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Friday, November 28, 2014

The Present is King

Having a child is so different than wanting to have a child. As I write this, my first and only daughter is lying on my chest, her warm body melting into mine, her little lungs softly breathing freshly upon my skin. Only a week ago, this same daughter was driving her parents to near insanity, crying out for more food in a language we could not understand. What is wrong with us? We are capable, intelligent, perceptive people who at the seemingly imperceivable cry of an infant are operating at our wits end and no sleep.

When I imagined having a child with my wife, I imagined the stories we would tell of growth and hardship, triumph and strength. I surely didn't realize how scary it would be to have the doctor tell us
twenty-three hours of labor and three hours of pushing were not going to be enough, that we would have to go to surgery. The present moment is much more terrifying than the past or the future, which each hold a certain optimism that helps me ignore the meaningless parts, the scared-shitless-for-no-reason parts, the inadequate parts. In that moment on the hospital bed, there was no bright light ahead, pointing us to a better future (a future which the doctors has assured us would not lead to a cesarean section). Neither was there a deep well of past experiences from which we could draw (any preparation we thought we had was obliterated over a full day of labor. Besides, who can prepare for parenthood?). In that moment, in the "moment" of parenthood, all I can do is look at my wife's exhausted and terrified face, eyes that are searching for hope, enter into that painful, scary moment, and try to feel it. Try to feel it without arm-jabbing optimism or ruthless idealism. Try to feel it for what it is: an unknowable moment that came despite our best efforts to avoid it.

When I imagined having a child with my wife, I did not anticipate how unwieldy the present moment could become. Yet as I entered into it, as we entered into it together, I realize the foolishness of the imagined future, with all of our desires met, and also the foolishness of the past, which would persuade me that I can handle this kind of thing. So far in parenthood, the present moment is a king who demands all preconceptions be dropped. My wife on the hospital bed, my purple, cone-headed, wrinkly child wrestled free from a wound, the quiet hiccups of a newborn, the asylum-esque nights of eternal wailing, the concession of sleep, the gift of being beheld by the wisdom of my newborn's gaze: I slowly become aware that none of my imaginations or determinations could have prepared me for the sheer weight and momentum of the present moment upon my heart. The God of grace is improvising his mercy as a song unrecorded and unrepeated; the God of resurrection is dancing the dance of glory in the cloud of present uncertainty. Such a God is not experienced in the future or the past, but here with a sleeping daughter on my chest and a sleep-deprived wife napping upstairs, right here with me in the present moment more fully than any of my imaginations.

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