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.
