were confirmed. And anything I felt while I was out running that day landed painfully short of what I felt in that moment.

In those first days with him, he had no idea who I was. And that’s okay. I don’t mind admitting that one bit because it’s absolutely true. He was busy sleeping and simply adjusting to life on the other side, an existence ruled by struggle and work and sensations, both good and bad. It must be quite an adjustment to make, having previously been in a state of bliss. Warm. Fed. Cozy. Secure. Suddenly you’re thrust into a world of vulnerability and consequence. What once flowed naturally to you through a supplementary tube is now worked for, with sensations magnified a thousand times due to the absence of water and flesh.

Needless to say, he wasn’t able to contribute a thing to our relationship. He couldn’t interact with me. He couldn’t lock eyes with me. He couldn’t smile, laugh, talk.

He couldn’t even hold his own head up.

But I loved him nonetheless. And I returned to that day when I was out jogging, struck with the notion that I would give anything –anything –to keep him happy. To keep him loved. To keep him safe.

Even if I had to lay down my own life. I wouldn’t bat an eye.

And in that moment, it made sense, the sacrifice that was paid for me. The way I feel about Benjamin doesn’t approximate the way God feels about us, if you believe those accounts of His interactions with people down through history. He loves us in ways we can’t fathom, though my relationship with Benjamin is the closest I have ever come.

What’s more, we’re told that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And this amazes me, because what it says to me is that like Benjamin, I didn’t even have the ability to have a concept of God. Back when Jesus made His sacrifice, I couldn’t have even had a notion of Him.

Being so ensnared in sin, so wrapped up in my darkness, so ruled by blindness, I was in worse shape than an infant, an infant who isn’t able to speak or smile or laugh or stare or even hold his own head up, let alone recognize and interact with his own father. I was in a worse position than simply not being able to contribute to our relationship at all.

I was dead.

And yet somehow our Father looked down on that mess of a creation. He looked upon that death that defined me, and He saw something beautiful. Something worth something. Something worth saving. Something worth life.

Something worth death.

And without batting an eye, without waiting for me to be conscious of what He was doing, He did it.

And I think that love surpasses anything we have words for. Even my love for Benjamin.

Every day Benjamin teaches me something about God. No wonder the Scriptures constantly refer to Him as “Father,” or “Abba.”

Daddy.

I’m blessed that He’s given me the opportunity to discover what’s been poured into these words, my own father having left me lacking. And it’s a brilliant new world.

And you see? I told you Benjamin’s teaching me. He’s putting a whole different spin on things.

Essay 2: Eggshells

The above words recorded in the previous essay were etched last January, shortly before the person growing inside my wife’s body left us. For some unknown reason, for something unforeseen, unpredictable, and scientifically inexplicable, she left.

Doctors say no one’s to blame. That early, it just happens. I suppose there’s some relief in that.

I suppose.

It pains me to bring this up and I don’t mean for any of this to be depressing. However, this process would be incomplete and therefore fake if I were not to explore those haunting days. The hours, days, weeks, months left walking in the coma of existence, shallow sighs and empty smiles.

Unable to connect with anything.

It’s difficult to describe and strange to speak of. We didn’t even know that we were pregnant for that long. But it seems that sometimes Hope can be born in just an instant and can change your world, simply by passing through.

Passing on by.

Hope is a dangerous thing.

The remaining days and months were nightmarish, spent in the wake of some unimaginable, intangible pain. The sort of thing one feels, yet struggles to describe. There is no explanation.

How does one venture to paint the picture correctly to someone who has never experienced such an ache? There are no words, which is further complicated by the lack of tangibility.

Something is absent that never existed. Something is missing that never was.

The idea itself had barely even existed, so to mourn such a vacant loss seems childish and trivial. How does one mourn what he has never grown accustomed to? How does one feel the absence of something he never had the pleasure of growing close to?

And how does one describe this kind of dull ache to friends?

There were good days and bad. And not all were filled with the walking knowledge of the absence, the continual wake and stench of death. The topic rarely came up, though the grief was always there. Maybe a television show would trigger it. Maybe a song. A prayer. It didn’t always matter, nor did it have to make sense. It was always there. The proverbial elephant in the room. Ignore it and maybe it’d go away, or at least you could grow used to its enormous, cold, draining presence.

Some days the cold shoulder approach wouldn’t suit, and it’d demand attention. Sitting there, its trunk waving like a like a fifth grader’s hand in class, squealing and hollering to be called upon. Not so much so that you would know it was there and thus, it would become real. But more so that it would know it was real. Its conditional existence depended upon our acknowledgment of it.

And some days one could do nothing but acknowledge it, yielding to its chilling presence.

Needless to say, making important life decisions with such a burdensome and draining presence latching itself on like a tick to a dog is not recommended. One isn’t thinking clearly. The deck isn’t full. The cards are stacked.

And marked.

Never play a hand of cards under these conditions, regardless of the game. You will lose.

And so our lives over the next series of months consisted of the types of bumps and bruises associated with getting on the wrong rides at the amusement park and then not buckling in. We smiled and secretly cried. We talked and were secretly quiet. We heard but couldn’t listen. Looked but couldn’t see.

I esteem the psycho sciences very highly. At any point in the ordeal I could have pointed out exactly what was going on. We knew the funk that we were in. We could taste the fog we were living beneath, the choking, pungent odor that clung to our clothes and our skin. But we felt powerless against it.

And so we made mistakes. We made important life decisions that, in retrospect, we shouldn’t have made. And I suppose it lets me off the hook tremendously to simply blame these clumsy blunders on the pain we were living beneath. And it does. But truth be known, I don’t suppose we would have traveled down that particular road had something not placed us upon it in the first place. We wouldn’t have gone out exploring had something not left us empty and unfulfilled. And so the experience may seem to all a scapegoat.

I suppose it is. And I’m okay with that.

I knew that we were not the first people to ever experience a miscarriage. (I hate the word and usually avoid it, but let’s call it what it is.) But for some reason the ordeal affected us in ways we could have never anticipated and ways that still mystify me to this day. Again, we hadn’t known that long. And I had barely become accustomed to the idea.

But again, hope is born in an instant; its death stretches on for eternity.

We discovered in retrospect that we had made a lot of mistakes along the way. Apparently, the baby-production process in a woman’s body is not as automatic as I had been led to believe. (Honestly, and not to be crude or disclose too much information, but I had always been of the understanding that the one time a single specimen of DNA-carrying material “made it through,” then BANG! She’d be pregnant. I suppose now that that thought’s as arrogant as it is immature –that I have some type of indestructible power in me that, should I choose to unleash it, would irrevocably alter a person’s life. And even create one. Wow, that does seem narcissistic.)

We were informed in the doctor’s office one day that, actually, the baby-production process is quite frail in those early hours. Until a mother arrives safely out of the first trimester, the body hasn’t altogether made up its mind about whether or not it’s going to fully manufacture at all. It’s still a bit up in the air and honestly quite flippant about it. At any point, the biological psyche can decide, “You know what, things aren’t lining up quite right, and we’re going to suspend this process right now and wait to start over next time.”

At that point, the emotions become the slave of the body.

He told us that this was actually quite common, and as a matter of fact many people had likely experienced it and never realized it. The assurance this ushered in was immediately felt in the doctor’s office that day. It made me feel tremendously better, but was short-lived. We returned home to the sadness and tears that became our constant companions over the next several months.

But the thought strikes me now that we are actually quite frail. Human beings, I mean. The doctor in that moment attempted to describe the fragility of life in those very early days, the tedious and delicate nature with which the body goes to work on manufacturing life. Creating it. Producing it.

Does life ever become anything less than frail though?

This time around, with our current pregnancy, we could barely speak of it for fear of breaking it. The miracle of life and of life-production that had commenced within my wife’s veins and biological structures was a whisper, so soft, muffled, and faint that mentioning it seemed to threaten extinguishing it. Acknowledging it jeopardized terminating it.

And so we spoke about it in whispers and stole fleeting glances at its prospects when we thought Providence wasn’t looking.

As you can imagine, these were the thoughts that led to my delay in blogging or journaling about it. I wanted to. But I feared that committing anything to the written word risked undoing it entirely. And so, for safety’s sake, I embraced silence.

Life never becomes anything less than frail though, does it?

As I sit here writing this, I am aware that at any point, my heart could stop. My lungs could fail. They could fill with fluid and drown me. My brain could simply turn off, never to be turned back on.

Do you ever think about this? The times when this strikes closest to home for me and becomes all too real are those times late at night when I cannot sleep. You toss and you turn and for some unknown reason you become keenly aware of every noise going on around you.

Then suddenly, this awareness turns inward.

You begin hearing your own heartbeat through the suppression of your own ear against the hardness of the pillow. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. You wish you could turn off the awareness of what you just tapped into. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

Great, now I have to listen to this.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

It’s like a radio frequency that you’ve stumbled upon. Now that you’ve found it, you want to tune elsewhere. But you can’t. Instead, it becomes louder and louder and less available for being tuned out.

And so you switch sides.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

And now the thing that you have aimed to do –to turn off your thoughts and allow your brain to rest so that your body will –has just gone the entirely opposite way. Your imagination becomes fueled with thoughts. Your mind begins to race. Your brain kicks it into high gear.

At least if it didn’t before, it will now.

It’s always in this moment that I become eerily aware that I have absolutely no control over the thumping I hear coming from within my chest and echoing through the caverns of my ears. Sure, I could get up and do jumping jacks and speed it up, but I mean governmentally, I have no say over what this organ does. I cannot, at will, speed it up. And I cannot slow it down.

Further, I cannot keep it pumping.

And all it would take in this moment is for that one organ to skip a beat, to miss a thump, to fall silent and go dead just for a bit, for me to cease to exist.

You see, Death surrounds us. It astounds me in this culture the great lengths we go to to avoid this reality. We’ve invented body bags and morgues. We relegate death only to certain places –cemeteries, where we can be exposed to its existence only by choice. Otherwise, we go on acting like it doesn’t exist. We pass over every day places where inevitably someone has died and is likely buried.

There are hospitals with dying people and morgues with dead people. There are natural calamities that claim lives nearly daily. There are wars, car accidents, plane crashes, sicknesses, and, well, natural causes that snuff out lives all the time.

Natural causes that cause death. It seems like an oxymoron.

I’m not saying that we should all embrace death and become like the Goths, dressing in black, wearing heavy spikes and chains and tracing our eyelids with gloomy eyeliner. This seems foolish to me because I honestly believe that the Rob Zombies of the world who seem so comfortable and even celebratory of death would literally pee in their pants were they ever exposed to its truest forms.

(Rob Zombie, are you reading?)

But I do find it interesting the lengths we go to to block out its inevitability from our daily lives. We strive and we seek and we fashion elaborate ways to not be exposed to it, when really it’s the only thing in existence we can count on.

Well, they say death and taxes, but taxes are manmade. Death is not.

The only thing we can count on in life is death, and we go to such complicated and painstaking lengths to avoid having to think about it. And then when we become exposed to it, it hurts.

It hurts really bad. Really, really bad.

I think part of this pain comes from being caught by the surprise. When Hannah and I experienced the miscarriage, I believe that part of what clobbered us about it was the fact that we didn’t know that was a possibility. We didn’t know that was an option. I never for an instant thought that was a possible outcome. I had all these grandiose ideas in my head about the kind of father I would be. The kind of lifestyle I would create for my child to be raised in. The kind of child I would raise. The things I would surround him or her with. The philosophies I would expose him or her to. The love I would shower upon it.

Love.

And then when Death struck, I was caught completely off guard. I mean sure, when we tested positive I realized almost immediately the kind of vulnerability we had just made ourselves open to. We had even talked about that. Suddenly, there was this entire area of our life together that we couldn’t safeguard or protect. We were vulnerable without remedy.

But we only visited that reality; we didn’t live there.

What we know for sure is that Death surrounds us. Earthquakes, car accidents, heart attacks, tsunamis, suicides, overdoses, cancers, wars, famines. Death is everywhere.

And yet we act like it doesn’t exist.

If I were Death, I suppose I’d want some recognition too.

The Ancients all commonly held a belief that things were never meant to be this way. Death was an uninvited visitor, an intruder never intended by the Author of Life.

And you and I, we were never programmed to fully grasp Death. It was a concept left absent in our psyches. At our creation, our conception, the Author of Life did not put the notion of “life ending” in our hearts. He did not program us with an awareness that this could all stop. Instead, He programmed in us the opposite concept.

One ancient writer puts it this way: “He has set eternity in their hearts.”

Eternity in their hearts. Not Death. Not life-ending. But life-extending. Forever. We were programmed with an innate sense of Life. Not Death.

And so when Death happens, when we’re exposed to it, it takes us by surprise. It stops us cold. It shocks us. We’re caught off guard and we spend lots of time and lots of money rebounding. How many dollars a year go into therapy? Therapy over loss? It must be a ton.

Death tires us. Exhausts us. Pains us.

Death, well, kills us.

We were never made to have this mentality, yet we live in a world with a forced exposure to it. People die. And we’re left asking why, beneath pillars of anguish and blankets of tears.

The Bible says that this isn’t the way that God intended it. When He created, He created Life. And then He placed that Life –named Adam –in a pristine environment, full of Life.

And then He gave that Life, named Adam, an opportunity to exact freewill. And the curiosity of that Life in that single moment invited in a world of sin. A contaminant. A cancer. Something that was never meant to be here, but arrived nonetheless.

And the rest of the story in the Scriptures is God’s love building up to and offering Hope –a second chance –amidst that contaminant.

And Hope is a dangerous thing.

We live surrounded by Death, though we were never intended to. And with all that Death around us, it’s a wonder we don’t have to deal with it more often. It’s a miracle we’ve been able to hide it and confine it and relegate it only to certain areas of our lives.

And with all the Death that’s around us, I’ve realized this. When we are exposed to it, as cold and as ugly and as draining as it is, we shouldn’t be surprised by it. We should wonder what took it so long. We should wonder how we were able to go unnoticed by it for such a long period of time. Death abounds. It’s everywhere. And beneath its enveloping blanket you and I are given the chance to regain the Life we were previously programmed with.

Still, it’s there and it’s prevalent. But when we acknowledge it’s there and it’s prevalent, we should treat every day that we don’t come across it as a gift.

Because it is.

Because of sin, because of the contaminant, Death is the rule. Life is the exception to the rule.

Life is a gift.

Still, this doesn’t make the pain of a miscarriage any less real. It doesn’t mute or even sedate the struggle.

There is some consolation I suppose in knowing that God never intended for things to be this way. That He grieves and sobs right there with us. That His arms envelope us, cushioning our callous sighs.

After all, He was exposed to Death too. In the Garden that day. On Calvary…

But when Death is the rule and Life is the exception to it, it makes Life all the more sweeter. All the less gray.

O save me from a gray life.

Save me.

(And with such a dramatic ending, telling you this seems to undo it, but it’s too good to resist: I typed “Save me” as the last line, and then hit “Save” on my document. Haha. Not really what I meant, but it works. Blessings!)

Essay 1: Groundwork

Obviously, this was written some time ago. But it seemed the right place to begin…

___________________

There is a swirling whirling ball of cells growing furiously inside my wife’s belly.

I of course do not know this because I’ve seen it for myself. I haven’t. Scientists tell us this swirling ball of cells and mass of chaos is too small for me, or anybody for that matter, to see with the naked eye. It could literally fit through the eye of a needle.

And usually this type of intrusion would be unwelcomed. Some microscopic, undetectable invader taking up residence beneath my wife’s skin. Attaching itself to her organs. Securing itself in her womb. Hunkering down in her abdomen. Making friends and allies with her own organs. Using them to protect itself.

Becoming a person.

This is Week 5. Week 5 means that the furious growth rate of this cluster of cells, which two weeks ago lent us only a retrospective knowledge that deeply embedded in my wife’s tummy somewhere existed this unseen and unrealized reality, is slowly, yet blisteringly quickly, metamorphosing. It is swirling out of its existence as a swirling whirling ball of cells into something that resembles more of a tadpole.

A tadpole.

It is this week that this tiny tadpole will begin to develop its heart, complete with chambers, its central nervous system, bones, and muscles. It will develop a hairline spine. A speck of dust brain. A heart so gentle, so delicate and fragile and frail, so faint that you hardly speak for fear it will break.

Eggshells.

And after this week, nothing will ever be the same. My swirling whirling ball of cells, metamorphosing into this tiny tadpole, will accelerate, from this point on, into a tiny person.

Which of course it already is.

But the foundation has been laid. And right now, a takeoff is ensuing. A race has begun. The shot has been fired, and my baby is first out the gate.

My baby is becoming.

What I find so bizarre about all of this -certainly not the most bizarre thing, but bizarre nonetheless- is my utter excitement. I have wondered for years if I even wanted children. I thought something was wrong with me. What kind of person doesn’t want children?

I rather enjoyed my life the way it was. Few bills. Little responsibility. Free time. Life was extravagant and perfect. Why tweak something that was fine the way it was?

I could have ended this internal discussion there, but in probing myself a bit further it became starkly obvious that Fear was the motivator, not Happiness.

Fear?

As someone who places a great deal of stock in psychology and the psychological sciences, I self-diagnosed. I told myself my fear stemmed from my own challenging childhood. Specifically, that the same pitfalls that tripped up my father, the same holes that he himself fell into, head over heels, awaited me should I go down the same road. Should I go down that road of having children.

You see, nobody intentionally becomes an abuser. Nobody intentionally becomes a monster. I think back to all those monster films. Teen Wolf. The Incredible Hulk. Those guys had triggers. There were triggers. There are triggers.

And avoid the triggers, avoid the monstrosities.

If I chose to forgo walking down the same road my father walked down, in the disillusioned disaster that became his life, I could escape his fate. Oedipus left town to avoid fulfilling prophecy. I simply toyed with impotence.

Secretly toyed with impotence. Discontinuation. Extinguishment.

Proaction. Responsibility. Duty.

It was deliberate metaphoric castration.

Soon, however, all of that would change…

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