i am becoming…

Our little four month old is sick for the first time and it’s heart-breaking.  His eyes are full of tears ready to spill, his nose is raw and runny, and the sound of his cough is just dreadful.  We took him to the doctor and he tested positive for a specific bug so it will be a couple weeks of this.  {Sigh.}  I wish it were different.  But it is not.  I asked God to heal him and work within his little body to alleviate his suffering.

In the meantime, I’ve been resting in the promise that God is with us in the midst of suffering and it’s giving me an opportunity to learn to “be with” without any way to fix it.  I’m learning as Henri Nouwen once pointed out, “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

Since my son was born a couple months ago, I’ve bee on a journey to reconnect with the heart of Life.  To get back in touch with the nature of love and what’s truly important in the fleeting moments of breath we have on this earth.  More than anything, I want to be a man who loves deeply.  But I have not been. I’ve lost sight of how precious life is and my relationships and my soul have suffered from malnourishment.  Over the years, a grey fog settled in as the pressures of starting my own business slowly redirected my priorities.  Worries spread like weeds in my heart as I tried to based my decisions on the unpredictable future.  I lost my way by making choices bent to insulate my life and future from pain and inconvenience.  These worries have put a strangle hold on my confidence in God and my belief that at the center of life is something good and meaningful.  Within the last few months of my son’s new life, he’s been teaching me what I’ve been missing.  He is so small, tender, fragile and yet so full of life and innocence.  I’m falling in love with him.  And it’s easy to start worrying about him and start scheming how to keep him safe in this dangerous world that makes no guarantees.  But that thought chokes out the love.  As Jesus’ showed, love comes through the cross.  Not by avoiding it.  I am learning to open my hand to God.  And love, not because it will “get me something” in the end, but because there’s no other way to do life.

This is my confession.  And a new beginning for repentance.  I am becoming….  And I want to become something good.