That Space Big Enough to Let Love In

So tonight, my youngest daughter cried over a dollar. Now, this presumed dollar that she felt she wouldn't get stemmed from trying to find the black slip per I had been looking for. It really wasn't the dollar or the slippers (although my cold toes would claim otherwise), that caused her mini meltdown, as precious as it was. It had everything to do with time and love.

Daddy, sometimes you don't spend time with me. You and mommy are just mean. You don't love me.

She's seven, I should remind you, dear reader. But the knife in my heart cuts the same as if she was 20.

This past Sunday, the sermon series "Questions Too Big to Ignore" delved into answering, "What Makes a Great Parent." I had been lucky to arrive at church that Sunday. I was alone, which was a rare occurrence (my wife elected to sleep in and get the house and prep work done for our last day of soccer celebrations), and I had barely been awake 30 minutes. I thought the sermon series was planned to speak about marriage but was pleasantly surprised it was parenting. Sometimes I feel like the sermon series is just for me and everyone just gets to be in an audience of my own design.

To be honest, parenting has been one of my greatest gifts and an area where shame and my own self doubt has generally found a seat on my home sofa, slurping my diet coke and hogging my late night tv snacks. It was always a great story, the making of our family. The trials of miscarriages and the testing of our resolve rewarded when we opened our home to our future-to-be older daughter at age 10. Cruz was conceived months later, and Lisa just a few years away from being officially adopted, became a big sister. Reycina arrived like a miracle surprise 3 years later. Suddenly the Cordova family was a table for 5, not including the cats and one stupid dog.

I had no idea what parenting was. As a teacher, I had an idea of what it wasn't. I had seen too many kids at my previous school come through wearing the sores and scabs of their parents broken lives. Parents who slept with prostitutes in front of their sons, dads in jail, moms with several kids and none of their last names were the same, moms who rarely made conferences while their kids missed days upon days at school. Of course, other judgments come into play to. Rude kids who talked back, kids who constantly teased other kids, kids who always talked back.

I wasn't much better myself growing up. I was hard on my teachers, what we call now "high maintenance." If you allowed me, I acted like a class clown. When I didn't get me attention needs met, I acted out in sarcastic, rude ways. I wasn't terribly nice to other kids, unless you were popular. I'm sure my teachers made judgments then about my parents, but they didn't know what happened between closed doors. There was plenty of love. My mom sent her best to school each day, a kid with not just a notion of college, but with a reality that college was my future. A kid who knew how to behave around adults (shaking the hands of bank presidents and meeting countless friends of friends had its advantages) but didn't quite have a shut-off button. The kid whose mom continued to encourage even when he thought he'd never have a girlfriends, or that his sports writing career was over because I had moved high schools. A mom who didn't sugarcoat life by making excuses for my behavior. A mom who taught me it was okay to cry, more important to listen, and that family would always have my back. Although the blogs I have written have sometimes put some undue spotlight on my mom, I would have not been able to pull myself out of the deep self-hate I had before I met my future wife.

We've had some ups and downs behind the door of house Cordova. A hyper active boy who just recently threw his X-box controller at the wall in the basement causing a hole in the wall (thank you, Madden 15), but who just made the B honor roll in 5ht grade (all A's except for Language Arts). There's Milly who cries each morning because her top doesn't match her pants or because she thinks she's dressing for a ball gown every morning (I think she could be in a dress and stockings for 24 hours). This past week at her soccer game, I yelled from the sideline to her to stop kicking the ball up the middle (she's a goalie). She looked at me from across the field, that stunned look on her face, holding the ball in the air.

Where do I kick it then?

Not in the middle!

The sideline parents had a laugh on that one. The tone of the way I said it cannot be explained in the sentence in type, but it was one of those daddy/daughter moments that will probably become the nexus of some future sad bastard poem of my daughter's. I remember having similar moments with Lisa back when she was playing softball, when I envisioned my expectation onto her ability as a player. This is your chance to succeed, I'd always think, as if I could shake winning out of her like a bully shakes out coins from a kid hanging upside down. While Lisa and I had several car travel moments where we hashed out life, I had many times where I couldn't hold my tongue, and the criticism of my expectation reared its ugly head.

And while I was folding towels in my bedroom, standing in front of my daughter, it became apparent that my parenting skills that were preached on Sunday needed a lesson in application. One of the talking points about the sermon was to allow space in our hearts big enough to listen to what your children have to say. So God spoke to me through her tears.

Daddy you don't help me with my homework.
I don't get to snuggle with you but Cruz always gets to.
You're just being mean.

And while the details of her pleas become lost in the small details of our lives, the one thing that is clear, it's much more than a dollar. She wants my time, my love. She wants her daddy. Before share group I sat on the couch with her and snuggled like it was the first time home from the hospital. Just a baby with arms too small to hug me back, but just little enough to wield a tiny hand and grasp my finger.

The idea of parenting is so much cleaner and easier than the reality. The nights when they are sick and you're cleaning up vomit from your sheets. The twinge of frustration when I get  call from one of their schools. The times when you can't answer your college-age daughter's text without going into a mini-sermon. Times when your son has a tantrum in front of your friends.

Oh, but to experience the love from each breath they breathe. Earlier today my little one was dancing in the kitchen to a "Royal." She's oblivious to my watchful eyes, the smirk I'm giving as she shakes and twirls and pop-star preens in front of an invisible audience. She's my queen bee, that's for sure.

A Hug for the Panicked

I just sent my kids to bed after a night of playing mom. In her absence, I'm hardly an adequate substitute. My cooking is suited for comfort, outdoors and easy, while my wife's is more complex, seasoned. My wife helps with homework and juggles the whiny demands of my youngest daughter, age 7. Tonight, my son peeled potatoes and helped me cut them to make homemade French fries. He's wanting to work in the kitchen more and with my wife's help, he can make rice and a basic General Tso's. Reycina, my little one, helps cut fruits and other vegetables for salad. Before my kids went to bed we did a round of Candy Land, UNO and some devotions. I could tell Reycina was a bit emotional. Earlier in the day I received a call from the nurse at her school. She dropped a bowl of soup on her skirt, was embarrassed, and apparently was upset enough to cry uncontrollably like she's been doing. I ended up whispering a prayer to her over the phone during Reading so she could go back to class. She came downstairs twice after being sent to bed and I eventually relented to allow her to sleep in ours. I'm a shallow replacement for my wife (she's at some Scentsy/Pampered Chef/Fru Fru kind of party women attend on weeknights). I caved because I had no more hugs left in me. No more reassurances that the anxiety she feels will go away.

A few weeks back during soccer, I told her not to "panic" when she's playing defense. She likes to reactively kick the ball out of bounds when the other team attacks, and while it slows the other team down, we could have easily kicked the ball upfield to keep possession. She then used the word "panic" when we had a parent-teacher conference when she explained why she sometimes has trouble in math class. "I panic sometimes," she says, with the sincerity of a little girl who wants the nurturing and attention of everyone she loves. It's a funny use of the word, for both in soccer and in life, but her anxiety sometimes gets the better of her. In her mind the word "panic" fits, it made sense to how she was feeling.

I'm seeing the same panic in the world around me. We want to shut down the borders and flights from West Africa in order to control Ebola, and this after 2 confirmed cases in America. How many people live in America, in Dallas where the infection occurred? Millions. I play a game called "Plague Inc." on my phone which eerily plays out a scenario where you can infect the world with a virus (not so fun now that Ebola is ravaging Africa. Suddenly the sarcasm of death isn't an escape as it was weeks ago.) The setting on Expert closes borders when half the world becomes infected. America is in Berserk mode. Someone sneezes in an airport and we contain them in plastic, roll them in duct tape and start digging the mass grave.

ISIS is affecting our lives too. My mother in law was informed that our oldest daughter hopes to do mission work in Tanzania. In my mother-in-law's mind, my daughter Lisa will be infected with Ebola, get beheaded, sold into slavery or all 3. We shouldn't have even told her she was going. But in other corners of the world, military families are on defcon alert from ISIS supporters who could be targeting them or their families through social media. A beheading happens in Oklahoma. The media claims it was workplace violence, but the panic contingency has us believe more is at stake. Mosques are suddenly the target of gun-toting, flag waving Americans.

Which brings me to Ferguson, Missouri.

I wrote a piece on the death of Trayvon Martin last year which you can feel free to read to know where I stand. As a supporter of police (the new word being used lately is an "apologists"), it's hard to get behind the death of Michael Brown, a teenager. We know some of the facts, or at least we think we know. Brown and a friend were seen stealing cheap cigars and intimidating a nearby store clerk. The men were later stopped for jaywalking or blocking the street, depending on the report. Some claim the cop in question, was stopping Brown because he was the suspect in the same crime that was broadcasts on the wire (although others claim the storeowner never informed police of the theft). What reads like a case of stubborn pride and machismo on both sides erupts into a fight for a gun (again, there was false information that Brown assaulted the cop and broke the cop's orbital bone, which ended up being faked), an attempted arrest and ultimately shots fired. Eyewitness claim Brown had his hands in the air (leading to the chant, "Hands Up, Don't Shoot!" by protesters), while the cop claims Brown charged him. Seven shots later, Brown lay dead in the street. Four hours later, his body still lay there for onlookers.

Panic.

Other cops across the nation are coming under fire too. Busting the window when a man won't give identification, tasering him. Another cop shoots a man who was stopped for a seat belt violation. Why is it that people of color all have cop-harassment stories? Why is it a black man was arrested for reportedly being in his own home because the neighbor didn't believe he lived there (the guy was adopted by a white family). A man in Detroit shoots a drunken teenage girl who is banging on his front door. Panic. Every black man in a hoodie is a suspect. Panic.

When I first was driven to write a blog about Ferguson, I was infuriated with some of the logic and condemnation I was seeing on Twitter. The cops were racists, the sheriff is racists. Brown was a teddy bear who wouldn't hurt anyone and was starting college the next day (with stolen cigars to celebrate, perhaps). With the case dragging on into a second month and no indictment, it makes those thoughts pretty trivial. Why hasn't there been a grand jury indictment? If there are those that demand justice, why does it feel like it hasn't been delivered?

The Brown case seemed to rip open old wounds. What do we see when a young black man is walking the street? There are times even in my thoughts where I see a kid wearing droopy pants and wonder why he can't just pull them up. Many of my African-American kids at school don't smile much, and sometimes they wear the same kinds of clothes, baggy pants, a hoodie sometimes, a cap turned sideways. I see a kid. Would it be different if I was wearing a badge and it was past curfew in a crime-riddled neighborhood?

On Twitter, the hashtag #ifIwasgunneddown provided the public with the snapshots of young, black men in photos that showed them giving the finger, smoking weed or looking like a "thug" next to a picture of them in graduation gowns, or smiling with friends, holding books while walking to class. Just the other day two black teens were killed when they exchanged shots with cops after holding up a Dollar General at gunpoint. The first picture the media shows of the young man in question is one of a young man lost, another unsmiling menace that the public can now write off as a thug. I question why young men of any persuasion would be taking pictures showing the middle finger, or smoking weed, for anyone to see. I have ex students who parade their fingers on their Facebook walls, or they stand with friends holding cash fanned out like a good hand in poker, holding up signs that have nothing to do with peace. They snarl at the camera, the thug selfie. They post videos of neighborhood fights and openly curse and brag about shooting "haters." I've begun to work with students on social media and how the world will see them based on what they project. For my girls, one shot of cleavage and they are considered a "ho", and for boys, "thugs." Parenting is all but gone too. Single, overworked moms rationalize the portrayals of their young boys as a faze they are going through. But when young men they that look like them are killed everyday, and some by cops, more by other young men who look like them too, your camera is only capturing survival mode, posturing selfies. The boy who blew out the candles at their birthday party is a long ago memory.

Protests continue in Ferguson. In the men's study I'm leading at church, we are focused on Satan's tactics. Indeed I see Satan's handprints on many facets of my life. He has a firm grip on the lives of many of my school families. Poverty, strife, fatherlessness, the distrust of teachers or the school. I see Satan's grip on the attitudes of many people, including those in my church or workplace. FML many of them posts on their Facebook. "I'm going to hell anyway." "You only live once." "I hate my job."

Especially panicking. I think the anxiety we all face is from that lack of control we hand over to God. I'm to blame too. I bite my nails, pick at the inside of my mouth. I let anger fester until it erupts on a loved one. I freak out on a kid at school when they do something trivial. We consume so much filth in our lives, from the news, from gossip, from our uncertainty and distrust, that the only reaction we have left is sarcasm, dismissal, ridicule or panic.

 And tonight I feel overwhelmed. The news is noise in the background. More panic (now we're killing the dogs of Ebola patients). I don't have any more hugs for those that are panicking. I don't think I'd have enough anyway.