Monday night I was thinking about when my kids were born. There are moments in life so surreal, so overwhelming that it just cannot be put into words. If you don’t have kids you’re thinking, “Yeah, yeah I know. The birth of your kids is amazing and miraculous and bla bla bla.” But if you are a parent who was there when you’re children were born you know what I mean. The rush of emotion is hyper-intense and for me it was almost too much to bear…both times.
You see, I grew up knowing my parents and brother. They were always there so I just always loved them. With Krissy, it took time to get know her and fall in love with her. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with her overnight and vise-versa. In fact, she probably still has her doubts. But over a period of time I fell in love with my wife and now I can’t imagine a life apart from her. But with my kids it was different.
Falling in love is intense, especially if it is a life-long type of love. But for all the commitment and love Krissy and I share there are still things we can do to one another to make the other not be in love with us anymore. An extreme example would be adultery. If either Krissy or myself decided to look outside of our marriage relationship for physical or even emotional gratification, chances are, the one other of us may fall out of love because of the offense. With kids, it doesn’t work like that. There is NOTHING either of my kids could do to make me love them any less…nothing.
So try to imagine that much emotion and feeling pouring over you over a period of a fraction of a second. In the first 0.000001 seconds I saw my kids I was overwhelmed with emotion and love and joy and hope and fear and awe all at once. It’s pretty scary.
Now here’s the thing. When kids are born it’s nothing like you’ve seen on TV or in movies. It’s gross. They are wet and nasty and they have all this stuff on them that I can only describe at “birth-cheese.” They smell funny and, often times, their head is all funky looking and misshapen from going through the birth canal. Seriously, it’s putrid and gross. But I didn’t care. These were my children and they were the most amazing, beautiful, innocent things I have even seen, read about, heard of, or saw in a movie and there was nothing in all of creation that would make me not want to hold them. When it’s your children, you see past all the grossness and nastiness of the “birth-cheese.”
You see, I grew up knowing my parents and brother. They were always there so I just always loved them. With Krissy, it took time to get know her and fall in love with her. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with her overnight and vise-versa. In fact, she probably still has her doubts. But over a period of time I fell in love with my wife and now I can’t imagine a life apart from her. But with my kids it was different.
Falling in love is intense, especially if it is a life-long type of love. But for all the commitment and love Krissy and I share there are still things we can do to one another to make the other not be in love with us anymore. An extreme example would be adultery. If either Krissy or myself decided to look outside of our marriage relationship for physical or even emotional gratification, chances are, the one other of us may fall out of love because of the offense. With kids, it doesn’t work like that. There is NOTHING either of my kids could do to make me love them any less…nothing.
So try to imagine that much emotion and feeling pouring over you over a period of a fraction of a second. In the first 0.000001 seconds I saw my kids I was overwhelmed with emotion and love and joy and hope and fear and awe all at once. It’s pretty scary.
Now here’s the thing. When kids are born it’s nothing like you’ve seen on TV or in movies. It’s gross. They are wet and nasty and they have all this stuff on them that I can only describe at “birth-cheese.” They smell funny and, often times, their head is all funky looking and misshapen from going through the birth canal. Seriously, it’s putrid and gross. But I didn’t care. These were my children and they were the most amazing, beautiful, innocent things I have even seen, read about, heard of, or saw in a movie and there was nothing in all of creation that would make me not want to hold them. When it’s your children, you see past all the grossness and nastiness of the “birth-cheese.”
I think that God sees us this way. We are covered with imperfection and rebellion. In the Christian sub-culture we call it sin. So we are covered with “sin-cheese.” Our lives are misshapen and we reek of a fallen existence. But God doesn’t care. God looks at us and sees his children. The most amazing, beautiful, innocent things He has seen, read about, heard of or saw in a movie and there is nothing in all creation that would make Him not want to hold us. There is NOTHING we could say or do that would make Him love us any less…nothing.
2 comments:
That's a cool (but kinda gross) comparison..."birth/sin-cheese"...interesting.
I don't know if I'll ever be able to eat cheese again.
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