In conclusion… Happy Birthday, Fighting Finn! (Final Post)

“To create is precisely not to control,” says a Jewish Midrash expert.  Anyone in the business of making art knows this.  Anyone in the business of procreating knows this.  Procreating is a form of art.

We may not like lacking control.  We may want to control all that we have made.  Yet be soothed: we get to experience what God experiences when our creations run free.  For in the crucible of freedom is love.

Finn, today you enter a new year.  A new year to see, through a one year old’s yes, what love looks like in freedom.  Let’s love together.  Let’s press more deeply in freedom, worrying less about other’s opinions of us and more about the great freedom God lives in.

We watched the clock today, remember what happened one year ago.  How we were sleeping until Mom’s water broke at 8am.  I don’t remember sleeping in that late since then.  We watched the clock from 10am to noon when Mom wrestled, laboring in the tub.  We noticed the clock move past 14:41, when Finn appeared in the world.  We also noted on our clock how we went to bed early that birthday eve, how the nurse noticed Finn’s blueness and rushed him to the NICU.  And so began the unexpected acts of creation and the graces splashed out along the way.

For this first birthday, Finn opened his presents from Aunt and Uncle and Grandma.  And he even opened one that had no giver’s name.

On his first birthday, he fed himself with a spoon.  Mom scooped the food, handed the spoon to Finn, and Finn turned it upside-down to slide it into his mouth.

On his first birthday, he began to ascend from his cold as I’m descending into it.  All that lack of sleep and abundance of stress from the weekend weakened all of us.   Finn and I played all morning till I was beat.  Mom is also climbing out of her cold, more slowly.

On his first birthday, we discovered some our land plans will be approved.  The county says they look good.

On his first birthday, we drove to the grocery store for peanut butter and orange juice.

On his first birthday, we practiced standing.  But Finn didn’t take his first step.  I predicted a month ago that Finn would walk before he was one.  I was wrong.  And that is my last insight for this blog: I’ve learned being a first year dad that nothing is predictable, each day is different, routines change, and the little guy surprises you with advances and setbacks.  You never know what happens next.

“To create is precisely not to control.”  This saying hangs on our wall in our bedroom.  A continual reminder we live in a larger story.

Thanks, Readers, for taking the reading journey with us.  For leaving your comments.  For jumping into my rants and celebrations.  For, most of all, relating.

Finn, this blog is a gift to you.  It’s my version of a baby book.  You probably won’t appreciate it until your wife is pregnant and you’re sitting on the bed together wondering, as we did, what the future will be like.  And you’ll wonder, as we did, what our parents anticipated.  And you’ll wonder, as we did, once your little one comes along, what you were like as a baby and how your baby will be like you.  Grandma, who had been in heaven for over six years when you were born, kept a baby book for me.  It was sparse and left open a lot of questions.  But the treasures inside were still sweet.  I wish Grandma were around to see you now.  She’d be tickled with you.

Now begins another year.

I finished yesterday’s post with these words, “Tonight at midnight, the curtain falls on being a first year dad.  Tomorrow a new chapter — a second year…”

Finn’s recorded journey in our family is not over.  You’ll get to read more, if you like.  Mom has already begun Second Year Mom.  She won’t update daily, like I have (that would be crazy!).  But she will update when she is not overwhelmed by other things.  Her posts will be under 200 words.  Her blog will be more like a journal conversation with Finn.  So don’t expect to leave comments.  And with that, I hand the story to her…

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Haircuts and Selfishness (only one more post left…)

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We were gone all day… to town.  Mom and I worked while Finn spent time with Babysitter.  Finn didn’t want us to leave this morning, more so than usual.  He’s fighting a little cold and we think that’s the issue.  Babysitter said he was fine after we left, until he saw us walking up to the door when we returned.  He erupted again.

Then to haircuts after lunch.  I’ve not seen Finn struggle and cry, outside of getting 15 pricks from a blood-drawing needle at the hospital, than he did getting his hair cut today.  I wondered if he thought his hospital experience would return.  Friend, who cuts all our hair and is the best stylist in town, navigated Finn well, pulling back the scissors every time Finn jolted his head and body.  And Friend said afterwards that some kids are three times that bad.  Wow, three times?  I couldn’t imagine anything worse than Finn’s struggle at that moment.

Mom and I also got a trim.  I’m cool again.

Presents have piled up for Finn the last few days.  These are the only packages we let him play with.  He climbs on the large box and pulls at the smaller envelopes.  Nothing has come open yet.  I re-stack them and he pulls them down again.

Finn has also learned to hand toys to the dogs.  Sometimes the ladies are a little rough when they take it and Finn pulls his hand back and holds it where, apparently, a tooth slides across his sensitive fingers.

Finn, today, stood.  I think he stood a few weeks back (I wrote about it).  But today I was walking him across the room and I stopped and pulled my hands away.  He stood upright and balanced for at least five full seconds.  Then he turned and grabbed my leg.  He laughed and kicked and danced, which makes me think that he knows that he stood, a true stand like a confident biped.  We tried it a few more times.

And Finn put himself to sleep tonight too.  He’s done this before, but we’re working harder at it.  For me, it isn’t the amount of time he cries in his crib; it’s the quality of the cry.  All needs met, he cried because of the crib itself.  And the cries slowed, like the gradual turning off of a faucet.  Twenty minutes later, silence.  Now, getting him to fall asleep on his own is one thing.  It’s not often yet, but it’s not miraculous either.  The next thing is a lengthy sleep.  How do you keep a kid from being hungry three hours after you put him down?  Mind you, he’s filled with milk and solid food at the point of putting him down.  If you have a tip, share it!  If you say to ignore his hunger, I’m reporting you.

Now here’s something else I’ve learned from Finn, though I risk sounding pompous.  I do not intend any pride in this, but an observation.  An encouragement really.

I’ve met many who said they did not realize how selfish they were till they had kids.  I’ve met others who say the same about their flexibility.  Kids put the strain and demand on you.  And if you are responsible parent, you bend.

I talked to Friend one day, before Finn came along, who confessed that his kids revealed his selfishness.  We had a long talk about it, trying to parse out and get to the bottom of what selfishness really is.

I think some people believe selfishness is when you don’t want to do something that you need to do or when you lack gladness in your work.  And that isn’t selfishness.  It can be inconvenience or shocking or whatever.  But that is not a character issue.  If someone asked you to pick up after their dog, you are not selfish to think, “That’s gross.”  You might not even be selfish to ignore the request.  However, you  might be selfish if you asked the same of someone else.

Selfishness is the attitude that others exist for you.  You design your own world.  That, I think, is closer to real selfishness, though I’m sure there are better definitions.

Here’s what I learned from Finn’s first year: that I’m not nearly as selfish as I expected to be.  It appears marriage worked out a lot of kinks long before the Fighting Finn came along.  And I’m glad for it.

Okay, not just marriage.  Having three corgis also helped.  Mom and I used to joke to people that our three corgis were practice for having children.  Some remarked soberly that those three corgis were about the equivalent of one child.  And, in some ways, I agree.  Lady Lucy as a pup taught me to get up in the middle of the night during her first six weeks at our house.   But I wizened up and crated her after that.  She could whimper and wet her crate all she wanted in the distant room with the doors closed and I could continue sleeping.  Not so with Finn.

But tending to the dogs, playing with them, watching their health, training their behavior… these all have overlap.  And the biggest overlap is the mindfulness, the presence, that these dogs are my responsibility, always.  Nothing happens at our house without taking the dog’s welfare into consideration.

I also learned than I’m flexible.  Sure, a new idea must sit on me a few minutes to sink in.  This bugs Mom who can shift gears faster than a cat on an ermine.  Sometimes Mom will ask me to do something and my first reaction is, “I’m in the middle of something else and I cannot steer that quickly.”  But I eventually steer, usually.  I’ve been accused of being inflexible by some in the past and I’ve taken it to heart… and learned that sometimes people say this to you because they want you to conform to their wishes.  But flexibility, I’ve found, is a strong point of mine.  Most of the time, I’m more concerned with the needs of Mom and Finn.  I ask Mom what she wants, where, how… before injecting my opinion.  This sometimes bugs her, but I do mean it.  I admit that sometimes I don’t care, which makes me seem virtuous when I’m not.

But I’m learning my limits.  And limits are not necessarily about selfishness or inflexibility.  Sometimes they are just about our capabilities. We can grow stronger, sometimes.  But knowing our limits is also a virtue.  When I get to a point that my eyes are hung at half-mast and my emotions beg for Mom to relieve me from Finnundation, that’s when I know I’m passed my limit.  That’s when I know I should have said an hour earlier, I lack endurance.

Mom and I are both getting better at that.

I’m sure year two, three, 10, 14, 17 will teach me more about my many flaws.  Don’t worry.  I’m anticipating it.   No need to comment, “Just wait until…”

Finn’s passport arrived yesterday.  Now he can explore the world.  He’s going with us to speak at Oxford in May.

Tonight at midnight, the curtain falls on being a first year dad.  Tomorrow a new chapter — a second year…

We made it.

Into the elements (only two more posts…)

Finn moved into the elements today.  The french doors were wide open with the warm sun streaming down.  The snow and ice on the deck receding by the hour.  That’s when Finn looked out.

He stood on the threshold a while, taking it in.  He’d crawled out these doors a couple of times in the past, but not with such deliberateness.  Before, he crossed the threshold like a wind-up toy seeking an open floor.  Today he was an explorer uncertain of what lay beyond.  He did not look back; he slowly went to his crawling position and stretched into the unknown.

One small step for man, one giant stretch for Finn.

I followed him, quietly.  He moved to the receding ice and touched it and pulled his hand away.  I wonder if it felt like fire, all that cold.  His face said so.  He looked and touched it again, trying to pinch the slippery thing in his fingers.  The dogs saw the commotion and moved into place.  They like playing with ice.  I threw them some pieces as I knelt next to Finn.  Finn watched them crunch the ice and wait for more.

And this evening, as I made a fire, I looked behind me at Finn who sat, leaning hard, his head cocked to peer around my frame and into the flickering light.  He gazed for a solid minute.

As Finn ramps up to turn one, he’s growing more alert and capable exponentially.  He used to stretch for the knobs on the kitchen cabinets just six weeks ago.  Now he grabs them with a bended elbow.  He’ll now hold the telephone, as he did this morning, and pretend to talk on it.  The person he prank called, thankfully, didn’t call us back.  I would have asked Finn to talk to him and calm the man.

Finn has taught me, or rather reinforced, to see the world fresh.  This telephone, that book, this leather cushion, and that small package.  Here’s a soft pillow and soft kisses, a ray of sunshine and a familiar face stepping through the door.  Simple pleasures that go easily overlooked.  I take Finn’s feet and rub them against the scruff on my chin and he giggles.  He opens the spice cabinet and pulls out a Tabasco bottle to lick the cap.  Something on the cap is tasty to him, some residue of pepperiness left over from the factory.

These are all graces to grab.  This is the stuff of life worth celebrating.  The brisk walk in the later afternoon and the long shadows of the trees.  The dogs tossing themselves into deep snow to chase a weasel.  And, though it sounds so very unspiritual, this is one of the reasons Jesus died.  Not just died, but rose again.  To make us alive to the world.  To redeem a world alive.

Original sin revisited (only 3 more posts…)

 

Grocery shopping like royalty

Early rise.  I spoke at two separate church services in the Vail area this morning.  Mom and Finn rose with me, but they stayed behind.

 

I drove 90 minutes to the event, living on little sleep after a fatiguing day.  Unlike many other jobs, you cannot call in sick when an audience is waiting for you.  And, besides, it’s worth it.

I think several had breakthroughs today.  It’s a gift when you see fruit.

I had several conversations that could lead to future opportunities.

I returned home at 3:30pm for a nap.  Then grocery shopping and dinner and cleaning and then an early bed for Mom and Finn.

Tomorrow will be more restful.  We’ll need it to nurse the colds we’re all getting from wearing ourselves out.

Since this final week has been one of reflection, another thing I’ve learned and re-considered with having Finn is the old doctrine of “original sin.”

Living with an infant, just like all experiences, should give us pause to see whether our “doctrines” line up with life or if we have misread the traditions and need to re-read them.  At the start, I imagined I brought another sinner into the world.  But I’m not as certain now.

What I am certain of is that Finn, sadly, will be a sinner.  Everyone is.  That’s the first mystery of original sin.  The Judeo-Christian view, of all views, seems closest to describing humanities ill.  We willfully do what is wrong sometimes without illusion.  All of us.

But the part I’ve shifted is attributing guilt to a child before that child is guilty.  Some Christian groups claim a baby is born guilty, a universal condemnation.  I do not agree and have found, through research, that a growing number scholars also do not agree.  I’m in good company.

And that’s the shift in reconsidering this old view of the human condition.  We’re all born broken but we’re not all born guilty.  We’re all born under the wrong king in this world, but the right one is available to us.  And Finn will have to come to terms with his own guilt some day.  And he will have to ponder why he was born broken, why he has hang-ups.  He will stand with the rest of us asking the same question: why does it seem our condition is lodged in our DNA?  No doubt parenting can nurture a child in the wrong direction.  If parents are willfully poor decision makers from time to time or refuse to see their own blind-spots, the kid will get caught in the cross-hairs.  Yet, despite the conditioning, there is a real evil we must contend with that we sometimes desire in the wrong way.

We could say God is culpable of this, leaving humans to their own demise, these humans with a certainty to fail.  But is God culpable?  Has he left us?

Yet the rightful King has not left us and therein lies the larger story.  Our frailty is but a foreshadowing.  With the First Adam is the promise of a Last Adam.  God would be guilty had he abandoned us beyond abandoning Adam.  But he hasn’t.

And so Finn must seek him as we all must.  We are culpable for our good choices as well as for our bad.  But Love has broken in.  And sin, original or not, is no match for it.

We, the sleepless parents (4 posts left…)

 

Finn taking stairs (both up and down) while flights cancelled Friday.

I think there’s a haunt assigned specifically to Fincher air-travel.

 

We’ve officially changing our airport of preference to Denver, not because our airport is not good enough.  It is.  But because most airlines have ditched our airport during the non-ski season that we need more options than United.  Sorry, United.  Delta, our typical carrier before moving to Colorado, has you beat.   United feels like a clumsy, outdated, cumbersome company.  So busy acquiring Continental they seem to have overlooked creature-comforts that we need in air travel.  Drop the baggage charge so we have more overhead stowage.  And stop with the Economy Plus upgrade.  Give everyone a few inches extra leg-room please.  And 1995 called and wants their CRT monitors back.

After our flights canceling last night and hunting down a hotel room, we were ready to get home.  We left the hotel at 10am and caught our first flight to Chicago.  Then our next flight to Denver with an hour on the tarmac waiting to take off.  Lots of planes in line for de-icing.

We were tired when we landed in Denver after two flights.  We tried to bump up to an earlier flight for our last leg home, but none were available.  Not a single plane in United’s fleet was flying home sooner than 9:35pm.

And so the six-hour layover began.  I would tell you all that we did, but I don’t want to be bored with reliving that again.

Then our time came.  We neared exhaustion.  Mom was sleep-walking.  I was beyond the fatigue that leads to nausea.  Finn cried and cried as a prisoner who wants sleep amid the noise and lights that refuse to grant it to him.

Finn finally slept after Mom worked with him, pacing the terminal.  Layovers are tiring.  Air travel is tiring.  Add an 11-month old to the mix and you multiply the tired by 3x.

Then the flight was delayed more.  And more.  An hour later we boarded.

Then the flight home and the drive home.  I hit the pillow at 1am, Mom and Finn getting a slight head start.  I collected thoughts for a talk at a church in Vail in the morning.

I can relate to parents of infants better now than ever.  I used to see families and think very little of it.  ”There’s a family of wee ones,” I’d think.  I’d give them a glance and a smile and was glad other people had a knack with kids.

But now, NOW, I see passed the families into the eyes of these parents.  And I know.  I know the sleep they yearn to have, the extra hands, the on-demand pocket-nanny.  I know their plight.  I can stand among them and stand for them.  We are the sleepless parents, the walking dead, who were once alive and are now unsure.  We think Purgatory may be real now and we’re caught in it, purging ourselves of sin.  We know at the other end of this rainbow, which is my child, is a pot of gold.  We believe it, but we cannot feel it.  We stand united with knowing glances and encouraging nods.  This is love, not that our child loves us, but that we love him, and die daily on the cross of parenthood.  Though he knows little of our suffering, I now know better of my parents’ suffering.  Graduate school and parenting: two seasons that plague adults with a need for wrinkle cream.

Finn, one day you may ask of us, “How do you love me?”  Well, like God, we love you in unlooked places.  Those unlooked places are those that have buoyed you along to even raise the question.  The reply, “Well, you’re here now, aren’t you?”

And after that reply, I’ll take a nap in remembrance of the early years.  My wrinkles, like my sleep, will be long and deep.

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People shouting – a rant (5 posts to go…)

We finished our time in Indiana today, Finn absorbing so much activity and staying calm.  I spoke for two chapels and drew questions in two classrooms.  Finn stuck with Mom through all of this, though Mom got a little Finnundated in moments and passed Finn-the-Football to me.

Then our time was done. We packed and rolled to the airport.  The lines were long and our flight was cancelled.  The attendant rerouted us to arrive home after 11pm tomorrow (Saturday) night.

And I speak again in Vail on Sunday.

Oh boy.

For a respite, we found a comfortably historic hotel in downtown Louisville.  This was the first hotel, of the ten I called, that even had a room.  When we checked in, we were given the club level with a free breakfast in the morning.  Thirteen floors above the street, I can still hear people shouting from below.

People shouting.  That’s another thing I’ve learned during this first year as a dad.  And the shouting is a metaphor.  I’ve immersed into parenting and discovered, just in like in religion, cults form around the edges and sometimes creep into the center.  I’ve found that many let you be the kind of parent you believe you should be.  Still many more believe there is a right way and a wrong way to do things.  In gender research, we know stereotypes abound that disallow individuals from being free.  Parenting is no different.  People will tell you what you should do and how.  They will point out books and manuals.  They will even mail them to you.  Some are decent. Some are not so much.  Some will give you a shift in their eyes when you tell them how you’re helping your son fall asleep.  And they, while speaking softly, will volunteer their methods as the tried-and-true (by the way, we’ve tried all the suggestions and none of them work for helping Finn sleep… I’m of the “customize to your own baby” philosophy).

What is more (are you ready for this?), people will also you how you should feel and how you are going to feel.  Yep.  They do.  It comes in forms of “Just wait till you…”  Or, “Right now you think this, but one day…”  As Mom says, some people want to script your life for you.  They want their experience to be your experience.  Or they want to read you the last page of the novel as you’re starting the first page.  It splashes forth as patronizing.  Yeah, patronizing.  An assumed superior position bestowing its bounties on the lowly.  ”I’ve read the book, so let me tell you how it ends!”  Some people cannot help it for they are blind to their insecurity.  Others can and live with that large wart of pride that we cannot take our eyes off of.

Now, from the insecure, I take the gesture as a generosity.  People want to share their life and hope yours is as good as theirs.  When we work toward love, even in awkward and unpolished ways, we want good for others.  What could be a horrible revelation to some of these voluntary sharers, is that you may find their life less good than the one you’re seeking.  Yeah, that’d be a horrible thing to say.  But isn’t it often true?  The problem is not the more or the less.  The problem is that people want to transcribe their life onto you.  And whether they have more or less, living on a higher or lower plane, this simple revelation must be told: every life is different and must be lived according to that person’s design and wisdom.  You have your life.  I have mine.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

That’s prof0und when you think on it.  When we can each live our own lives before God, we may discover missing colors shadowed by parenting cults of conformity.  We may discover nuances to love and a certain understanding of the precious life heaven has bestowed upon us that would be missed if we followed the manuals.  We may end up overlooking our child in the name of parenting and so become poor parents while patting our own backs that we are good parents.

That’s a sad lot.  And before any parents try to defend themselves, let me add that the only real critics are not ourselves.  It is our children.

I want to see children leave their comments in 30 years, sharing their praise and sadness in the parenting their received.  Thirty years is enough time: that’s when the issues come out.

This is something I’ve learned as a first year dad.  And, as a dad, I’m on the sidelines of these issues mostly of the time.  Mom’s are the ones in the throes of those battles.  Yet, maybe we need more dad voices to calm the storm, to help point out that the cult-like activity-directors that, well, they are not in charge.

Being a first year dad, didn’t teach me how to rant.  But it did teach me how to rant about THIS.  And I do this in the love and protection of Finn.

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More than I thought; less than I wished (6 posts to go…)

Within the first year of Finn’s life, all three of us in our family have enjoyed the delirium of general anesthesia through surgery.  Mom for a D&C.  Finn for the cyst above his eyebrow.  And I for my gall bladder.

That’s a lot of doctors to see, and prayers to pray.

Today was crazy.  Not only did I speak twice this morning and Mom and I attend a class for Q&A, but I also worked on the largest financial deal of my life.  I had to hunt down a notary at the school before school began and then another one after our presentations were done.  Last night, I was also up till midnight, printing, signing, and emailing papers.  We have a prayer team at Soulation who regularly prays for us.  I think that upheld us to keep our attention on the students with so many big things going on around us.

One of my jobs is to invest.  Another is to volunteer as Soulation’s president and one of its speakers/writers.  The latter is dependent on the former, as you can guess, while Soulation continues to be a donor-supported work.

And God is good to carry us through.  At times, this last transaction led to some nail-biting.  I don’t think Finn noticed.

This is something I’ve learned with Finn:  I’m able to do more than I thought I would.  Before Finn, I expected to be more shut down.  I thought so many avenues would screech into crawling traffic.  But, remarkably, we continue to press forward.  People ask us how we co-parent with Finn and still do Soulation.  It helps that we work together.  That’s one thing.  The other is that we work hard at it, communicating, sharing, assuming nothing is the work of “woman” or “man.”  It remarkably comes together.

I’ve also learned this: I’m unable to do as much as I wish.  I read far fewer books that I should this past year.  I’ve written less (apart from this blog).  I’e not started a new book like I had intended.  I’ve had to take fewer opportunities to reach out.  It saddens me when we speak at a school and students ask us to come to their classrooms because they want to discuss.  So few get to hear the kind of material we share, but we have to say “no” so often.  I didn’t say “no” as often in the past.  But with Finn we must.  We sleep less at night and have less energy.  And Finn also has his own needs.  We can help the students or take care of Finn.  But usually not both.  I fear this would happen, expected it to happen, wished it wouldn’t happen.  I grieve when it doesn’t happen when I sense it as my calling.  But so it goes.  I hope this is but a season.  I see fields white for harvest and some left unharvested.

This is yet another thing I’ve learned.  Kids can take you out.  And when they take you out in negative ways, I’d like to think that’s part of the fallenness in this world (if the world wasn’t fallen, then people would lack the needs).  And in a fallen world there are casualties. Better for me to admit causalities than turn a blind eye with the praise of parenting.

But no one can do everything.  With children comes expanded responsibilities.  Baby becomes a ministry too.  I understand Paul even better now.  Before, I knew him in theory; now I know him in experience.  I better see what it means to “serve God without distraction.”  I once thought that meant emotional distraction.  Now I see it’s practical distraction.  A Dad lacks the time, arms, and strength to carry the world on his shoulders.  He’s sometimes just glad that baby is clean and fed and that he got half a banana for breakfast.