Parenting, Am I Right?

If there’s one thing that’s really frustrating about parenting, it’s how painful giving birth can be (I myself had to wake up at like 3am–ouch!). If there are two things that are frustrating, here’s the second: The insights into life that parenting yields, even to the most reflective personality, are rarely unique.

My friend John (“Hoss,” as he was appropriately nicknamed) complained a few times about the homilies that Joe Belzer, one of our campus ministers in college, used to give at weddings. “He always talks about macaroni and cheese,” John would say. “Every time! Just wait, you’ll see. Something about macaroni and cheese and his kids.” Since I like macaroni and cheese, I couldn’t understand what the problem was. I mean, there are worse things to mention in wedding homilies. But the part about always working in a story about his kids, that’s what bothered me.

So I listened for it, and sure enough Joe told a story at the next wedding I attended. The ingredients were different (no mention of macaroni and cheese, sadly), but the point was the same. Reflecting on being a dad, how he relates to his kids, the way he feels about them and all that, he said it taught him something about who God is, or maybe who he is before God. Maybe his kids had wanted to do something, but they were afraid to approach him and ask permission, thinking he would surely say no. But he thought that was crazy, because he wants his kids to love life. And maybe it made him realize that God might want his kids to enjoy life and not be afraid to ask for good things, and to freely and passionately enjoy them when they come along. That kind of story.

John’s objection, and it became mine as well, was that an analogy mined from the mountain of parenting experiences you have is so universally available that it seems shallow. A saying I heard recently from the mining business: “All the easy stuff has been mined.” Almost everyone parents, and even more were parented. The statistics are staggering. It is a universal relationship, and the lessons that it teaches keep getting relearned each generation. Nothing new under the sun. Just everyone discovering how to parent, like Columbus: “Look what I discovered!” And the older generation bewildered, like the Native Americans: “Is this kid serious right now?”

Now I will grant you that this in itself is not absurd. What makes it absurd is just how profound it can be to have one of those “watching my kid taught me something about who I am before God” moments. It’s like if all the mountains of the world were filled with gold, you would expect that it wouldn’t be considered a precious metal. That gold is so rare, as well as so beautiful, is what makes it desirable (and in a deeper sense than mere supply-and-demand thinking). If gold were as common as dirt and people still got ecstatic every time they found some, that would be absurd.

In the same way, profound thoughts need a certain combination of rarity and beauty to be truly profound. And when rarity takes too long, novelty will do. And so I spend weeks not writing on this blog for having nothing novel to say, believing that a thought is meaningful if it is profound, and that it is profound if it is unique. So uniqueness is the path to meaning, and not just for thoughts, but for people too. But all the easy stuff has been mined, and maybe the preacher knew what he was talking about when he said, “There is nothing new under the sun,” and, “The wise man and the fool both die, so why do I have all these student loans?”

But as a certain resignation set in, a surprising epiphany from the unlikeliest place, which you must watch for yourself:

As I heard my daughter say, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies,” I thought to myself, “What enemies!?” What enemies could she possibly have? Someone from her Sunday school class? Some kid from a playdate earlier in the week? And how could this kid become an enemy? Does he have any power over her most basic needs that her life could be threatened? The worst this kid might do could be easily stopped or undone. And in that light, how could she possibly name anyone an enemy?

And that’s when it hit me, like macaroni and cheese at a wedding.