Personal Stories

The love of the Father

It pains me to see my daughter suffer. When she is sick, injured, or melancholy, it hurts my heart. It’s not hyperbole to say that I would do anything in my power to alleviate her suffering, to save her from pain, and to keep her alive. If it came down to it, if her life hung in the balance and I could take her place in death so that she could live, I would do so. 

I know I am not alone in this. I’m not special for feeling this way. In fact, I assume that every loving parent feels exactly the same way about their children. Perhaps this is a God-given instinct because, according to scripture, this is how God feels about us, his children.

God loves us so much, in fact, that he came to the world in human form, as Jesus, simply so that he could take our place in death. He sacrificed himself for our salvation. He died on the cross so that we may live with him in eternity. Is there a greater expression of parental love than this? What could be more loving than to give one’s own life for the sake of someone else? Yet this is exactly what God did when he sacrificed himself, in the form of his only son, so that our sins may be forgiven. 

And since this sacrifice has already been made, we do not even have to ask for it. We did not, cannot, and do not deserve it. All we can do is to accept it. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Prayer is the return message

Every morning, I set aside time for God. Upon awakening, I say a prayer of thankfulness and petition to God for guidance and strength, and then, after taking care of my morning hygiene, I go downstairs and sit down to read a few passages of scripture as well as some other spiritual literature. This period of reading is followed by twenty minutes of silent, centering prayer, after which I write a poem for my Meditations of a Gentle Warrior blog and a longer piece for my personal website. 

On a perfect day, this is all done first thing in the morning before my wife and daughter wake up. Many days, however, this time is broken up by my making breakfast for my daughter and helping her get ready for school or whatever other activities she has going on. When this is the case, I usually listen to a spiritual podcast or lecture while prepping her food. 

Lately, I am listening to a variety of things, including Father Mike Schmitz’s ‘Bible in a Year’ podcast, the audiobook version of Henri Nouwen’s ‘Spiritual Direction,’ the ‘Turning to the Mystics’ podcast with James Finley, Steve Macchia’s podcast ‘The Discerning Leader,’ as well as a variety of YouTube talks by Fr. Mike Schmitz, Bishop Robert Barron, among others. 

Today was a snow-day for my daughter so she didn’t have school and we all slept a little later than we usually do. For me, sleeping in means waking up at around 7am. I have never really been a late sleeper. When I woke up, I said my prayers, listened to a talk by Fr. Mike Schmitz while making some french toast for my daughter, and then sat down to read and sit in silence.

A few minutes into my silent prayer, I heard my daughter walking down the stairs. I could sense that she was trying to be quiet because she saw that I was in prayer and, to the degree that a nine year old is capable, she tends to be very respectful. My eyes still closed, I could feel her standing next to me. She then leaned in, kissed me on the forehead, said, “I love you,” and walked away. 

She asked for nothing. Unsolicited and without expectation, she simply returned the love so freely given to her. Her kiss and the words, “I love you,” were her return message, her way of saying to me that she knows I love her, that my love is felt by her, and that this love is reciprocated. In that moment, it occurred to me that this is what prayer is really about. Isn’t it? It’s our way of saying, “I love you,” to the one who has loved us since before we were in the womb, much like I have loved my daughter since the very possibility existed of her ever even being born.

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Finding God’s purpose in a snowstorm

As the snow began to fall, I grew increasingly anxious. The feeling of inevitability settled upon me like a heavy weight being laid upon my chest. My mind raced in denial as my schedule, my plans, and my desires for the coming day and an unknown number of days to follow began to slowly disappear with each falling flake. Then the messages started pouring in. 

“With the snow coming, should we cancel classes?” “Are we closed tomorrow?” “What are our plans for tomorrow? It looks like the roads are going to be bad.” 

With every text, my mind rebelled, rejecting the idea that I was going to be stuck in the house, the momentum of my life coming to a grinding halt because of some snow. I grew increasingly irritated at the thought that my appointments, my jiu-jitsu classes, and my daughter’s school would all be canceled for what amounted to less than a foot’s worth of accumulation. 

Putting out of my mind other people’s concerns, their safety, and their wishes, an argument started up in my mind. “I grew up in the Northeast,” I thought, “We got way more snow than this and we still went to school. My father still went to work. He woke up early to shovel and went about his day. What is wrong with people here? They are always looking for any excuse to stay home and it’s ruining my plans.” 

Then the thought came to me, “What are you really bothered by? What are you afraid of? Do you think you are in charge of all of this? Even if you show up to open the academy, no one else is coming to train with you this morning. They are dealing with their own problems. They have their own kids and jobs to worry about. Why are you so bothered by the idea of staying home with your family, of being still, of being stuck with yourself?”

As I sat with these thoughts and feelings for a while, I said a prayer, asking God what He was trying to teach me, asking what the lesson in all of this was, and asking Him to use this moment of anxiousness, resistance, and discomfort for His purpose. After a bit, I began to settle down and accept the situation for what it was, for what all circumstances, pleasant or unpleasant are, and that is an opportunity for God to express His love for us and for us to either accept or reject that love. 

Did I want the academy to be shut down for snow? Did I want to stay home all day? Did I want my daughter to miss school (she loves school)? To all of these questions, the answer was a resounding, “No!” However, I also had to ask myself, “Do I trust my Heavenly Father? Do I long to know His will and to serve His purpose? Do I have faith that He is not doing this, whatever ‘this’ I happen to be upset about now, to punish me, but to teach, guide, and shape me in His image?” Yes, of course, yes, even if that “Yes” is the reluctant “Yes” of a child who, having just been scolded for throwing a tantrum, knows he was wrong for doing so. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Tension between the world and the Word

At church this past Sunday, the pastor gave a sermon that centered around a passage from the book of James which states, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like (James 1:22-24 NIV).”

As part of the sermon, the pastor gave out small, circular stick-on mirrors for the congregants to take home and stick in a conspicuous place as a reminder of James’s message. My daughter and I each took one on the way out, but as my daughter received hers, she dropped it on the floor and exclaimed, “Oh no!” When she picked it up, she let out a sigh of relief and said, “Whew! It’s not broken. I won’t have seven years of bad luck.”

Being in a hurry to get down the road, I didn’t think much about what happened. But then, as we were leaving the church, I noticed one of these small mirrors on the steps, broken in several pieces. “Someone dropped their mirror,” I said to my daughter. “Oh no,” she replied, “Whoever dropped it is going to have seven years of bad luck.”

Hearing what she said a second time, I couldn’t let it go. We had just left a church service wherein we heard about, praised, and proclaimed our faith in an almighty God and here my daughter was, albeit innocently, worrying about superstitious bad luck from a broken piece of polished glass. I said to her, “You know that God is more powerful than a broken mirror and that is just a superstition, right?” “Of course,” she replied confidently and sincerely.

As we drove away, this interaction got me thinking about how, even when it seems innocent or insignificant, the teachings of the world and the teachings of God are so often in direct conflict with one another. This tension between the world and the Word is a fact of life as old as humanity itself and is precisely why God gave us the filter of Scripture through which to view and understand life. I can’t and don’t fault my daughter for her childish superstitions because she is, after all, a child, but this experience did make me take a look in the mirror, so to speak, and ask myself where I hold false beliefs that keep me from accepting God’s truth.

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

God wants you to make a decision

I have recently been struggling with what to do with my life. More specifically, I have been contemplating a career change. This has me thinking about whether or not I want to go back to school, either for my master’s degree or for some type of specialized certification. Where I struggle, however, is in trying to discern what path God wants me to take.

Where does He want me to go? What is He trying to tell me? What is He asking of me? How can I best serve Him and my fellows in this next chapter of my life?

I have prayed extensively about this and I actively listen for answers in meditation. In addition to my spiritual practices, I have also been talking to people I trust and doing a lot of reading, research, and listening to podcasts for inspiration. In spite of all of this, I feel stuck. I simply do not know what my next steps should be.

Then, while driving to church this morning with my daughter, I feel like God gifted me with a clue. My daughter and I were talking about what she wanted to eat for breakfast. I gave her two options and asked her to pick one. Unable to decide, she assigned each choice to one of her hands and asked me to choose, left hand or right.

Growing somewhat frustrated at her indecisiveness, I told her that neither choice was better or worse than the other and that she simply needed to make a decision. As the words left my mouth, I realized that I was telling her the thing I needed to hear. In my words to her, I could hear God speaking to me. As I spoke to her as my child, I could feel God speaking to me as His child, with the same love and sincerity that I have for her in my best paternal moments.

From this perspective, I was able to see that, while God will lovingly lead me to a point, ultimately, He requires that I make a decision. He does this precisely because He loves me enough to not impose His will on me. Like a loving father, He is guiding me, not to blindly do His will, but to make good decisions of my own free will based on what is in my heart.

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

I might have never started jiu-jitsu

I might have never started jiu-jitsu if it weren’t for my little brother. In fact, I had never even heard of Brazilian jiu-jitsu until he told me that he was doing it and asked if I wanted to go to a tournament he was competing at.

In spite of having practiced traditional Korean hapkido for many years, it was the first tournament of any kind I had ever been to. It made an impression on me, not all good, but not all bad either. I loved watching Matt compete and I loved being there to cheer him on (I was the idiot yelling “Hold on!” to something that probably should have been let go of), but the idea of competition was so far outside of my comfort zone that I didn’t quite know what to make of it.

Fast forward a couple of years and I earned my black belt in hapkido while Matt was in Korea. He and I would email back and forth and, somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted to learn how to grapple, mainly to get out of my comfort zone and primarily for the sparring. I asked him if he could recommend any BJJ academies near me. He pointed me to a Pedro Sauer affiliate near my house and, after much procrastination, I went to a class.

It was so foreign, so difficult, and so humbling that I went back again, and again, and again, determined to master this thing. After my hapkido teacher passed away, I made the difficult decision to resign from hapkido and to focus on jiu-jitsu and my other holistic practices.

It’s often easiest to forget those closest to us, especially when you are as self-centered as me, but, whether he knows it or not, I owe a lot of where I am right now to my brother because, if he never invited me to watch him compete, I might have never started jiu-jitsu.

Working two jobs for a field day

I worked two jobs for over six years so that I could attend my daughter’s third grade field day. Well, that wasn’t the intended purpose of working two jobs, but it made it possible, now that I work for myself, for me to attend my daughter’s third grade field day. 

I was initially nervous when I signed up to be a volunteer. I was nervous because I knew it would mean a lot to her and because I knew there were easily half a dozen ways I could screw it up. What if the background check doesn’t come back in time? What if something comes up and I have to back out? What if I chicken out and have to back out? What if I am too socially awkward and the teachers, other parents, or kids don’t like me? But I knew how important it was for my daughter to see me at her school, so I was determined to show up in spite of my fears. 

I was one of four people in charge of the tic-tac-toe relay race station. There were about twenty stations in total. It was a hot day in June and the field was filled with some kind of flying insect that seemed to be attracted to the sunscreen on my arms and legs. 

After manning my station for about an hour and seeing a different group of kids every ten to fifteen minutes or so, my daughter’s group finally made its way over. When my daughter saw me, her face lit up. She yelled, “Daddy!” and ran over to give me a hug. I think I got about five more hugs from her before field day was over. 

A few days later, my daughter brought home some school work. In the pile was a paper about the school’s field day. As I looked through her work, I read the words, “My favorite part of field day was: ‘Seeing my daddy.'” My heart melted and I began to tear up a bit. 

I knew that having me at her field day was important to my daughter. What I wasn’t prepared for was how important it was for me. In her early years, I wasn’t around for her or her mom nearly as much as I would have liked to have been. I worked a lot at my day job and I was running my own business in the evenings and on weekends. 

When she was little, I did the best I could, but I was also selfish and preoccupied with my ambitions. Last year, however, after missing several really important moments in my daughter’s life because of work, I made the difficult decision to quit my day job and to focus on my business and my family. 

Some days, I wonder if I made the right decision, but then, when I read a note that says that my daughter’s favorite part of field day was my presence there, I know I did the right thing. My life isn’t necessarily easier because of this decision, but it certainly is a lot more fulfilling and these moments are priceless. 

I would have sold myself short

I often think about how much I would have missed out on if I’d gotten what I thought I wanted when I was younger. My life would be so small and I would be so lonely if I’d have had my way.

In my youth, when I first got clean and sober, in my depression and my pain, I had given up on hope and on happiness. I hated people and I wanted to hide. I did hide.

I hid in my anger, my pride, and my self-centered fear. I did my best to push everyone away and I longed for the day when I could be alone and independent enough to stay that way. I wanted my life to match how I felt inside.

But over time, as I did the spiritual work necessary to get and stay clean and sober, my life started to change. As I healed and began healing my past to the best of my ability, my heart started to open up, and my world started to open up.

Now, many years later, I look at my life in disbelief. It hasn’t been all great. There have been some really difficult times over the years. I’ve experienced pain, loss, and even moments of spiritual and emotional desperation.

Through everything though, I can honestly look at the life I have now with a sense of amazement and gratitude. It is so much different than I hoped or imagined. I am so much different than I hoped or imagined. At times it’s more complicated and more difficult than I would prefer, but it is also more full and rewarding than it would be if I’d gotten what I thought I wanted.

Left to my own devices, I would have sold myself short. God knows I tried to.

Durian and Dr. Seuss

The first time I ate durian, I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to like it. In fact, I had never even heard of durian before. I was simply offered some, I tried it, and I thought it was delicious. I didn’t even notice the smell or at least it didn’t bother me.

I have since come to learn that durian has a bad reputation for its strong odor and unique taste. Having eaten and smelled a lot of it since that first time, I now understand. As much as I enjoy eating this strange fruit from Southeast Asia, I wouldn’t want my house or vehicle to smell like it for any extended period of time.

I think knowing nothing about durian actually helped me get past its less desirable attributes. The first time I tried it, I was at my favorite Thai restaurant at the time. I had just finished my lunch and I ordered mango sticky rice for dessert.

The waitress, who knew me as a regular customer, asked me if I would be interested in trying something new. Not a shy eater, I asked her what it was. She told me it was durian sticky rice and that I might not like it. It wasn’t on the menu and I think it was just something the staff ate amongst themselves.

I told her I would like to try it. She asked if I was sure and I told her I was. At this point, I was starting to get a little nervous. She seemed hesitant and I couldn’t help but to wonder why.

She brought out the dish, set it on the table, and took a step back, waiting for me to try it. I took a bite and she stared at me expectantly. It was good, very different from mango, but I liked it. I told her as much and she seemed shocked. I think she was ready to take it away and replace it with mango sticky rice if I hated it, but I reassured her that it was fine and I continued eating it.

Relieved and surprised, waitress then went back into the kitchen. When she came back, she had the owner with her. In a state of disbelief, the owner asked me if I liked the durian. I told her it was good. She was equally as surprised and delighted as the waitress. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to like durian, but I didn’t know it.

I’m sure there is a lesson in all of this. Perhaps it is not to let other people’s prejudices or preferences dissuade you from trying something new. Maybe it’s simply that different people like different things. I’m not sure, but I’m reminded of the first book I ever read as a child, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. I’m sure Dr. Seuss knows what the lesson is.

My first bicycle – I hate you

My little brother and I being the first grandkids in our family, everyone usually gathered at our house for Christmas. One year, as we all sat in our basement around the fireplace opening presents with our family, I saw two large boxes covered in wrapping paper. One had my name on it and the other had my brother’s. They were from my grandparents, my dad’s parents, two of the sweetest, most genuine and generous people I have ever known.

My grandparents didn’t have much, but what they did have, they gave to others. These two boxes were the last gifts to be opened. Everyone watched in anticipation as we tore into the paper. When we finally got to the boxes, we could see there were pictures of bicycles on them. But there was a problem. The boxes were empty.

My brother and I were extremely confused. Then, everyone started laughing. Being a few years older, I vaguely understood that there was more to the story than two empty boxes. My brother, on the other hand, didn’t get the joke. He must have thought everyone was laughing at him, as opposed to at the punchline, and he lost his temper, yelling, “I hate you!” at our grandparents and everyone who laughed.

I could feel the mood in the room shift. I can still feel it to this day, the awkward tension his outburst created and the hurt I could sense in my grandparents upon hearing those words.

This was partly my fault. Being the older brother and not knowing any better, I had played a lot of tricks on my little brother over the years. I created games where we would wrap toys in paper and trade back and forth. He would give me my favorite toy of his and I would give him his favorite toy of mine, or at least that’s what I told him would happen. When I opened the gift he gave to me, what was inside was exactly what I had hoped for, most likely some G.I. Joe figure or accessory, or a Transformer or Go-Bot. When he opened the gift I gave to him, however, where he was promised a toy, what he would usually find was a book, and I would laugh. I don’t know how many times we played this game, but it was enough.

So when he opened that empty bicycle box and everyone began laughing, what they didn’t know was that he had been through this before and he didn’t like it at all. He was hurt and angry, just like when I had tricked him so many times prior. Shocked at his reaction, everyone responded differently. My grandparents remained quiet, my parents were embarrassed, my uncle was upset by the seeming ingratitude, and I felt all of it all at once.

When the adults finally got my brother to calm down, they took us into the garage where the bicycles were, fully assembled and ready to ride. What I unconsciously suspected all along was true. My grandparents were not the kind of people to play a cruel joke like giving children, their only grandchildren, empty bicycle boxes for Christmas just to laugh at their expense.

Of course the bicycles were in the garage. It was so obvious in hindsight. I’m sure my brother apologized for his reaction, even if he was made to, but I’m also sure he was as embarrassed after the fact as he was upset prior to seeing his brand new bicycle. I’m also sure that my grandparents forgave him as they would forgive both of us many times over in their lives.

As I said, they were two of the kindest, most gracious and generous people I have ever known. They were hard-working faithful family-oriented folks. Whether they know it or not, I learned a lot from watching them over the years, even if I was unable to show them during their lives. They saw my brother and I make a lot of mistakes, but they always treated us with love.

Oh, and those bicycles were amazing! We got a lot of miles out of them and, I don’t know about my brother, but my bicycle gave me my first real taste of freedom. I’m guessing he had a similar experience because he was usually with me when I would ride miles away from home around lake for fun, or to the tennis courts to play street hockey with the kids from school. We rode together to many places for many years and had many amazing experiences.