Before you become a father

Being a father has been one of the most important processes of my life. It is not the only way to be a man (Jesus was not a father and neither was the Apostle Paul), but it is a way of manhood.

When I was a boy and became a young man, I always knew I wanted to be a father, but I was also terrified of it. Would I be any good at it? Would I make the same mistakes of my own father or grandfathers? What was a good father anyway?

Now that I have been a father for over 16 years, I have a learned a few things about being a father. I have also learned enough to know that being a father does not end – ever. Once a father, always a father. I have also learned enough to know I have so much to learn about being a good father, but at the same time have learned enough about being a good-enough father.

Below are some things I have learned about being a father. It is uncertain how much these learnings could be grasped by a young man considering fatherhood (or terrified by it), so I offer these seeds of understanding that have the potential to grow in the hearts and souls of young men and become something much greater than the understanding itself.

Fatherhood is a process. It is not a one time moment of passion with a genetic contribution. It can start there, but it most certainly cannot end there. The word for that is not “father.” Instead, fatherhood is a developmental process of constant growth and change and investment. As your children grow as people, you grow as a father. The process ends not at genetic contribution (or adoption), not at high school graduation, not at the death of your child (God forbid that happens first), and not even at your own death. This process of fatherhood outlives you in the lives of your children and grandchildren.

Fatherhood is opportunity. There are many diverse pathways of  manhood, but there are some unique opportunities in being a father. The door is open to fathers to reproduce their own best qualities into the life of another. This is not accomplished by force, of course, but by being the best person you can be day and day out in the presence of your child. It also allows for ample opportunities for self-correction as well.  Fatherhood has a unique social context that can be an opportunity to influence another person to be a great person.

Fatherhood is presence. Being presence both physically and psychologically is at least half the the job of fatherhood. Fathers who are physically present, but psychologically absent or physically absent, but psychologically present create ambiguity for their children. Chronic ambiguity can be traumatic for children. Being present in a calm and safe way with your child has a powerful effect of preventing so much negative that can happen in this world.

Fatherhood is formational. Under the ever present eyes of a child, there is a constant context of accountability that requires self-confrontation in order to grow. Being in the presence of a child, your child, forces the question of your own growth and development as a person. The reality is that a father’s growth trajectory is experienced by the child as a highly influential lesson on how to be a person. It does not determine the life course of the child, but it is what the child sees most.

Fatherhood is earned. Engaging in the process of fatherhood  as a way of living creates the accumulated credibility that the label “father” is a legitimate label. We used to use the term “illegitimate child” to refer to children who were born outside of marriage. What we really had was wide spread “illegitimate fathers” who did not raise the children they helped create. It is earned by being present, being calm, being kind, being attentive, being patient, being honest, being forgiving, being forgivable. You do not have to be the best father; instead, you do have to show up and be good.

Fatherhood is exposing. Just about every flaw, imperfection, and failure you have or will ever do is exposed when being a father. This is probably terrifying to some young men and may make them run for the hills, but it is one of the great mercies of being a father. So many times when I have felt like a failure as a father, it has prompted some corrective effort. In short, fatherhood is like an early detection mechanism for poor choices and inadequacies that, left unchecked, could have become way worse and hurt a lot of people, or resulted in self-destruction.

Fatherhood is redemptive. Although fatherhood has a constant social context that exposes shortcomings, it also provides a social context for making things right. It is a context for apologies and forgiveness, for humility and clean slates – it is a context for constant redemptions little and big.

Fatherhood is vulnerable.  Being a father is a vulnerable position to be in. The responsibility is huge and the stakes are high. Your reputation and name is carried around by children who have free will. But that is the easy part. Each day a father must make the choice to let the forming and vulnerable heart of a child into his own heart or to put up walls and not let the child in. It is a vulnerable feeling to let someone into a place where they could hurt you, but it is also one of the most amazing things in life. Being vulnerable with a child is the context the child needs to grow.

Fatherhood is power. The power a father has in the life of the child is essentially impossible to calculate. What the father does is the reality in which the child lives. Father create reality! That is power. And yet power and vulnerability are two sides to the same coin. Fathers cannot not create reality for their children. The question is: what kind of reality will the father create? Even the absent father has created a reality for his child – the reality that fathers leave. The resent father who leans toward virtue creates a reality that makes it easy for his children to lean the same way.

There is so much more to fatherhood than this scratching of the surface. These a just a few things I have learned and am learning. May these seeds of understanding land and grow somewhere.

You’re Ghana Love it

I arrived back from Ghana a couple days ago, so my jetlag is just about resolved. My soul-lag, however, lingers. I love children who live half way around the world, and they love me. My soul is stretched across the map as part of me lingers in Ghana while the rest of me is back here in the states.

I had the privilege of leading a group of Lipscomb University Marriage and Family Therapy Masters students on a Mental Health Mission trip to the Touch A Life Care Facility in Kumasi, Ghana. The trip was epic. We learned so much from this venture and bonded as a team. We also developed relationships with children and adults in Ghana that are going to last a long time.

The mission was to provide some clinical assessment, inquire about important relationships in the lives of the children and to listen to their story. WOW!!! Our eyes were opened and our assumptions rattled as we got an amazing and tender look into the lives of these children. What we found was a resilience that was strong and the incredible ability to hold in tension what might seem like conflicting attachments.

I am inspired by the children and Touch A Life and the incredible staff on site. There is so much love in that place.

I am also inspired by the Lipscomb MFT students who took two weeks of their lives to invest into this mission. The two weeks’ investment resulted in a lifetime of memories.

I will be processing this trip for the next several weeks. Some of that processing will make it here to the blog.

Lazarus Has Something to Say

The Green stirs stories;
Fires neurons;
Leans full on into hope
Like Pisa for the uninitiated

The Green induces amnesia;
Snow and slush?
Soulflooding aspiration
"Maybe I'll run a marathon"

The Green rallies redemption;
Losers win!
Death is shocked again;
All of nature resurrects

Pondering the Old Testament

Reading the Old Testament is an exercise that raises lots of questions for any reader. It is a complicated, multi-genred collection of books that carries a raw and beautiful story that must be understood at 50,000 feet and where the feet hit the ground.

The question I pondered this morning was why there are so many ups and downs in the life course of God's people. Why not a simple, "God wins and we all go home" story? Instead we get: Sometimes things are good; sometimes things are bad. They are victors. They are losers. They are good. They are bad. They are faithful. They are faithless. They are kind. They are ruthless.

It was when I listed these things above that I realized two things:
1) It is easy for me to relate, in principle, to so much of the inconsistency of God's people in the Old Testament. When I become critical of the OT, I find that were I to hold myself to the standard I hold the text to, I find myself seriously inadequate. I could plot similar lines of ups and downs, successes and failures (big and small) in my life.

2) There is something in the story of God's people for everyone. It is not merely for the winners whose life seems to go well no matter what, it is also for the losers who can't get ahead to save their life. It is not only for the heroes who capture all the fame for their acts, but also for the nobodies who seemingly don’t accomplish much. Almost every Israelite is a nameless nobody, but is part of the story. The rock stars are complicated and flawed (Moses, Abraham, David), the wimps are elevated and also flawed(Gideon), and the generally unimportant matter.

I have had my fights with the Old Testament – perhaps you have had them as well. In fact, I hope you have. But for every part of the Old Testament I find difficult to reconcile (there are many), I find many more reasons to embrace it. I am grateful for a text of a people so generous to be as flawed as I am.

Grief is entering eternity piece by piece

In grief, there is no closure. There is no end. There is no coming to terms and there is no recovery. When someone who you let into your heart and let them tie strings between their heart and yours, who you allowed the psychological and spiritual privilege of connecting with you – when that person dies you do not recover. You never get back to where you were. In grief, you are forever different.

Those strings get pulled tight with one end of the string on this side of eternity and the other end of the string on the other end of eternity, only there is no way to fully or even faintly see what the other side is like. Those strings pull so tight wrapped around the heart it can feel like you’re carrying the weight of not only your life, but that of the other as well. In grief we try to live for two when we do not have the strength to live for one.

Ambiguity is as much a part of grief as pain. Knowing where the person you love is used to be easy. There they are. In loss they cannot be accessed in any way. It is not satisfying to gain logical truths about what the dead cannot do. Even if the mind can grasp permanent absence over time, the heart refuses to be convinced – because the heart believes there is life after death. The heart is right. The physical absence and psychological presence of those who have died creates incongruence between heart and mind. This ambiguity is difficult to reconcile and impossible to close. Closure is actually foreclosure on the heart. We are not successful in our grief to come to closure, but rather we are successful in our grief to hold together the seemingly impossible realities that this loved one is dead forever and also alive forever – forever.

The psychological and spiritual privilege you extended came with risk and in loss that risk is realized. It hurts like Hell. “I let you have a piece of my soul and when you died part of me died as well.” That pain is the evidence not of permanent loss, but rather of living in two worlds. The more people I love who die the more I am divided between here and there. Grief is entering into eternity piece by piece.

Grief Strings

People go about their lives tying strings to each other. From heart to heart strings are tied, some of them tied forever and some of them for a season and then untied. Sometimes the strings are cut and it hurts.

Really good people, the kind of people who have really figured out how to love, these people go about tying strings to the hearts of everyone they meet. They are contagious people who cannot help but be good to others. They have so many strings tied from their hearts to the hearts of others that their life is a web of connections that is dense and beautiful.

It is these beautiful webs of connection that help keep each other from plunging into the depths or falling off the edge. We need as many of these connections as we can get in our lives.

And then when we lose someone to death, it hurts so bad. The tug of those strings pulls tight and stretches our hearts until they bleed, and then more. We do not cut these strings in death. If we did we would not feel the pull. Instead, we feel the meaning and importance of the strings more in death than in life.

When someone dies and leaves from here to there, we do not lose connection; we maintain it. We feel the tug and pull and ache not because they are dead, but because they are more alive than we are. Everyone that goes on ahead of us is pulling us toward them. At the right time, whenever that is, we will join them.

Grief is the short time (even thought it never feels short – ever) that exists between the time we lose someone and the we join them.

Send Us To Kenya

Dear Family and Friends,                      "I already know I want to donate" - click here

Greetings! We pray that this letter finds you well. We are in our 4^th year of living in Nashville and who would have dreamed so much would happen in four years? We have seen doors open that we never imagined and opportunities presented to us that were pleasantly unexpected.

We would like to share with you one of those opportunities and invite your support. We have an incredible opportunity to engage with an amazing organization in Kenya, Africa called, Made in the Streets MITS (www.madeinthestreets.org).

Context For The Trip

Nairobi is the capital city of Kenya and home to over three million people. It is a city of contrasts. It is both an economic center in the nation and at the same time home to thousands of children who are on the streets with no parents, no homes, and no hope. Most of these children are abused, hungry, and addicted to substances - glue sniffing is a pervasive and destructive problem for these children who live in the streets.

MITS is a child development program that uses a holistic approach to address the serious issue of child homelessness and the related problems of abuse and addiction. MITS reaches out to children who are still on the streets. They identify children who are ready to leave the street life and offer them something better. Once a child is taken off the street, their basic needs of food, water, shelter, and clothes are met first. As children are able and old enough, they are given incredible opportunities in education and learning trades such as auto mechanics, sewing, woodworking, catering, hairdressing, computers or farming.

How We Plan To Engage

            Engaging with MITS as a family is a rare and beautiful opportunity. There will be two kinds of engagement during this trip.

The first kind of engagement is the children who have been rescued off the streets. This trip is unique in that the plan for the trip is to engage the unique qualities and skills of the Americans with the unique qualities and skills of the Kenyans. Chris will engage in some staff training (and getting training from staff) on child development and will be exploring how Positive Youth Development might intersect with the work of the program. Gail and Sierra will engage in the young women learning to sewing and singing. Canaan will gravitate toward the farming and computers. 

The second kind of engagement will be with children on the streets of the Eastleigh Suburb of Nairobi. We will observe and even participate in the outreach work done in the streets is Eastleigh. So, in a sense, we will see both the challenge that exists in the streets as well as participate in the existing programs that address these challenges. 

How You Can Engage

We would love to have your support in any or all of the following three ways: Prayer, Financial, Social Media. You will see more details for each on the following page.

Our financial needs include airfare, ground travel, lodging, food, immunizations, passports and visas. For each of us, the cost is roughly three thousand dollars for a grand total of $12,000.

We depart July 15, 2014 and return July 30, 2014.

Peace,

Chris, Gail, Sierra & Canaan Gonzalez

Facebook: facebook.com/fajitaboy

Twitter: @fajitaboy

DONATE ONLINE:

www.ottercreek.org/missions

DONATE WITH A CHECK:

PAY TO THE ORDER OF: Otter Creek Church of Christ

MEMO: MITS

STICKY NOTE: "Gonzalez"

Otter Creek Church of Christ

409 Franklin Rd.

Brentwood, TN 37027

A Prayer for the Board of Trustees at Lipscomb University

 

Heavenly Father, Holy Spirit, Jesus, we come to you today grateful for your generosity in allowing us to breathe another day full of breath, for the privilege of being alive. We come grateful for the responsibility of being situated as leaders at Lipscomb University. You have positioned us to touch the lives of students, their families, their friends, their churches. Everything we do vibrates across hundreds or even thousands of relationships, plucking the tender and resilient strands that hold people together. Let us now take off our sandals, for you have placed us on holy ground.

As a Christian institution of higher learning located in Nashville, in Middle Tennessee, in the Southeast, in the United States, in the world we have the choice either to close ourselves off and protect ourselves from the world and culture that swirls about us or to engage this world and culture.

May we resist the temptation to disengage as the Essenes did finding comfort and identity in separating from the world about them, settling into an insular seclusion as though we can somehow be separate from anyone else.

May we resist the temptation to engage as the Pharisees did finding comfort and identity in judging the world about them, settling into self-righteousness and spiritual pride as though we could be spiritually superior to anyone else.

May we resist the temptation to engage as Rome did finding comfort and identity in lording over others with power and authority, settling into domination and oppression as though the power we have was meant to control others.

Instead, guide us as we engage this amazing world around us. We seek to follow the way of Christ as he engaged the world. Let us make an incarnational engagement with this place, with everyone we touch. Let us be fully in this world while not being of this world. Let us be generous like Jesus, giving ourselves away without losing ourselves. Let us be an aroma that promises delight and let us be the delight to the world that we promise to be. Let us change this place by goodness not force, by kindness not judgment, by connection not protection. Let every single thing we do leave a generous and unforgettable experience for this world to ponder.

With the responsibility and privilege we have been graciously given, we ask for boldness. May we be bold. Truly bold. Not the imposing boldness that flows from arrogance, not the flailing boldness that comes from desperation, not the explosive boldness that ignites from anger, but rather the generous and engaging boldness that can only exude from humility.

With the responsibility and privilege we have been graciously given, we ask for wisdom. May we be wise in leveraging our collective experiences, wounds, successes, failures, skills, talents, deficiencies and personalities for the benefit and blessing of the world around us. And yet even with all of that, we ask for more wisdom. Give us wisdom beyond ourselves. Give us wisdom that we have not earned through experience. Give us divine wisdom. In your word you promised that a request for wisdom would not be denied and so we come expectant.

We are grateful for being blessed with the privilege and responsibility of Lipscomb University.

We offer up this prayer in Jesus name.

Grief Demands A Story

Grief demands a story. It is story inertia - story energy that sits heavy on the soul. It may be so heavy the soul can hardly pull itself out from underneath it. Early on, it simply can't. Grief is meaning that must be storied. Grief introduces piles and mounds and layers deep of meaning with no pre-programmed language or behaviors by which to tell the story. Grief does not ask for you to read lines; it requires that you write them - in a language you have never spoken. Grief, the relentless and ever flowing source of disquieting, disrupting, unstoried meaning, tires the body and wears on the mind, stress-fractures the soul, sets granite boulders on the heart and then says, "speak!" 

For my grieving friends, I know you are tired and weary and may be looking for a place where grief is not or a moment when grief sleeps - so you can also sleep. I also know such a place does not exist and such moments for rest are elusive. You may look at the days before you as an endless line of blank hours awaiting processing. 

It is my prayer that you can find some way in all the disorienting emptiness to story your grief. In words. In song. In dance. In tears. In prayer. In poetry. In mission. In art. 

And it is my prayer that you will have genuine and humble listeners. Real listeners. May listeners be near you when you can story your grief, the kind of listeners who are uninterested by anything else in the world but you, who are undistracted by any other care in the world, whose listening humbly invites more story. 

An Open Letter To Cancer

An Open Letter To Cancer

(Not so) Dear Cancer,

Let’s cut to the chase and dispense with any trite and meaningless pleasantries. I am not going to sugar coat this or pretend to play nice. I hate you. We all hate you. You are an unwelcomed intruder and are invited to leave immediately. Your invasion into the body of my friend is an absolute affront to her and everyone who loves her – an army numbering in the thousands. 

We’re on to you. We know what you’re up to. Your invisible presence is now out in the open. The spot light is on you and will be on you until you are gone. We know that your goal is to take the strength, energy, health and ultimately the life of everyone you touch. You take health. You take money. You take security. You take hope. You’re nothing but a selfish, wicked, insatiable black hole of life draining evil. There is nothing good in you.

Your mission is evil and we will fight you with everything we’ve got. We will find every medicine available in this day and age to crush you. We will use any surgical procedure to cut you out. We will marshal the warriors of Heaven to storm the gates of the Hell you seek into impose. With unrelenting prayer and merciless prayer we will petition the Almighty God of the Universe for your complete annihilation.

We are not discouraged; we are energized. You wanted to crush our faith; it just increased. You wanted to instill fear; we just became more courageous. You wanted to tamp us down; we’re just getting started.

You think you’re a serious diagnosis? Diagnose this:

·         There are more of us than there are of you

·         God is on our side

·         You are alone in your mission - friendless

·         You’re trending downward in your victories

·         Your “best days” are way behind you

·         Even when you win, you lose (New Heaven; New Earth – what have you got?)

·         Anything you can do will be countered the Redemption of all things, so….

We didn’t want this war, but since war is thrust upon us, we will fight you with everything we’ve got. You’re going to wish you hadn’t started this.

Sincerely,

The Band of Friends