I found this just now on youtube. I don’t even have words to describe it. It’s so randomly funny. Think about this poor little kid and the tongue lashing he gets from all these St. Bernards. It’s like walking through a car wash of St. Bernard tongues.

3 steps, lick, fall down…

3 steps, lick, fall down…

Scold St. Bernard #27…

3 steps, lick, fall down…

In fact, I’m not even sure I’m awake right now. Maybe I’m actually asleep and this is just a nightmare.

The more it started to look like a real car, she started laughing and saying, “Oh, this is awesome.” A few minutes later we had a sweet ride on our hands. Within minutes Braylen started building a truck, following the same pattern we had used to make the car. “Braylen, you are so smart. That is awesome. I want you to say these words after me: if you can imagine it, you can live it.” And she looked at me with a big grin and said it. It might have been the sweetest moment of my parenting life so far. This little genius has a lot to teach me about imagining.

The wurr of the cassette deck brought back memories, and I had to listen closely to hear what Dwight was actually saying over the buzzing. Every now and then the tape would speed up making Dwight sound like one of the Chipmunks, actually he sounded more like a goat than a chipmunk, but eventually it would slow down again. I was paying more attention to the fact that I was listening to a cassette tape than I was what he was actually saying when suddenly he asked a series of questions that got my attention.

Discipleship happens first and foremost in the home. Husbands, when was the last time you placed your hands on your wife’s head and recited the blessing of the virtuous wife? Fathers, when was the last time you placed your hands on the heads of your daughters and your sons and pronounced a blessing?

Then the cassette sped up again, and I got distracted by the billy goat sound of Dwight’s voice, but those questions have been lingering in my mind. When was the last time I had done those things? And for that matter was there ever a first time I had done those things?

I told Trisha about it, and a flattered look came over her face as though the mere suggestion of a husbandly blessing had itself been a husbandly blessing. Then she said that I should be listening to more Dwight Pryor tapes.

So I trudged downstairs and read through Proverbs 31v10-31, and then rummaged through my shelves and found a book that someone had given me by Dwight Pryor’s wife Keren: A Taste of Torah. I thought I’d open it up to see what, if anything, she had written about blessing, but before I even got to the table of contents I stopped because there on the inside cover was a blessing written to me by the people who had given me the book.

Such kind words from two very thoughtful people. Then I looked at the next page and saw that my daughter Braylen had gotten hold of the book long enough to leave a blessing of her own.

A little pig from the angry birds stickers Braylen had gotten for Christmas. She and Clara like to get into my office when I’m not home and play library. They drag all the books off the shelves, put stickers in them, and then leave them lying all over the floor. I like to think that the stickers they leave are their way of blessing me.

To bless someone is to impart something of yourself and something of the God in whose image you’re made into the life of another. Life giving, life affirming words or presence. And when I think about the way words are usually used around our house-Dad! Clara antagonized me twice! Dad! Clara’s not scooting over so I can sit there too! Hey! It’s my turn! Clara’s not letting me have a turn! Clara, stop antagonizing your sister! Braylen stop tackling your sister. You didn’t make her cry? Really? Then why is she crying? Everybody just be quiet! We lay hands on one another around here but not often for the purpose of speaking blessings.

So this week we’re going to practice putting our hands on one another, looking each other in the eyes, and speaking blessings, imparting something of the God in us to each other rather than the anger and impatience. As husbands and fathers, men have the chance to name the precious gift that their wives and children are to them. Wives have the chance to name the gift that their husbands and kids are to them, and to have your wife place her hands on your head and tell you that you are indeed a gift is a tender thing. And as for your kids, you need only watch because for all the noise they make, you’re kids are blessing you too, if only you have the eyes to see it.

Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil. The greatest way to do that is through love. I believe firmly that love is a transforming power that can lift a whole community to new horizons of fair play, good will and justice.”

Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.

Lately, things have been very hard in our house. In September, our five year old started kindergarten; five days a week, all day long. She’s pretty exhausted by the whole thing and has become an innovator at being cranky. Meanwhile, our two year old has recently begun testing us. All that talk about being great parents, forget it. Most of the time, we’re just trying to make it through the day. Loving your kids well is not easy.

Then a few months ago, Trisha sent me an email on a Wednesday afternoon. The kids had put her over the edge, and she didn’t know how much more she could take. Would I please pray for her? When I got home, I could see why. The oldest was arguing while the youngest had attached herself like a koala bear to Trisha’s ankle, whining louder and louder to keep pace with the escalating volume of the argument. Dinner was boiling over on the stove. I needed to create a diversion.

“Girls, come here I want to show you something that I got today.” I went over and sat on the kitchen floor and pulled out my laptop.

“What is it?” our five year old asked?

“Music,” I said. “My friend Aaron gave me this new music that he wrote. You might recognize it. We sing some of these songs at church.” I hit play. By now, the two year old had released Trisha’s leg from her kung fu grip and had joined us at the foot of the stove.

Soon the music was building, and it had a driving beat with big bass drums thumping. Boom, boom, boom. They both started bouncing and giggling, and I got them playing air drums. We were keeping the beat and they started trying to dance in place while keeping the air drums going. The chorus started through the second time and I tried to get them to sing the words with me:

“Oh, you love your children. Love your children. Every daughter, every son. Oh, you love your children. All your children. Help us see you in each one.”

Then through the dancing chaos, I noticed that Trisha was kneeling down watching us from the other end of the room with tears in her eyes. “You love your children. All your children. Help us see you in each one.” It was one of those holy moments that you happen upon by accident in the most ordinary times and places. We hadn’t laughed and delighted in one another’s presence like that in a while.

In the span of a song we were apprehended by something beyond ourselves and became aware that the ground we were standing on, impatient and absent of grace as it seemed, was holy and full of God’s buoyant love.

God in Search of Man

A Christmas stocking for Clara.

An Advent wreath for the back door.

A star for the top of the tree.

A Christmas angel for our bedroom door.

Mermaid tails for her toy princesses.

A puppy that she named Sparkles and led around on a paper leash for a weekend.

An elephant head.

I was wrestling with the question that all communicators would do well to wrestle with. “So what?” I wanted to find a way to show what suffering well looked like and why it mattered, but for whatever reason nothing was coming to me. And I had the sense that the words, the image, whatever it was ultimately going to be, was something I already possessed. I just needed to locate it. “Just wait. You already have what you’re looking for. It’ll come,” the Spirit seemed to say. So I shut my computer and headed for home.

When I walked through the doors, I saw this.

“Can I show you what I did?” Trisha asked. In a little less than an hour, some friends were coming over for a Christmas party. Throughout the Fall we’d gotten together six or seven times with three other couples, mostly to drink wine and to spend intentional time with each other. All of us have kids and don’t have much time or energy to be intentional with but still felt that being with other people on purpose was something we needed to do. Our goal was simple: Get together six times in the Fall, drink wine, and answer two questions: What in the last year has been really great? What in the last year has been really hard? I don’t think any of us expected it to be so holy.

So as Trisha was putting the house together for the party, she wrote a series of short prayers on little pieces of paper, prayers that gave a subtle nod and wink to the things that each of us had shared.

She placed the prayers around some lit candles and in the center wrote a prayer that said, “We call upon your name. We bless you. We ask that you would be near to us and walk alongside us as we enter a new year. We love you.”

It was so moving to me. We remember…we remember…we remember…we remember. Our conversations through the Fall had been a form of suffering well, and these prayers of remembrance were an extension of that. But what struck me about these prayers is that they were a particular kind of remembering. Not the selective memory kind of remembering that shuts out the bad and only chooses to remember the good but an “and yet” kind of remembering that sees the bad exactly as it is, and goes on trusting that life can still be full even in the midst of those hard things.

“Be near to us and walk alongside us” the prayer in the center said, and surveying the dirty dishes and the half empty wine glasses later that night, it occurred to me that God had done just that.