"The Forest for the Trees" (excerpt from Imitiating the Fatherhood of God - 2nd ed. - (Spring/Summer 2014)

The Forest for the Trees

“If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” – John 14:7

God speaks to us throughout our entire lives, but only four times during my Christian walk that I can recall a message that stayed with me; but actually three times that I unequivocally knew it was Him.

The first time was when Naji was around 10 months and it was time for him to go back to his mother after being with me for six months.  As I mentioned earlier, Naji’s mother was in the military and at that point in her training, children were not allowed on the base, so he had to come to me.  For me, this was a critical time because many impressions are formed at this age and the developmental impact of a father on his child is something that I understood with far less depth than I do now.  As I pulled up in front of the house, I stopped the car and began to undo his car seat.  Just then, I was overcome with a wave of anxiety and insecure thoughts and questions; they were all built around the thought “what’s gonna’ happen now that I’m not going to be around him as much? …  Will all of that 6 months of work be erased?... Will he remember me? …What am I gonna’ do from being so far away to restore that bond?”  So as these anxious thoughts raced around in my mind, it was as if time stood still and this 10-month-old, who could not speak and who apparently wasn’t too focused on my little verbal expressions of reassurance, turned and looked directly at me with a confident and peaceful glare as if piercing the center of my soul. He reached out his little hand and placed it on my cheek, the way one comforts a child in distress and a clear message took over my consciousness.  It was one that silenced the war in my head and whispered to my spirit: “It’s going to be alright.”  And I heard it.  It wasn’t outward where human senses could record it, but rather inward where a human consciousness could know it. This was REAL and it happened to me.

The second time I heard God’s voice was when I was courting my wife.  To be precise, five days after our first date and three days after a prayer of frustration in which I saw fit to ‘dare’ God to show me what everyone else seemed to be seeing but me.  At that time, I recently broke up with someone I actually considered marrying but it didn’t work out.  Everyone who tried to comfort me strangely kept echoing one phrase: “…I think God has something better for you….”  But it wasn’t in a clichéd kind of comforting way.  It was as if they all knew something and weren’t telling me.  So in my frustration, I cried out to God that everybody keeps saying this, but I’m not seeing it.  So I told Him that if this is supposed to be true then, show me.  Three days later, the knockout punch I received would reveal itself as a direct message from God that only I knew.  He used my conversation with my friend now wife, to show me things that she didn’t even know she was showing me; things I never described or shared with another person.  That’s how I knew it was Him. What did God say?  God said that he HAS something better AND he can prove it.

The third time brings us to the reason for this chapter.  The scripture I opened with inspired me to reflect on the ways in which my son and I are so much alike. It is those similarities that redeemed my confidence in a certain inner instinct I have always felt about him, even though we were often miles apart.  There were times when I lost heart and questioned whether it was too late for me and any attempt at greater bonding were dashed to the curb by time, circumstance and misfortune.  This struggle arose because Naji was growing up fast and it was also a critical time for bonding seemed to be slipping through my fingers because of less time spent in our day-to-day interaction. 

During the early years, when Dee was going through her challenges, many people advised me to ‘take my child’, ‘get what was mine’ and similar sentiments.  But in the midst of it all, a quiet voice said to me: “When he is older, he will come to you and then you will know” Know what?  Like the father in the story with the prodigal son, I waited for many years, looking down the road in the distance or out the window, to see what was coming ‘when he was older’.  I wanted to be ready and so I kept watch.  But all the times that I thought were THAT time were not.  I became numb and resolved that I would look ahead and be grateful for time I have, rather than lament the time I didn’t have.  In some ways, you could say I gave up.  I probably just didn’t understand what God was doing, and maybe I had some other lesson to learn.  Then something spectacular happened! At the end of Naji’s first year at Penn State, he called me and made a formal request unlike anything he has done before.  He was planning to travel abroad for a year and upon his return, would continue his studies after transferring to the top music school in the country.  But before leaving, he wanted to spend three months with me and my family.  However, there were other factors hinging on the decision to be considered, like his girlfriend in Canada who was three hours closer to where I lived than to him in Pennsylvania.  This was a tough decision for my wife and I to make, because we were concerned about our grown child not being a Christian and set in his ways. Meanwhile, I feared that my son’s beliefs and contrary behavior could endanger a strong family dynamic that had taken years to build with the younger boys.  But then there was that quiet voice again, urging me do something I could not adequately explain, but felt compelled to do, even at the risk of disagreement with my wife.  My hope was that she would catch a glimpse of what I was seeing and hopefully warm up to the idea.  I wanted so badly for it to make sense to her the way it did to me.  It didn’t completely make sense logically, but spiritually it made lots of sense.

We acted upon the prompting of the quiet voice and took the leap and let him come to stay with us, but what happened to him as a result of the experience? If we had any fears and doubts about what made sense about this, they were laid to rest the very night before he left.  I asked him one question: “What did you learn from staying with us? I’ll spare you the details, but his answer spanned over almost 10-years of thoughts, feelings and questions he had about me and my life that this trip helped him to answer and resolve in his mind.  But the victory came in the words he spoke about the impact we had on him as a family.  He said “I’m confident that if I ever have a family of my own one day, I know that this is what I would want it to be.”  This admission came from observing our behavior – something that I really can’t take credit for because it was given to us by God.  Even though we still have diverging spiritual beliefs in some ways, I was comforted to know that one of the things he desired most is something he can only get from God.  This experience is one that I know will live with him forever because he sought and gained it on his own terms, just as the ‘little voice’ said he would. 

Every visit he made before was coordinated, and executed by his mom.  But this time it was different. Naji a young adult, going on 20 years old this year and made this decision on his own.  That is a freedom that is really important to him and a lesson for all parents in similar circumstances.  Children thrive more productively when we, the parents are responsible in giving them back what God gave them from the start, their voice and power to choose.  Knowing the right time for this is best discerned spiritually.  I realize and am convinced that consultation with the ‘voice’ of God is assuredly the best way in raising my children (the grown ones and the small).  And when it comes to realizing a real plan for their futures, it is Him who has helped me to see the forest for the trees.

Life After-MATH

“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” –Proverbs 22:6 (NIV)

If you’re a parent with school age children, you can totally relate to what I’m about to share.  One of my greatest challenges once the school year comes around is meeting my boys’ needs when it comes to homework.  It’s a fantastic opportunity to be humbled by what you think you know but don’t , when your child brings home a math problem that you thought you must have seen a thousand times, but then realize that times have changed when you hear what the expectation or method is from your child, on how they want it done.  Yes, some things have changed, but often times, many things have not.

Our children are often wired, in some ways, just like us; when they don’t ‘get it’, it may be that they just need another way of looking at it that speaks to their style of learning.  I remember how to do certain basic problems from my school days and there are some oldie-but-goodie tricks and short cuts that still work.  Sometimes in today’s advanced and progressive methods, the kids are frustrated.  When we old schoolers look at it, we feel even worse because we don’t get the ‘modern math’.  I can’t tell you how many of the pain staking, late nights I spent, grabbing the baton from my wife to make sure homework gets done.  Sometimes I’ve battled with insecurity, feeling of failure because I’m not privy enough to all the modern teaching methods.  My 10 year old son had one of those moments and it would serve to de-motivate him through most of his school work.  But the problem was not with the math, but with the method of understanding it. 

My family is quite gifted in the Arts so it is no surprise that my sons share these gifts.  My 10-yr old is an instinctive artist and performer; his attention to detail and complex artistic concepts somehow are very natural, where others might struggle.  Teachers don’t see everything so that is why partnership with the parents is so crucial – to add that ‘element’ that only a parent would know.  We figured out he had very little patience for verbal illustrations, but if you depict it in a story or graphic presentation, he is lightning fast in grasping complex concepts.  So after we figured that out, when he brought that home the next time, we weren’t as drained and up- til 11 trying to get it done before school the next day.  When he got stuck, I started using pictures and stories – instead of just the instructions given on paper.  But as the parent, it’s still my job to translate so that he ends up back on the same page with the teacher.  Since that time, when we conveyed this in parent teacher meeting, the teacher took it to heart and began to implement some of our advice to compensate for how his artistic gifts work.

What my son learned is perseverance by first looking within to solve problems.  We were created with many things built in to help us in times of struggle.  If he was too reliant on the teacher or the paper to get through homework, he’d fail because neither one is going to finish his homework for him.  It was encouraging for him to know that he had something, a gift, which helped him feel not lost in the sauce.  Thus, he was more motivated to figure it out; life didn’t have to be lived ‘inside the box’.  His creativity helped save his grades and further educated his teacher on meeting diverse needs in the classroom. But even more importantly…I was THERE. The only way I was able to help my son was to KNOW my son.

And more and more, when I get bombarded with the ‘whys’ indigenous to childhood, I can to my best to answer from my own childhood experience and to the fascination of my children, they realize that in many ways, they’re just like me.  Who better for them to identify with than a larger version of themselves?  It gives vision, it gives hope, it gives context, and it gives PURPOSE - to everything they go through in childhood.

If I didn’t have a front row seat, my story would read much differently.  Knowing I was there… I know they're gonna be alright.

Bite The Bully

So how many of you have ever had your child come home with stuff missing, complaints about not having had lunch that day, unusually irritable or sullen, missing assignments, etc.?  What is your response when on a random, unrelated day at an unannounced time, he/she 'happens' to mention that that kid in class who is 'always bothering me' did something...again and that it happened before but you never even knew?

Most people might say " well as the Dad, you gotta show him how to be tough and put that boy in his place and blah blah...."   But how many of you, before responding would think to PRAY about his weaknesses so that God can reveal where the real fault lies?   We think the world of our children and that most times, they can do no wrong.  But are we willing to find out that maybe he/she is or has something to change?  This doesn't mean that all teachers are right and all kids are wrong or that your child is always right and other kids are always wrong.  What it does mean, however, is that when you parent school age children, you must also realize that their influences are so diverse in the time that you're not with them that sometimes, you just don't know.  But God does...

And this is not a Daddy exclusive problem; there are some single moms who have to wrestle with "which parent do I need to be right now - the lover or the fighter?  the tough or the tender?" when there is no Daddy to help make that choice more obvious.  There is a reason why a relationship with the Creator is critical in these times.  He sees the beginning, middle and the end of every circumstance.  What we fail to realize when we operate without Him is that these situations were designed as much for you as well as your children; to shape and mold their character and yours.

As the leader of the home, a man must make a spiritual decision on how to fight and win those battles for our kids.  The emotional approach most often invites factors into the mix that never existed in the first place and people get hurt.  When the woman is the leader of the home, those men out there looking on should learn from their struggle exactly what they are not doing in certain situations.  So when a woman has an attitude with you because you're not there for little Billy or Suzy - but think  you think you're "there" as a parent because your checks and your visitation schedule is on point -like clockwork- but your empathy for to the day-to-day is absent, THAT's what she's talking about.

What do you think and how would you and do you deal?

Welcome to My World!

Hey Y'all,

Welcome to "About The Baby Daddy...."  This is the place you want to come to unload your drama with that other mama and get some real help with some of those real issues.  This blog is about REAL TALK -straight up.  I know you FEEL stuff..but you might just be tryin' to do the right thing.  This is not the mama-bashing spot; nor is it the 'I am man- worship me' spot either.   I just think that one of the biggest challenges for the men in this lifestyle is to be viewed as honest, legit and just as emotionally challenged by a new baby as women are.  It just looks different on us.  That's just one of the many things that people may not know About The Baby Daddy.  I'm looking for all of you brothers out there who know what I'm talkin' about to come forward and let the sisters know About The Baby Daddy - who is he? where's he from? what does his life look like? Is he really unemployed and destitute or shiftless?  What is REALLY true?

 And for the ladies....I'd like you to talk about what YOU believe and what you DON'T ( and why?) - the guys need to hear it and get sober.  Each side will develop the listening skills that are needed when emotions are high and spirituality is LOWWWWW.   So yes, about that spiritual thing...  we will talk about what the bible says in a really practical way; in this way, we can come to grips with the fact that in the midst of all of these conflicts and challenges, more than anything, we need the ability to step back and see who the enemy is NOT - each other.  For the sake of our children, parenting -like marriage - is for life and we would do well to avail ourselves of the tools that will get us through the long haul.

 So spread the word!   We here and we're ready!  Welcome to my world!

Peace,

V