parenting

Leaves floating downstream

When my daughter gets a song stuck in her head, for whatever reason, listening to the song on the radio helps free her mind of the song. So quite often I hear her voice from the backseat of the car saying, “Daddy. [insert song title] is stuck in my head. Can you play it?” She tends to be extremely sincere and generally honest, so I at least believe that the song is stuck in her head, but I’m not entirely sure whether this trick of playing the song to get it out of her head actually works or not, or if she just uses this as an excuse to ask me to play the song for her.

Either way, I typically humor her. I don’t mind playing music she likes while I’m driving. It helps me understand her a little better and it’s an opportunity for us to bond. There are times, however, when I simply want to listen to my music, either because I’m simply not in the mood for hers or because I want to expose her to something new. She tends to be fairly understanding, at least as understanding as a child can be, and it gives us a good reason to talk about music, which is something I have always enjoyed. 

Tonight, maybe I simply wasn’t in the mood to listen to the song she said was stuck in her head or maybe I was just being stubborn, but when she asked me to play a song to relieve her of the torture of it running through her mind, I said no. But I wasn’t being cruel. I turned it into a conversation about intrusive, obsessive thoughts, something I have struggled with for as long as I can remember, and a healthy way I have learned to manage, or even transcend them. 

When she told me that the song was stuck in her head and she couldn’t make it go away, I explained that I have the same problem sometimes. In fact, we all have minds that often seem like they are entirely out of our control. Even when we want them to be quiet, they simply won’t and we live with the constant chatter of hope, worry, anger, fear, frustration, excitement, anticipation, shame, regret, etc. running through our minds. Sometimes it is so loud and chaotic that it almost seems quiet, but it is anything but. 

We think about the past, the future, and all the things that have happened, could have happened, may happen, or may never happen, and we are rarely, if ever, simply at peace in the present moment. This, I explained to her, is one of the reasons I meditate every day. “Really?” she asked. “Yes, dear,” I replied. “When I don’t meditate, my mind races, obsesses, and does all sorts of crazy stuff to drive me crazy. Meditation helps to quiet my mind down a bit, or at least makes me less susceptible to getting carried away with the thoughts that bombard me from every direction.” 

I then explained that, in the style of meditation that I practice, known as centering prayer, I pick a simple word that I can repeat whenever my thoughts become intrusive or my mind wanders. I sit quietly and, when thoughts arise, I simply say the word in my mind as a way to let the thoughts go. I don’t try to fight the thoughts or deny them. Rather, I acknowledge them with my word, and let them gently go on their way. “It doesn’t matter how many thoughts arise or how often, I explained, only that I return to the practice of repeating my word every time I need to return to center.” 

Intrigued, she started throwing out some words she might be able to use to release the song in her head. At first, she chose “Stop,” as her word, but then I explained that it’s preferable to use a word that is softer and less of a command. “Remember,” I said, “The goal is not to resist the song, only to free yourself from it.” “Please” was the next word she chose. “That’s closer, dear, but it’s still engaging your thoughts. What we want is a word to remind us to let the thoughts go, not to directly engage our thoughts.” 

“Here’s a visualization I once heard,” I said, “That has helped me better understand the practice. Imagine your mind is a stream. It’s cool and calm, with the water quietly flowing by. On top of the water are fallen leaves. These leaves are your thoughts. As they float down the stream, you will be tempted to hold onto them or to follow them, but the goal is to let them be, to simply acknowledge them and let them continue to float downstream. Your word is there to remind you to let the leaves go and to keep your mind on the stream itself.” 

As I explained this all to her, it occurred to me that it may be a bit much for her to comprehend. After all, it’s a bit much for me to comprehend and I’m the one practicing it. But then I realized that, even if she doesn’t understand or utilize this practice now, it’s something she can recall when she is ready. I merely planted a seed, a seed I wish was planted for me earlier in my life, but which I am grateful to have received when I did. 

We pulled up to our home and unloaded the car. I went upstairs to take a shower after jiu-jitsu class while my daughter sat down to eat. After my shower, I came down to eat and my daughter, now done with her dinner, went upstairs to get ready for bed. After she showered, brushed her teeth, and read for a while, my wife tucked her in and turned out the lights. As she lay in bed, from downstairs I could hear her every few minutes saying a single word. “Leaf,” she said and then some time would pass. “Leaf,” and some more time would pass. “Leaf,” she said again, until eventually she fell asleep. 

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. 

My wife hit me with an egg

While I was making pancakes for my daughter, my wife hit me with an egg. Well, that’s not exactly how it happened. My wife and I were both in the kitchen this morning, rushing around, getting our daughter ready for school, my wife ready for work, and myself ready to go visit my mom in the hospital. I was making pancake batter for my daughter’s breakfast. She likes the pumpkin pancake mix from Trader Joe’s. Today, I mashed up an over-ripe banana in it just to mix things up and so I didn’t have to throw it away, but I digress. 

As I gathered the ingredients for the pancake batter, I saw that my wife was getting something out of the refrigerator. I asked her to grab me an egg because the pancake recipe called for one. She got one out of the egg bin, reached over to hand it to me, and just as she did, I turned toward her, the egg and my elbow meeting at just the right time and angle for the egg to go crashing to the floor. 

For about thirty seconds, we both blamed each other for the mess and then it turned to joking. As my wife cleaned up the egg on the floor, which I think I thanked her for doing but will thank her for later just to be sure, I mixed the pancake batter and proceeded to make my daughter’s breakfast. In spite of the whirlwind of chaos, my daughter got to school on time, my wife made it to the office, and I drove out to the other side of the beltway to meet up with my brother who was acting as my mom’s caretaker for the day, and to see my mom. 

As I sat in a local coffee shop writing, reading, and waiting for the message that my mom was out of surgery, my wife called to ask if I needed any help getting our daughter home from school later. We talked over our plans for the day and both agreed that, if the other needed anything, we would be there to help, eggs in hand. We both laughed at the beautiful chaos that is our life. 

Some days things feel like they are going perfectly. Everything runs smoothly, we are on time, and it feels like nothing can stand in our way. The wind is at our backs, all the traffic lights are green, and the life just seems to fall into place. But other days, in spite of our best intentions and preparation, nothing seems to go right. We feel hurried, clumsy, and like nothing we do is working out. We oversleep, argue, we hit all of the red lights, and we drop the eggs. 

What I try to keep in mind is that God is ultimately in charge of all of this. Of course, we play our part. We have free will and God doesn’t make us do anything we don’t want to do. On the other hand, nothing happens in this world outside of God’s will, either his perfect will or his permissive will. Whether life seems to be going well or poorly, it is all being divinely orchestrated by a God who loves us. He is writing a divine love story for us, even if we don’t understand it from moment-to-moment or day-to-day. 

We don’t always know the plan. We can’t always see the bigger picture. We are asked to trust, to have faith, and to walk forward into the dark unknown on a promise, a promise that God loves us and will not fail us. In faith, God allows us to walk across the stormy waters toward him, but even when our faith falters, when the winds and the waves frighten us and we begin to feel like we are drowning, if we call out to him, he will reach out his hand to pull us up out of the depths (Matthew 14:22-33). 

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. 

Snowmen aren’t forever

As we were coming home this evening after a long day of church and youth wrestling, my daughter and I noticed that the snowman she built earlier this week had started to melt. It still has its general shape and the sticks she used for arms are still there, but it is a smaller, less distinguished version of itself, and its holly-leaf eyes and nose are gone. “Awww,” she said, “My snowman is melting. I worked so hard on him.” 

“Sadly dear, nothing in this world lasts forever,” I told her, “So we have to appreciate them while they are here.” “But daddy,” she replied, “I saw a sign the other day that said, ‘Presidents are temporary. Wu-Tang is forever.'” I grew up listening to the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan so I couldn’t help but to laugh when I heard this.

“That’s just hyperbole, dear,” I said, “Wu-Tang is not really forever any more than your snowman is.” “What’s hyperbole?” she asked. “It’s an exaggeration,” I told her, “but its an exaggeration not meant to be taken seriously. It’s a joke. Wu-Tang Clan has been making music for over thirty years, but, like your snowman, they aren’t forever. Only God is forever.” 

Now, I realize that this is too much for a nine-year-old to fully comprehend. Honestly, the concepts of transience and eternity are too much for any of us to fully comprehend. However, I don’t think it’s a conversation that should be avoided. Our time here is extremely short and our time with our children is even shorter. What good does it do to withhold the most important conversations about the most important subjects from them? 

Of course, I want my daughter to enjoy her childhood and to be a kid for as long as she can be a kid, but I also want her to know that there is more to life than simply what she sees and feels. My hope is that, by understanding just how impermanent her snowman, or Wu-Tang Clan, is, that she appreciates it even more while it lasts. 

Her experience of building that particular snowman in that particular moment was truly one of a kind. It never happened before and will never happen again. Her sadness in seeing it melt is real and it should be acknowledged as such. If she cared about what she created, of course there is some grief in its passing, even if it is just a snowman. This sense of loss is real and it will not be the last time she experiences it. 

But I don’t think God created this world of impermanence simply for us to exist in a perpetual state of sadness, grief, and loss. Rather, the fact that we live in an ever-changing world where everything that is born eventually dies and everything that is built eventually crumbles should make us appreciate the preciousness of each and every moment, experience, and interaction as the amazing gift that it is. Furthermore, this experience of impermanence calls us to go deeper, to seek or settle into that which does not change, does not die, and does not pass away (Malachi 3:6). 

Like my daughter’s snowman, “Everything around us is going to melt away, (2 Peter 3:11).” So our task, it seems, is to cherish our time here as much as possible without clinging to it. As St. Francis of Assisi said, we are to “wear this world like a loose garment.” But we are called to do so while loving so deeply that, through our example, others may also come to know the constancy of God’s eternity through Christ Jesus (John 13:34-35). 

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. 

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. 

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. 

Your hope may be the only hope someone else has

I know that, in spite of her cheerful and enthusiastic demeanor, my daughter suffers from time to time. She has told me that she gets lonely. As an only child, I fear that we have made it difficult for her to relate to other children.

It doesn’t help that she is different. She is different because she is half-Asian and doesn’t look like the other kids. She is different because her mother and I are older than most of the parents of her peers. She is different because she was raised in a multi-generational household with grandparents to guide and teach her, so she has always been ahead of her grade level. She is different because she is creative, she’s a leader, and she is so damn smart, and I’m not just saying that as a doting father. The truth is that she is smarter than both her mother and myself.

I just don’t want to see her lose heart. I don’t want to see her become cynical. We joke about being weird. I can joke about it now because I have found solace in my weirdness, but it wasn’t always funny. It has also been lonely, painful, and confusing. To her, it is just lonely, painful, and confusing.

She doesn’t understand why the other kids don’t want to play with her. She is frustrated and hurt by the fact that some of the kids who are friends with her one-on-one choose to ignore her play on the playground while playing with other kids who exclude her from their games. She calls these kids “half-friends.” At least she knows that, but that knowledge hurts.

This pains and saddens me. I can feel it in my marrow. I have been there. I have been her. It made no sense to me then and it makes no sense to me now. She is full of life, full of joy and enthusiasm, and as sincere and loyal as they come. Why can’t the other kids see that? Why don’t they see how kind, smart, and generous she is? Why is she excluded? It makes no sense. No child should feel alone and unaccepted amongst their peers.

I know life is not fair, but I refuse to accept the unfairness of this. So we talk about it. I try to make it make sense. I try to give her hope. I tell her she is loved and appreciated, and that she will find her place in the world someday.

It may take a while and it may not be easy, but this is all temporary. And sometimes she cries. And sometimes I cry, but I try to stay strong for her because I know, even if she can’t see it now, there is meaning in all of this.

There are lessons in all of this. It makes no sense now. It feels wrong and it feels unfair. But these struggles will become her story someday and her story will help others through their pain, their loneliness, and their confusion. It is so important not to lose hope because your hope may be the only hope someone else has.

This is the life I would rather be living

I don’t ever want my daughter to feel as though her existence is getting in the way of a life I would rather be living. I want her to feel wanted, appreciated, and cared for. I want her to feel seen, heard, and understood. 

I want her to know that she is important, that she is more important than my personal goals and aspirations, more important than my desires or regrets, and more important than my hobbies and my occupation. 

I want my daughter to know that she can talk to me, confide in me, and come to me for comfort and guidance. I want her to feel safe to tell me anything and to know that, even if I do not always like her choices, she is loved without judgement or conditions. 

I want her to know that there is nothing more important to me than her, that I would and will drop anything and everything if she needs me, and that there is nothing she can ask of me that is too big or too small for me to help her. 

I am not always perfect at this. I make mistakes. I make a lot of mistakes. I put other things before her. I don’t always give her the attention she wants or needs. I am sometimes preoccupied with other things and miss opportunities to see or hear her. But I am trying, and when I make a mistake, we talk about it. I am learning just like she is, and that is important for her to see. 

Children do not choose to come into this world. They have no say in the matter. We make that choice for them and they have to live with our decision. This is something I understood as a child. 

Knowing that I did not make the choice to be here, there were many times growing up where I wished I had never been born. There were many times when I felt like an inconvenience, like there was some other life my parents would rather be living, but they had me instead. Real or imagined, this is what I felt and I don’t ever want my daughter to feel the way that I did. 

This is the life I would rather be living and my daughter is who I want to spend my time with, not because it is an obligation, but because that is the decision that I made when I helped to bring her into this world. 

French toast and self doubt

This morning, as I was making my daughter breakfast before seeing her off to school, I started to doubt myself as a parent. All of these questions and doubts started to creep in. 

Am I doing this right? What if I get it wrong? Is this food healthy enough for her? Is she getting enough protein so she will get stronger? Is she getting enough carbs for energy? Is she getting too many carbs for the amount of exercise she does? Is she getting too many calories? Or too few?

All of these thoughts were racing through my mind at 6:30am while I was making my daughter french toast and an omelette. The french toast was something my wife had prepped in the refrigerator from leftover bagels we picked up on a recent trip to New Jersey to visit family, and the omelette was just a plain egg omelette.

Then, the thought came to me, “Junk food was basically it’s own food group when you were a kid and you are worried about your daughter’s macronutrients. You are probably doing okay by her.” Standing there in the kitchen by myself, I audibly chuckled.

Life can be extremely serious at times, but there is no reason to make it unnecessarily serious when it need not be. French toast and an omelette is a pretty darn good breakfast. It’s tasty, relatively healthy, and it’s mostly real food.

Yes, macronutrients are important. Of course, whole foods are better than processed foods. But also, we do the best we can with what we have to work with. Life is hard enough without beating myself up unnecessarily for french toast and eggs. 

Thinking about swimming

I’ve been thinking a lot about swimming lately. My sister-in-law’s pool just opened for the season and both my daughter and I love to swim. In fact, I don’t remember a time when I was didn’t love being in or around the water. And like me, my daughter has been attracted to the water since she could walk. 

The first time we took her to the ocean, when she was still in diapers, my daughter tried to run straight into the water with no fear or hesitation. We would pull her back and, as soon as we let her go, she would try to run back in. It was like a scene straight out of Moana (an amazing movie, by the way). 

Now that the pool is open, she wants to go swimming every chance she gets. The only problem is that the water is really, really cold. That doesn’t stop her though. She eases her way in and will swim until we make her get out. It has, however, stopped me from joining her. 

The reason I’ve been thinking a lot about swimming lately is because I’ve been finding myself avoiding going in with her because the water is too cold. She all but begs me to join her, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I have a mental block that keeps me from taking the plunge, as it were. But this was not always the case. 

I used to have no fear nor hesitation about swimming whatsoever. Regardless of the temperature, if I was allowed in, I was jumping in. I swam in lakes, rivers, pools, and the ocean, and I didn’t care how cold it was. I was just happy to be in the water. 

So what changed? That’s what I’ve been pondering. What is it about getting older that makes us more hesitant, more reluctant, that keeps us from jumping in head or feet first, and that prevents us from simply enjoying ourselves? Why am I resistant to the cold water when I used to just be grateful to be able to swim? This may all seem silly, but there is something that happens to us as we get older that I’m just not okay with. 

In spite of my daughter’s pleading and her subsequent disappointment, I didn’t go swimming with her and, quite frankly, I’m bothered by that. I don’t want to be the kind of parent who says, “No,” to my child when she wants me to join her in the pool simply because I may be uncomfortable. I don’t want to be the kind of parent who avoids treats spending time with my child as an inconvenience. 

Beyond that, I don’t want to be the kind of person who never truly lives. Yeah, I know, it’s just a pool, but for whatever reason, it feels like more than that to me. My reluctance to jump in feels like a sign that I’ve taken this growing up thing too far, that I’ve mistaken being uptight, avoiding discomfort, and being unable to enjoy the moment as a sign of maturity. Growing up is for old people and I’d rather live.