And now on a happier note…

A lot of times when I write the words that I put on the page stem from hardship and struggle. I use the process of writing to find the silver lining in a taxing situation; I use them to find hope. Today is not one of those days.

Yes, today was a taxing day at work and as soon as I got home I was bombarded with requests for help with homework by all of the children. The good news I saw right away was that Lena, despite my dreadful example of parenting I wrote about in my previous entry, was eager and willing to ask for help. This is a huge milestone for her since she is FIERCELY independent and stubborn and for the longest time would either hide the fact that she needed help, or refuse to ask for help even though it was obvious that she didn’t understand what was going on. This has been a pretty regular occurrence and even though it is a tremendous effort for me to stay calm and composed while teaching, I have been making a real effort at being compassionate and understanding – even showing empathy – with my teaching. And the results showed today.

Lena’s science teacher is fantastic and regularly sends her home with assignments that require my attention. He then follows up via email on the same day to make sure that his kids don’t conveniently “forget” to tell their parents and that parents have a REALLY hard time being “too busy” to check up on their kids. Additionally, if the kids do poorly on a quiz or test then he sends the homework home to get a signature and will give the kids 5 bonus points if the parents sign and date. Altogether it keeps me, the busy parent, involved in teaching, keeps the kids engaged, and helps foster discussions in households where the dad fancies himself a lay-scientist. And today Lena came home with a quiz that needed signing.

She was slightly nervous about showing me the quiz and I could tell she was REALLY hoping that I would simply sign and date the sheet and let her go. So of course I started asking her questions about the answers she got wrong and I gently (for once) and carefully (no, really) tried to find out where the disconnect in her work was. But even though I was being gentle, and empathic, and patient Lena began to get very upset. Now, when Lena gets upset it is not a loud and violent kind of thing. Instead she literally clams up and will only mumble one-word responses. This type of response normally causes me to blow up and storm out of the room. As soon as she started this I had one of my few moments of clarity and quietly explained to her, as gently as I could, that I had to step away. In the past when I’ve done this I have blamed her for it. “I’m stepping away because you are mumbling. Maybe when you quit mumbling I’ll try to teach you again, but remember that if I don’t it is YOUR FAULT.” Thankfully that was not the case today.

I still stepped away from her for some time but I promised her that I would return once I calmed down. I also encouraged her to take a break while I wrote her teacher for a little more insight into the matter. A quick email to her teacher and my suspicions were confirmed: Lena had messed up the instructions. However I held off telling her until I could regain my own teaching spirit and when I finally did sit down and explain Lena was very receptive. I honestly believe that she understood the nature of her mistake and that is the first step in not making the same one again.

And that’s it. A relatively small success in most eyes but for once I have a bit of a longer perspective and can see my and Lena’s tiny triumph and embrace it in the moment. There was a struggle but there was no yelling. We both got upset but we both took the time off we needed and came back to help solve the problem. I turned for help to her teacher, and she turned for help to her knitting needles to help come down off her angry place. 1 Corinthians 13:13 talks about faith, hope, and love. Today I saw that my faith and hope that Jesus can teach me to teach was rewarded with the patience necessary to teach from a loving heart instead of from an angry one. A happier note, indeed.

The Meanest Dad in the World

Today ended up being a pretty good day. I came home and was speaking with Lena about her day at school and I heard her speak and thought, "Wow, she speaks so well for a girl who has only been regularly speaking English for just over two years." During her retelling of today’s events she got on the subject of her English class and told me how she only got one answer wrong on her quiz about nouns, verbs, and adjectives. And I immediately felt a strange mixture of pride and guilt – pride that she did well on a second day of school pop quiz of something I didn’t think she could even pronounce (the word adjective. I’ve never heard her say it correctly and today she didn’t even pause in her story when saying that) much less identify among a list. And guilt because I’m pretty much the meanest dad in the world.

Those that know me well know that I regularly call myself “the meanest dad in the world” in jest when I make my kids do something awful like setting the table, emptying the dishwasher, and other times when I forbid them from drinking gallons of soda, playing in traffic, or jumping off the deck railing. But in this case I’m quite serious because while today ended on a good note it started off terribly. It started with a continuation of my and Lena’s battle from last night over homework. Again this morning I reminded Lena that all her stalling and sitting at her desk and staring at the paper “pretending to try” last night was for nothing. That if she had only done the simple task I asked her to do, summarize a note from her teacher – like I have showed her a hundred times, she could have spent the evening playing instead of sitting at her desk crying. If she would only try, instead of “try not to try” we wouldn’t have these kinds of fights. After our talk Lena stormed off teary-eyed to school but as angry as I was about Lena’s behavior I was proud of myself. Not once in all of my lecturing and ire did I raise my voice in anger, which is a new goal of mine. Success! But the problem with my attitude and my little speech is…

It’s complete and utter bullshit.

Lena lived in an orphanage until she was ten and we’ve come to find that what other parents who adopted older kids said is true: That each year a child spends in an orphanage can equate to two years of unlearning some of the socially-unacceptable, yet completely necessary for survival in a Lord of the Flies atmosphere, behaviors they developed there. And one of the behaviors that Lena learned was to stall until the teacher went away. However, I’ve discovered that whether that behavior was learned or just something that evolved from an undiagnosed learning disability Lena does not do this consciously. Again: Lena does not freeze up, become physically incapable of proper speech and unable to repeat even the simplest of sentences of her own free will. It has taken a while to wrap my head around this but it is true. This maddeningly frustrating behavior that causes both me and my wife to turn into unhinged lunatics is not from her conscious effort. The truly shameful thing about my actions with Lena is that I know full well that the problem is actually my approach since all her teachers seem to be able to educate her of things that I am clearly incapable (see that word “adjective”? Yeah…) without causing her to freeze up as happens with me. Despite my previous observations, my learned knowledge, my previous testing of this theory, my 15 years of formal pattern analysis experience, my 10 years of experience in leading all manner of Soldiers in all manner of situations, and 32 years of knowledge of the saving grace of Jesus… I still found it in my heart to berate, belittle, taunt, and chastise my daughter. Then I got a night of sleep to think about what I had done and come up with a way to apologize and do my job as a parent better. And then I woke up fresh this morning and berated, belittled, taunted, and chastised my daughter.

Again.

I am the meanest dad in the world and yet in my time of darkest self-hate and well-deserved self-flagellation I am reminded of Jesus’ compassion. I was adopted into Jesus’ family at the age of five and it took the requisite 2 years for each year of being an orphan for me to shed all my institutionalized behaviors. But by the age of 15 I was a model Christian and I’ve lived life beatifically and in the same manner of Christ ever since. I am always kind to the people around me, I help them, do kind things for them, love them unconditionally, and dispense wisdom when offering answers to their questions… except, of course, when I verbally assault my daughter.

And yet despite being shown the right way to be like Christ a hundred times, reading of His example a hundred times, and seeing Him modeled in others a hundred times, I still don’t get it. I daily fail miserably in every way imaginable – even with my own kids – yet Jesus does not berate, punish, or withhold grace from me. Furthermore He has never belittled me nor taunted me and has only gently chastised me in the most loving of ways. Jesus still loves me. In the 32 years since I’ve accepted the shocking fact that I am a sinner and that He died for my sins, Jesus has only heaped blessings upon me.

I was a poor kid from a farm town and He gave me a glorious house, in one of the most expensive areas, in one of the most expensive countries, in the world. I grew up a tongue-tied goofball, had a mullet until I was 19, and couldn’t get a date to save my life in high school (I believe there were 17 consecutive rejections at one point) yet He gave me this most beautiful and intelligent woman who after 14 years is still proud to call me “husband.” I sucked as a squad leader, platoon sergeant, got fired as a platoon leader, and almost left the Army but Jesus’ grace allowed me to work through my issues and make a comeback, do a fantastic job as a Commander and become respected by my peers, seniors, and most importantly my subordinates as a leader. And finally when I, at the age of 32, conflated the compassion, love, and grace of Jesus and the people that surrounded me with my own sense of self-accomplishment and told a father who was working three jobs in order to have enough money to earn a college degree that he should “just work harder and you can get to where I am”… Yes, I did... And Jesus still loved me enough to work through that completely unwarranted view of His gifts.

Then He blessed me with a desire to be more compassionate, more loving, and more graceful and to change. He encouraged me to truly empathize with those around me and then used me for a positive purpose. The biggest part of that transformation was my decision to adopt and even though I have admittedly and obviously mucked that all up on many occasions He still hasn’t treated me the way that I treated my daughter last night and this morning. He continues to shower down more love, more compassion, more empathy, more grace, and more forgiveness and for that I am forever grateful.

So this afternoon when Lena asked me to help her with her homework I told her no. As she stormed away I demanded that she return to me and obediently she did. As I realized that I was setting the wrong tone I paused… reflected… and started over. I started with the words, “I’m sorry,” and continued on to tell her that I was sorry because I truly was the meanest dad in the world and that it was absolutely not her fault. I explained that I’m not kind enough or compassionate enough to help her with her homework without being mean, and that is why I can't help her with her homework. Then I asked her to forgive me and because maybeI don’t completely suck as a dad, but definitely because Jesus still continues to bless me even though I don't deserve it, she did. And then she told me about her day and how in English…

Why Does This Have to be so Hard?

Those of you who have ever asked me a question along the lines of, “If your God is so loving and merciful, why do bad things happen to good people?” you know that I tend to not pull any punches. You will not hear me tell of how God is using someone’s situation as an object lesson for someone else, and you definitely will not hear me talk about how “it’s all going to work out for the better.” The answer you’ll get is “because He is God. You know – ALL POWERFUL and ALL KNOWING and WISE and WITH HIS OWN AGENDA.” Job, you know the guy who followed God with all his heart and all his mind and did everything God asked him to do and was struck with the worst the world had to offer, that Job, covered it pretty well when he said, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised” (Job 1:21). And for a lot of last year I lived my life with a “what are you gonna do?” kind of attitude when it came to life since it seemed like I couldn’t catch a break.

It was when I walked into church (grudgingly) one morning and the lead singer broke into a song entitled “Where is the Love?” that a switch tripped in my head. I was reminded that I’m not a Christian because God holds all the cards and I’d best be praising him up front for fear of displeasing him. No, I’m a Christian because God loved me first and sent His Son Jesus to die for me (John 3:16) and I want the people around me to know that by showing that same kind of love to them. And it hit me: I wasn’t showing that love. No one had any clue that I was a Christian from observing me because my actions and my attitude were not those of a loving response, but those of someone doing the bare minimum. I was so caught up in my own pity party focusing on the Majesty and the Glory and the Unquestionable Supreme and Divine Will of God as it applied to my life that I’d lost sight of why I even answer to His Mightiness in the first place. Where is the Love, indeed? Not showing in my life.

Life is a bit better, now. A lot of the issues that were going on at that time that were causing me to slump forward and plod through my life of drudgery and pain have been solved; and if not solved then in the process. However there is one issue that keeps coming up and that is my oldest daughter, Lena. There is a previous blog entry of mine that covers some earlier problems, namely bullying, with which I was dealing. And praise be to Almighty God. The little girl that was stealing from her brother and sisters, and bullying everyone around her has turned around. At school she is the shining example of “kindness to others” and at home she is slowly buying into the idea of “being kind; loving the people around you; helping them; and doing nice things for them”. However with all her behavioral advances there still exists a problem. A major problem.

She doesn’t care about school at all. She does the absolute bare minimum required and only with serious prodding by Jenn and I. Every night at the homework table is a battle. On the weekends when we require all the kids to do a little extra work in order to improve their weaknesses, she cannot express her displeasure enough. In many cases she will take the homework and sit at her desk for 2 or 3 hours without doing anything at all until either Jenn and I spoon feed her the answers, or one of us blows up, there are tears, and then the homework gets completed in about 10 minutes after the crying stops. In many cases she knows the answers and will simply refuse to answer correctly. Furthermore, after a year of school and all the extra emphasis, time, effort, and worksheets we have expended on the problem her standardized test scores DROPPED. Not dropped relative to her age group. But dropped from her own personal test scores at the beginning of the year. And so I find myself asking God, “Why does this have to be so hard?”

From the beginning of this adoption process, for the first time (and I’m guessing the only time) in my life I knew without a doubt that the adoption was GOD’S WILL. No kidding, read my blog post from that time. Throughout the two-year process it was clear that the hand of God was on us as roadblock after roadblock evaporated and we were able to accomplish things that no one else was able to do. To this day, almost two years later, only a handful of people have been able to follow in our footsteps. So why, God? Why, as I walk in your will, is this so #$%^ hard?

On the afternoon I received notice of my oldest’s test scores I was driving to pick her up from dance. The plan was to confront her and explain the error of her ways. I had a couple object lessons planned and a couple logic traps all ready to spring on her to help bring her to the light. Things like, “If daddy just stood around in the gym do you think he would get stronger? Then why do you think you can simply walk into school without working and get smarter?” It was going to be a continuation of months of warfare on the education front and I was frankly stoked. I finally had concrete proof that I was right about EVERYTHING regarding school and studying and now I could convince my 12 year old daughter to truly apply herself. And that stupid/wonderful song I had heard in church months past drifted through my brain, “Where is the Love?” Yes, Lena is not trying as hard as she could be. Yes, there are many things that she can do that she is not doing that require me as a parent to get involved. However, in this moment of clarity, this moment of quiet reflection and as the words “Where is the Love” and “You’re doing it wrong” quietly flitted through the back of my head I couldn’t help but think about Jesus.  

While on this earth Jesus unabashedly loved those around Him; particularly His disciples. These were the guys that had all an all-access pass to God and yet they JUST. DIDN’T. GET IT. And Jesus loved them. The wonderful, colorful, and fickle people of Judea followed Jesus, begged for his miracles, didn’t like a lot of his sermons, and ultimately decided to have him killed. And Jesus loved them. Jesus kept giving, and giving, and loving, and giving, and sharing to everyone, even up to that night in Gethsemane when after sweating blood and probably asking His Dad “Why does this have to be so hard?” more than once, He once again showed love and compassion to both a Roman soldier and to his idiot follower Peter who STILL. DIDN’T. GET IT. Furthermore, a couple millennia later Jesus did the same for me when I took a stroll on the not-approved-for-Christian-consumption path. And Jesus still loved me. Not only did He love me in spirit he also blessed me with an excellent wife a great job, and so many other things that I in no way, shape, or form deserved.  

So after reflecting on all of that I decided to drop my plan of attack and went with Love. You see, there is a lot of tough love in our house and in my opinion that is a good thing. Just as God will remain ALL-POWERFUL and he should be feared and obeyed because HE IS GOD, Lena will have to do homework (and summer school). But since I’m factoring God into this little plan I can’t forget about Jesus. While Jesus did use tough love, he also used a lot of sacrificial love and a lot of “just because I love you” kind of love and it’s those other types of love that have been lacking in my house for a little while. It’s time to search my soul and find out exactly where those other kinds of love are. Because it’s not the knowledge of an all-powerful God, but the mercy, love, and joy of Christ that made me a Christian. So I’m going to make a bold assumption that I’ve been doing it wrong up until this point and that it will be my mercy, love, and joy that will help make my daughter care about school.

Snow Day

Last night before we went to bed Jenn and I made the assumption that due to the snow that school would be closed. We were right. Now, normally a snow day is a bit of a cause for concern for us because just because Howard County shuts down their schools does not mean that my office or Jenn’s office will close. It also means that one of us is usually left holding the proverbial bag of kid-watching. However today we were both already on vacation so it was no big deal. In fact while normally I’m kind of a grump when I get “stuck” home watching the kids all day I am taking this time to relax, enjoy the time around the kids, and make a concentrated effort to maybe be a bit less irritable; almost like a resolution of sorts. So today I will try to enjoy my day, I will spend time happily with the kids, I will relax, I will not go to the gym, and I will indulge in one last day of vacation and on this last day of vacation I resolve that I will live with more compassion to my family. Because if there is one thing that I learned in 2013 it is that I lack compassion in so many areas.

This lack of compassion has been an overwhelming theme in my year. Although things started out pretty tame it was about the time that we moved back to the U.S. that just about everything began to grate on my nerves. And unfortunately that grating had the most impact on my wonderful children and wife – those who have suffered the most of my impatience, my surliness, my bursts of seemingly uncontrollable anger, and my general disdain for all things fun. Many moments this year I have had to force myself to enjoy things that should have been considered fun: Trips to the County Fair, traveling to see relatives, playing games with the kids, and other moments that I should have been cherishing I instead had to grit my teeth, slap a smile on my face, and try to enjoy them. There were very few times this year when I was honestly joyful. Most of the times I had to work extremely hard at maintaining the appearance of peace and joy and many many other times I failed miserably.

At many points I had long conversations with myself about this as I was mostly aware of how unbearable I was being. I tried to reconcile my actions with my feelings with the feelings of those around me and I never could. I always came back to the realization that I was being a jerk and that I had to work harder and sacrifice more of my time, energy, and money in order to keep peace in the home. That was my solution: sacrifice more in the hopes that my heart would soften. I had hope that seeing the joy in my kids and wife would bring a little joy back to my heart and then I could get back to being a “good dad.” So I sacrificed more and I grit my teeth harder as I smiled wider. I spent more money that we didn’t really have in order to spend more time with the kids. I gave up personal time that I felt I needed in order to spend more time with my kids. I prayed FERVENTLY that I God would increase my personal resources so I could pour more of them into my family. Additionally I spent more time with the kids trying to help them with their homework, more time assisting Jenn in running the house so she could have time for her job. I was sacrificing and that was what I told God: “I’m sacrificing, God. Just like Jesus did on the cross. I’m living a Christian life so could you please help me out here? I’m running out of Schlitz and I need your help.”

Those were hard, hard days when I was doing everything right and I was working so hard and I just didn’t feel or see anything coming back from the big guy. My talks with Jesus were decidedly one-sided and on more tangible level I was failing miserably. My temper got shorter, my voice got louder, my patience got thinner, and my heart got harder. I stopped writing not for lack of ideas but for lack of will to put those ideas on paper (or digits as is the case). My inspiration was gone and my willingness to even TRY at being a “good dad” was gone. I continued to make sacrifices of my time and effort “for the kids” in the hopes that with enough repetition I might find joy in the habit but for the most part I knew that I needed something else. I had no idea what that “something else” was but I knew I didn’t have it. I was also losing at being a “good dad” and settled for the “I hope he’s not as angry tonight” dad. So in one of my more… ahem… spirited discussions with Jesus I may have possibly kind of yelled and swore and got all self-righteous with the God of the Universe.

Now, I’m not saying that my approach was correct (in fact I’ll humbly remind you all that I am the sinner of sinners and the product of an inexplicably deep fountain of grace) but I did get an answer. Jesus, in his best Jeremy Clarkson impression called me an idiot. More specifically he hit me up with Matthew9:13. Usually this passage is used when someone is trying to illustrate how Christians are urged to love others more and correct others less. But in this case it hit me hard because much like the Pharisees I had been sacrificing many things in the hopes of a good relationship. They had been doing it with God and I had been doing it with my family. Jesus reminded me that the best way to be a good dad was to show mercy and compassion to my family and worry less about sacrificing for them. Because sacrificing time and money and even energy is relatively easy. That’s the path that the Pharisees chose and the path that Jesus avoided. Jesus calls us to empathy and understanding in order to bestow mercy and grace – arguably much more difficult tasks. I realized that all my sacrifice was building resentment for those whom I love the most and that I was “doing it wrong.” For example I was so focused on driving the girls all over Columbia in order to get to their dance lessons that I missed the fact that they LOVED the extra time we spent together (when I wasn’t swearing at the other cars on the road and was instead just talking about life or music or funny stuff). Another example is that I was so focused on sacrificing my time helping Lena and Sujin with their English homework and struggling to help them get perfect that I missed the fact that both girls’ behavioral issues were rapidly eroding away and that I was closer to them as a father than I thought possible in only a year.

So in this New Year I am consistently seeking to know the hearts of my kids and wife. I want simply to understand their point of view and work less on sacrificing for them (outside of the love and empathy required) and more on showing mercy, understanding, compassion, and grace. I firmly believe that Jesus’ actions in the gospel – the ones that caused throngs of people to follow him, believe his words, and inspired them to try to act like him – are the same actions I need to embody in order to lead my family. The people of Jesus’ time did not follow him because He sacrificed for them. They followed Him because He loved them, He taught them, He showed empathy and compassion for them, and He truly had their best interests at heart. So let that be a lesson to me and to you.