Crying Babies and Men

So, apparently God is at work at 4:30 in the morning. I was pretty sure this wasn't the case, as generally nothing good happens at that hour. I even had a theory* that in some ways God used Santa's method to be everywhere. If Santa had to make it to everywhere in the world in just one hour, that would be tough. But because of different time zones, he really only has to cover one time zone per hour, and he can still make it to each time zone by midnight (still a daunting task, but much more believable). So obviously God is much bigger than Santa, so he can cover more ground and more time zones at once, but come on, give the guy a break once in a while. He is the One who invented the Sabbath after all. So in this theory essentially God is working everywhere, but doesn't need to be in the Eastern U.S. timezone between say one and seven a.m. So during those hours, he's working in the rest of the world. And at three in the afternoon in Ohio he doesn't need to be in, say, Beijing. This is a much more manageable schedule than trying to be everywhere at once. (One hole in the theory is that I hadn't really thought about people that work third shift. Admittedly, this theory has many holes and is really an attempt on my part to make God easier to understand.) All that to say I didn't expect God to show up at 4:30 a.m.

But Cooper had woken up at about 2:30 the other night. Heather got up, fed him, changed his diaper, burped him, fed him again, and was ready to put him back to bed. But Cooper would have none of it. He screamed and screamed, so Heather tried everything she could to calm him down. After repeated attempts, and at this point having been up with him for two hours, Heather finally came in and woke me up. (I had slept through the entire ordeal, which is generally the case as a train could go through our house and I wouldn't wake up.) She needed me to try to settle him down. So I went in and held him, and he screamed and cried, and so finally I held him as close to him as I could, tightly against my chest and sat down in the rocker with him. At first, he continued to scream, but soon the scream turned to a cry, from a cry to a whine. Finally, he stopped whining and his breathing was short and quick. Over time, his breathing slowed down, he took deeper breaths, until finally, he was lying there in my arms with his mouth wide open, arms and legs relaxed and sprawled out in a deep sleep. As he slept there in my arms, God showed up in a pretty real way.

We all have those times like Cooper. Life is painful, things fall apart all around us, the questions seem much bigger than the answers, we can't fix what's going wrong, relationships go through rough times. And yet I find that in those times I try really hard to fix it myself. I try to come up with the solutions, I try to make the problems go away. And the harder I try, the worse things seemingly get. But I find that when I go to my heavenly Father, and just let him hold me, when I stop trying to fix everything and just know that his arms are so big, that I eventually find rest.

As a man and as a dad, this can be really difficult to grasp. We live in a society that being a man is about being able to fix things, about being in control. But maybe being manly is less about being in control than it is empowering the people around you. Loving your wife and kids well so that they can do the same. Believing in people even when they don't believe in themselves. Giving people hope when they've given up. Sometimes we need to step back and realize that we can't control and fix everything. People's greatest need isn't me, it's being known and loved by an incredible God. Maybe I'm at my best as a man, when I let myself be held, because then what I have to offer isn't me, it's Him. Coming to that realization may be the manliest thing you could ever do.

As I was holding Cooper and the clock ticked to five a.m. (which up until then, I thought that hour of the morning was a myth) I realized that what Cooper needs isn't me, it's a dad much bigger and stronger than I. So by the way I live, by the way I love him, I'm going to do my best to point Cooper to his Dad. So I would encourage you, stop trying so hard to fix everything, and sometimes just let yourself be held. And God will show up.



*Before everyone writes and calls me a heretic and uses words like omnipresent to tell me that God is actually everywhere at once, please note the satirical tone to the opening paragraph.