"Lucky Me:" Michael Chabon and me on Father's Day

A Father’s Day quote from Michael Chabon. This one comes from his amazing volume of essays, Manhood for Amateurs: the Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son. In lamenting the low bar for fatherhood in our culture, he homes in on the humility of the work:

“The daily work you put into rearing your children is a kind of intimacy, tedious and invisible as mothering itself. There is another kind of intimacy in the conversations you may have with your children as they grow older, in which you confess to failings, reveal anxieties, share your bouts of creative struggle, regret, frustration. There is intimacy in your quarrels, your negotiations and running jokes. But above all, there is intimacy in your contact with their bodies, with their shit and piss, sweat and vomit, with their stubbled kneecaps and dimpled knuckles, with the rips in their underpants as you fold them, with their hair against your lips as you kiss the tops of their heads, with the bones of their shoulders and with the horror of their breath in the morning as they pursue the ancient art of forgetting to brush. Luck me that I should be permitted the luxury of choosing to find the intimacy inherent in this work that is thrust upon so many women. Lucky me.

When I read this, I thought first of my own experience over the last 10 years and the marvel of my wife and children. But close behind, I thought of the mystery of the Incarnation and what it says about the fatherhood of God. That he would choose to enter this world in all its follies and failures and so bind himself to our blood and bone to redeem every inch of it – surely, surely this whispers the truth of the word: Father.

rebuilding

Last week we experienced a wonderful gift--a family within our church gave us the use of their family beach home in Sandbridge, Virginia, for a vacation. It was unbelievably wonderful. Basically, our days ran something like this:

1. get up (unbelievably early for some reason, no sleeping in on this vacation)
2. drink coffee
3. eat breakfast
4. go to the beach for a few hours
5. come back to eat lunch at the house
6. nap
7. go back to the beach for a few hours
8. eat one of andy's fabulous dinners
9. watch another episode of "How I Met Your Mother"
10. crash

Exciting times, yes? We loved it, every single minute! There was not a lot to do except enjoy the perfect weather, and contemplate small matters, and build sand castles. This part really fascinated me, because every time we went to the beach (twice a day), we (I use the term loosely here) built another sand castle, knowing full well that the next high tide would obliterate it.
This fact alone really intrigued me, because honestly, I hate having to redo certain jobs every. single. day. Like unloading the dishwasher. Washing dirty clothes. Loading the dishwasher. Sweeping dog hair off of the floor. Shaving my legs (TMI? Sorry about that.). And here we were, blithely doing work that we knew, without a doubt, would be destroyed within hours.

I wondered how God feels about the work that he does in our life sometimes--whether he gets excited when we make spiritual "progress" in an area, like prayer, or reading our Bible, or serving others, even while he knows that in a day or a week or a month, we'll get distracted or bored and move on, only to be reignited in another day, week, or month, and do it all over again. Does God enjoy our baby steps of trying to build godly lives? Even though our selfish hearts will often wash away the work, so that it has to be done again? Does he view it like I view dishes? Or is he more like Andy with cooking yet another delightful meal (thank you, Lord, that he enjoys it so much)? Or is he like my children, building sandcastles, doing the same work again with joy?