“Oh Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! Thou whose glory in heaven is chanted by the mouths of babes and infants.”
Psalms 8:1-2
Children at your age? It was not so odd. I was only forty-two at the time which is not so old to be having children especially living in the suburbs filled with baby boomers who never wanted to grow up. Just go to any kids soccer game these days: a bunch of old coots watching…and they are not grandparents. So it was not really my age that elicited the question about having children. It was the shared lament of parenthood. Every parent wants to talk about how much children change your life, some say ruin your life. Whichever it is there is a shared pathos about being a parent which I ignored before we had kids. Now I get it.
Kids are a terrible burden. Parenthood irrevocably changes your life. Anything less is an understatement….a very large ungainly understatement. Kids mash, destroy, and most certainly mutilate almost every part of what once was your life. Movies? Forget them. Sleep? Not really. Eating out? Not with kids if you actually want to eat. A golf day for just you? Who has time for that? In fact they just about kill you and the life you once knew really does die. Luckily I was forty-two. Any younger and I would not have taken it as well. It would have been all about me and what I was losing. But I was ready to have my adolescent life die. ( not that I don’t miss my old life here and again…like on a nice golf day) I was ready, kind of, for the rest of my life to begin, the life for which I was created.
My new world was given to me when my son Conner was born. My son Conner taught me about this new life. In his demands that he be first, I began to taste humility and practice patience. In his hunger for everything- food, attention, love- I regained a thirst for feeling, living, and loving. In his smile I felt a home which I had never known. And in his laugh I will never lose delight.
My old life was over when he was born. It didn’t come back with the birth of my daughter two years later. The myth of having a second child is something about having one and that two is not much different. Two is a world difference from one. You would think your life couldn’t be ruined more than it already was with one but it is. Again, though, I welcomed this changed life. My son helped with the transition by showing the world anew. Since he was brand new to the world he saw everything new. It is the gift of being young. When you have been earth for a while there are fewer and fewer surprises. It is not so interesting but when it is all new it is fantastic. He showed again how to see this fantastic world. One day while I was holding Conner, when he was about one, he pointed out the window to the morning sun just brightening pink on the horizon. He said, “Ah-tah” I thought it was just baby jabber until a few days later the wind chimes were ringing and he made a point that they too were an “Ah-tah.” And then his mom laughing was an “Ah-tah.” And then a light bulb being screwed in a socket was an “Ah-tah”….I started to get it.
It was the gift of a one-year-old for his dad and mom: the world brand-new. “Ah-tah,” he said to those things that he wondered about, or was surprised at, or delighted him in some way. I started to hear it as an affirmation, the kind of affirmation I had all but forgotten about; a simple and sweet prayer of thanks for all that is good. Adults somehow forget such prayers and sometimes become blind to the depth of goodness all around. Maybe this place is forever brand new and we have trouble noticing.
Once trying to explain the wisdom that my child had given to me a friend said that she knew all about “Ah-tah.” She told me it was Portuguese and it meant “now I understand” or “Now I get it.” It is what Conner tried to convey but I think it is more. It is a sense of wonder, goodness, and delight. It is what we feel when all seems right, right now: a cool breeze on a hot day, a hug, a kiss, a warm smile, the right word of encouragement, the moon on the water on a summer’s night. I could go on but I think you get it. Glimpses of God and grace that we too often miss are what I believe to be the real “Ah-tahs. It is what this blog is all about. Seeing our God in the ordinary events that make up this life. I hope they help you look in a new way and see the most ordinary moments as delight- filled and God-filled.
