I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit this, but here goes: when I’m at the beach with my two toddlers, I live with a persistent, low-grade fear that they’re going to get swept up by a wave and drown. Granted, we’ve been to the beach several times with our girls, and neither of them have ever come close. But even when they aren’t in the water, the prospect of it lurks in my mind.
As a parent of toddlers, I hear it every week: “They’re gonna be all grown up before you know it.” I could be wrong, but when people say that to me, shaking their heads and looking down, I feel like the implication is, “. . . and you’re going to feel so guilty that you didn’t appreciate every one of these precious moments when you had the chance.” No, I won’t. If I remember the moments accurately, I won’t.
“Joshua, you need to come home,” my wife said over the phone. She sounded scared. For some reason, the previous owners of our home had installed a deadbolt lock on the master bedroom door, and my two-year-old had managed to lock herself and our one-year-old inside.
I think it’s childish, unkind, and pathetic for a man to raise his voice at his wife, but last week, in a moment of weakness, I let her (and myself) down. And in that ugly moment, God was there. My wife was very sick, so I had spent most of the day taking care of our daughters, ages one and two. I had gotten them dressed, made them breakfast and lunch, played with them, put them down for naps, played with them some more, and generally felt upbeat about it the whole time, despite the messy house.
This post is a continuation of “The Thrill of Dishonoring My Father.” I tried to confront my dad about his failures one time when I was a sophomore in college. It didn’t go well. We were getting to know each other again after being estranged for three years. Because he lived 12 hours away, we talked over the phone, building an awkward, on-and-off, long-distance relationship.
The story about my dad and the police car chase was the one that always got people’s attention. “That’s crazy,” they would say. I would suppress a smile and gin up some spiritual-sounding reason for bringing it up.
I was in my thirties before I realized what a weird game we played at the church Christmas dinner of 1987. It seemed ingenious at the time though. Someone took a large goblet, pressed play on the tape deck, and passed the goblet around the room. The 19 or 20 people of our little church were expected to drop money in when it passed by. The object of the game was simple: when the music stopped playing, whoever had the glass got to keep all the change.
My wife was racked with pain, desperate to deliver our baby, and on the verge of her last push. My pulse raced, my breath was shallow, and I was both terrified and elated. “I want to catch the baby,” I said to the doctor, reminding him, for the third time, of what we had discussed five weeks ago at my wife’s appointment.
Last Saturday, my 18-month old daughter was the flower girl in her cousin’s wedding. Daniela just learned to walk a month ago, so we questioned whether she would make it down the lengthy, red-carpeted aisle.
I don’t often get headaches, but when I do, I ask God to heal me. Even so, I often find myself doubting He actually cares about something so trivial. I figure He’s got more important things to worry about – things like world hunger, sex trafficking, orphans, and cancer. I can’t help but wonder if He hears my request, shrugs, and thinks, “Why don’t you use your energy to pray for someone who has a real problem?”
Sometimes you run across a story that demonstrates God’s love in a way that a theological explanation never could. Today, I’m featuring one of those stories from guest writer Evan Bell. If God’s been nudging you to take a risk, to give more than you thought you had to give – read this article. You may just walk away with the courage to follow Him down a path that will change your life forever.
Sometimes, my baby girl thinks I’m an awful father. I do mean things like laying her down to sleep, taking pieces of paper out of her mouth, and pulling her away from wall outlets. Today, I’m awful because I’m trying to help her get over a cold. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but here’s the problem: although my daughter likes to have her nose kissed, she does not otherwise want it to be touched.
My wife and I welcomed a new baby into our lives about five weeks ago. We’re taking a lot of our parenting cues from a book called On Becoming Babywise, though we’ve thumbed through some other books like The Happiest Baby on the Block and another book called The Well-Rested Child: What Your Child’s Sleep Problems Say About Your Poor Parenting Skills. Okay, so there’s not actually a book with that last title, but there really is a book called The Happiest Baby on the Block. The title of that one alone probably made us more likely to trust the…
Last night, my two-week-old daughter didn’t feel like sleeping. Instead, she was in high-maintenance mode and had basically taken me hostage. Hostage negotiations went something like this: “Dad, I know mommy needs to sleep right now, but that’s not my concern. I’m feeling the need to be pacified really badly. So you have a choice: you either hold me until I go into a baby coma, or you lay me down and I’ll scream so loud that mommy will hear me no matter where I am in the house. So what will it be, Dad?”
My daughter is only two weeks old, and the vast majority of the time she looks pretty angelic, but there are times when she is not happy about something and totally loses it. These times are usually when I’m doing something she needs – like waking her up because she hasn’t eaten in a while or giving her a bath or taking off an outfit she’s been wearing for a couple of days.
Joshua Rogers 