Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

In continuing my series, I bring to you an amazing film: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Released in the mid-2000s, it stars Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey. While it need not be said, I’ll say it anyway—this piece contains spoilers.

Jim Carrey was largely known at the time for manic comedy, while Kate Winslet was still strongly associated with Titanic. I’ve always loved artsy films—those with a degree of abstraction that still tell a fundamentally human, realistic story. This film fits that description perfectly. At its heart, it asks a simple but unsettling question: If you could remove the memory of a broken heart, would that make you happy?

The film jumps around in its structure, but it essentially follows a man who has recently broken up with his girlfriend. When he unexpectedly encounters her again, he discovers that she doesn’t recognize him at all. Over time, he learns that she has undergone a procedure offered by a company that erases specific memories—namely, her memories of him.

Feeling wounded and spiteful, he decides to undergo the same procedure to rid himself of the corresponding pain. The doctor performing the procedure has a sycophantic nurse with whom he is having an affair—an important detail that pays off later. The man is sedated and put to sleep, and while he sleeps, technicians begin the process of erasing his memories.

As the procedure unfolds, the viewer is taken inside his mind. We watch him relive the moments of the relationship: the excitement, the flirtation, the boredom, the irritation. And as he experiences these memories one by one, he begins to understand something crucial—erasing the pain means erasing everything. He panics and begs for the process to stop, but it’s too late. The procedure completes.

He wakes the next morning with no memory of what has happened.

Later, we discover that the nurse—rejected by the doctor—decides to sabotage his work. She mails each former patient the recordings and documentation of their memory erasure. As the protagonist receives this information, he also happens to reacquaint himself with his former girlfriend. With no shared memory of their past, they begin to build a new dynamic.

That’s when he plays a tape and hears himself listing all the things he finds annoying about her. Disturbed and hurt, she leaves. After a moment of reflection, he runs after her and says, “I don’t see anything I don’t like about you.” She replies, “But you will,” and begins listing the ways they will inevitably disappoint each other. He smiles, pauses, and simply says, “Okay.” The movie ends.

I love this movie—especially its innovative way of visualizing abstract ideas. What does a memory look like as it disappears from your mind? It’s not a particularly profound question, but it’s a fascinating exercise in shared experience. More than that, I love what the film says about pain.

There is a natural human instinct to avoid pain—to eliminate loss, grief, anger, and discomfort wherever possible. But in doing so, we often fail to realize that we may be discarding the most meaningful parts of ourselves. I don’t love my wife because she’s perfect. I have no illusion that her imperfections don’t exist, and I assume she would say the same about me.

I love her because my heart needs a home. I need her.

When she is open-hearted, funny, kind, and compassionate, the world feels bright and luminescent. When her less-than-fair qualities emerge, I would no more leave my house because a window leaks. I address the problem and carry on. To be clear, my world is far brighter than it is not.

When we are in a good place, I sometimes look at her and smile and say, “I don’t see anything I don’t like about you.” And somewhere, a voice answers, “But you will.”

The reality of love is that it is complicated and often painful. But those experiences shape us. The ability to taste that complexity—to live it rather than erase it—has far greater meaning than the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind.

The lessons of poetry

One of the intentions of this blog—among other things—is to produce something my children can look back on and glean why I did what I did in raising them, and what some of my broader goals were. A crucial element in a well-rounded human being is some education in art. This is not to say that art is necessary for survival, but it offers a quality of life insofar as it allows you to tap into emotions belonging to situations you may never personally encounter.

I believe art is the expression of the human experience. I believe good art reaches the largest number of people because it touches something genuinely true. Understanding art does not require a shared identity, politics, or history. The singular element it requires is empathy—not necessarily empathy for the artist, but empathy for the expression of the human condition itself.

One powerful tool for cultivating this is poetry. The modern world is more inclined to understand poetry when it is paired with melody, but a dynamic poem can carry tremendous power on its own. When I was about twenty years old, I inherited a book from my grandmother titled Best Loved Poems of the American People. I still hold it with great reverence, and its poetry has served me on many occasions.

One of my favorite poems in the collection is The Raven. My first experience with it did not come from the book itself. Like many kids in the 1990s, much of my early exposure to culture came through cartoons. In one of the early Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, they performed an abridged version of The Raven, narrated by the incomparable James Earl Jones. That was my first encounter with the poem.

At its core, it is the story of a man lamenting the loss of his wife, haunted by a bird he cannot rid himself of—a creature that continually repeats the word “nevermore.” Whether the raven represents a demon or serves as a metaphor for something else is outside my expertise. After my father died, I experienced many dreams in which I awoke and had to return to a dark reality. These were painful moments that felt very much like being haunted. While loss is experienced differently by everyone, I can understand the terror of wondering whether a deep wound will ever heal.

There are several other poems I love as well. One is A Shepherd to His Love, another She Walks in Beauty. I often reflected on these poems when I felt for the nearest crush in my younger years. They held something poetic and true—something I felt in my soul for these women. While that passion ultimately faded, it remains important to have a place where adoration can dwell.

A Shepherd to His Love includes the line, “Come live with me and be my love.” She Walks in Beauty opens with, “She walks in beauty, like the night.” Having access to such expressions gave me tools I still carry today. Understanding what you feel can be deeply challenging. Finding fragments of a kindred soul written on paper can be deeply rewarding, because it allows you to walk away with a clearer understanding of a complex feeling. The adoration you feel has words—and you are free to adapt them and carry them with you as your own.

In the truest sense, I am a collection of poems, songs, television quips, and other small tools I have shaped into a personality. My expression has been influenced by people like Shakespeare, who wrote the line I used when I first started dating my wife: “Doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love.” I meant to tell her that everything else in the world could be questioned—but never my love for her. Seventeen years this February, and I have kept that promise.

Ultimately, I want my children to possess personal depth. While I believe most people experience deep emotions, true depth comes from understanding those emotions—pulling at their strands, examining them, and expressing them intentionally. If you have met my children, you would likely find them to be verbose and colorful creatures. I am profoundly grateful for the personalities they bring into the world, and I hope that some of the fragments of human experience I absorbed through art have played a part in shaping them.

My hope is that they learn to engage fully in the range of the human experience—joy, sorrow, regret, lust, anger, jealousy. The fullest expression of humanity lies in our ability to share it. As people, we die alone, but we thrive in community. I simply want my children to find their place in the great village of the human experience.

This piece is the beginning of a series. In future entries, I want to return to specific poems, songs, films, books, and moments—some small, some defining—that helped me understand myself and others a little better. Not as prescriptions, but as offerings. These are the tools I found along the way.

If my children ever read this, my hope is not that they inherit my tastes, but that they inherit the habit of looking—of listening closely enough to recognize themselves in the experiences of others. Art taught me that we are never as alone as we feel, and never as separate as we imagine. If they can carry that with them into the village of the human experience, then this series will have done its work.

The Disappointments

 In reflecting on my 44 years of life, there are a great many things that were not as advertised. Ever since I was little the concept of a castle was a magical one-evoking images of fairy tales and heroes. When I was 16 I went to France on a school trip. I remembered how amazing the palace of the French kings (Versailles) was to me. I had never seen anything as beautiful and stunning. Then we saw another castle, it was nice, but not Versailles. Then we saw another one and another one and another one. In a 2 week trip I lost count of how many castles we went and saw. There is something decidedly less inspiring about seeing castle after castle. Much of the magic disappears. There are no heroes, no dragons and no kings. Just a bunch of people milling about doing the things they are supposed to do. 

Another thing that was set as an ideal in life was marriage and family. What an amazing thing it would be when I was married. We got married and whisked away to a beautiful holiday, where we promptly had several arguments. Honeymoons are just the perfect example of the juxtaposition of life. You are presented with an idea of the most exquisite and hedonistic time in your life and it can often end up devolving at times to something else. When you set a level of expectation, it can invariably come back and just simply say "no". You look down at your child, most exquisite example of God's creation, and smile the distinct smell of feces. 

When I was younger, I had a father. He was a man and so he was affected by the same struggles as all men. He lived with a sense of the expectation of his life was not the same as the reality he lived. He struggled with that. The fact that his choices and the resulting consequences didn't match with the reality that played out before him left him....sad, at least he always seemed a little sad. To master the events of your life, it is crucial to be able to deal with them head on. Ask questions, find wisdom, seek support would be example of getting ahead of your problems You need this, at least in part, to gain a level of confidence that you can be the master of your situation. I was with him a great deal of time and I saw him struggle with his sense of self-assuredness,  but he consistently carried with him a "lets try again." Even to the day he died he continued to show a desire to master his circumstance. 

Another father came along in my story. My step-father. He came from a world where a mans value was solely in his ability to be master of his circumstance. Yet there is a crucial element that one needs to face these challenges. That would be your mental faculties. Unfortunately, he experienced a medical episode that left him brain damaged. He faced a set of circumstances that, no matter how basic, he simply could not master. He needed help. This left him feeling deeply insecure while being keenly aware that the most basic social tasks were beyond him. He could see the awkwardness in the persons eyes when he started talking and all he could do was string together nonsense, with a tiny bit of substance thrown in the mix. 

I have been faced with my own disappointment. I loved the Bible and I got a masters degree in it so that I might one day get a PhD and so immerse myself in it. This was thwarted. Simply put, I was good but I wasnt good enough. Added to this fact the challenges of becoming good enough would limit my ability to raise my family and live my life. I gave up the joys of intellectual curiosity to sit across from old people who didnt know their email passwords. All the while, my friends who I went to school with established themselves as leaders in the intellectual elements of the Christian faith. I made a choice and, while I dont regret the outcome, its disappointing that I could not bring together those two elements that I loved. I traded my love of academics for the love of my children. For the record, totally worth it, but that trade came with a cost.

So the question is, how do I prepare my children for disappointment. Jobs failed, illness, relationship disappointment. Life is filled to the brim with experiences that will bring you down. I am unclear as to how to bake resiliency into the mix. Self-sufficiency is fine, but remains slightly underwhelming in the face of catastrophic disappointment.  How do I help my oldest deal with the fact that his social quirks will make it difficult for him to make friends no matter how he feels. How do I deal with the fact that my younger sons lack of self-control will drive everyone from his life because at some point he will have to choose other people before himself. How do I deal with teaching my daughter that the ugliness of humanity is a real thing, while at the same time striving to instill hope. These are balancing acts I cannot square and I suppose it is the burden of parenting that I will send my children into the world to struggle through these questions and sit back and watch how they answer them.  

From The Office to Parenthood: Teaching the Usual in Unusual Times

I’ve always loved a really good story. Relationship stories especially—they have such a personal flair. The charming back-and-forth of uncertainty mixed with anticipation is so delicious when told well by a gifted storyteller. Listening to one of those stories, you don’t just hear it—you feel it.

I don’t know if I have that kind of story. While things have turned out well, I remain uncertain about the steps between the beginning and now. I don’t really know how I got here.

I’m married—happily so—to a woman who brings me a deep and profound sense of joy. And yet, I’ve always found relationships exceedingly strange. I never quite understood how a person goes from watching episodes of The Office to raising children together. The steps in that transformation have always felt unclear to me—despite having taken them.

Now, adding to that mystery, I find myself responsible for three souls who will one day walk that same bewildering road. Knowing how confusing life has been for me, I try to stay aware of the challenges of the modern world. I hope, in my own imperfect way, to offer some guidance as they embark—unknowingly—on a journey full of shifting expectations and uncertain rules.

More than anything, I want them to have a really good story of their own—the kind of romantic edifice they can build their lives around.

I think fondly of progressive ideas. Morality aside, I believe social conformity should be light. People should be free to diverge from what’s considered “normal.” And yet, we are bombarded with conflicting messages. Women are handed goals that often clash with their desires and priorities. Men are given a confusing palette of expectations, many of them contradictory. The result is often a kind of emotional tailspin—for someone who just wants to share a hamburger and watch a movie with someone they love.

There are basic truths about male and female character that we ought to acknowledge. When I had a daughter, I was determined not to shape her into something garishly feminine. And yet, for her first Christmas, my mother bought her a doll. I was bothered—until I reminded myself that she might one day give birth, and that some identification with children might serve her well. I’ve encouraged her to see the beauty in motherhood, but I’ve also made it clear: that road is hers to choose—or not.

Boys, on the other hand, tend toward violence. Also, the sky is blue—another observation of the obvious. When my second son was born, he and his brother took to wrestling constantly. My wife expressed concern. I told her, “That’s what boys do.” My daughter joins in now too, but their appetite for roughhousing far exceeds hers. So I’ve had to talk with my sons about violence—both the kind they might express and the kind they might encounter.

I take a passive stance on violence—meaning, it should be avoided vigorously. Still, I’ve watched both my sons surpass their mother in strength. I coach them constantly on the responsibility that comes with that power. My daughter, influenced by media, once told me she didn’t need a man to protect her. I gently reminded her that nature has made men, on average, bigger, stronger, and faster. She may not need a man—but ignoring the potential benefit of one is shortsighted.

I’ve tried to pass on the value of family—its importance, its messiness, and the hope that it might lead them one day to children of their own. I’ve offered them faith, hoping it will instill kindness, forgiveness, and universal compassion. I’ve emphasized the necessity of personal growth—and there’s no better crash course in growth than raising another human being.

I’ve tried to model humility—occasionally yielding my authority to affirm their agency. I’ve defended their mother when necessary, showing that a man’s first duty is to protect his partner. I’ve taught them that love begins, above all else, in friendship. They see my wife and me laugh, play, and giggle. I’ve offered myself as a guide—someone who understands people and wants to help them do the same.

But I’m also aware that my role in their lives must be permitted. It cannot be demanded. It must be earned.

So I try—daily—to earn their trust, in the hope that when they step out to stake their place in this world, they’ll do so with wisdom: the ability to recognize peace in others, and the discernment to choose partners worth working hard for.

There are no easy answers in life. But pretending I have nothing to offer would be a lie.

I’ve known them since they came screaming into this world. I’ve been present for every moment since. I am the proud owner of a healthy marriage.

Bring on the future.
My kids will be ready.
…I hope.

Teach them how to say goodbye

I remember telling him goodbye and that I loved him.
Hearing the screen door slam behind him, he walked out of my life forever.
That moment has always stayed with me.

---

Several years ago, the musical Hamilton took the world by storm. I’ve always loved music for its storytelling power, but this was something different. Not only did the show sell out almost instantly, but there was a ticket lottery just to get the chance to buy a seat. It wasn’t just a hit—it was a cultural moment.

Like so many others, I gave the music a listen. In the final days of the CD era, I bought the soundtrack and played it in my car. Hamilton tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s founding fathers. I was smitten—not just by the music, but by the history, which has always felt to me like the most relatable and real kind of story.

I found myself drawn to George Washington. A man of great humility, he led the country through revolution and into its fragile beginnings. And then—remarkably—he stepped down. He gave up power. One line from the musical hit me hard:
“We’ll teach them how to say goodbye.”

Washington understood that knowing when to leave—and how—is its own kind of wisdom. One of the final paragraphs from his Farewell Address struck me as especially moving:

"Though in reviewing the incidents of my administration I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence and that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as I myself must soon be to the mansions of rest."

Ever since I first read those words, I’ve seen them as a lesson in parenting. Inevitably, we must say goodbye—and teach our children how to do the same. And when that time comes, we hope our flaws are overshadowed by our devotion, and that the burdens we’ve passed on are, by God’s grace, light enough for them to carry.

That story I began with—that was my final goodbye to my father. He was heading into surgery. Everyone around me said it was nothing serious. I treated it casually. I said goodbye lightly and coolly, without weight.
I go back to that moment often. I wonder what else I could’ve said. What would’ve lifted the burden I’ve carried since?

Life offered me a second chance to answer that question.

With my father gone, I clung to the only other man I had left in my life—my grandfather. He was sweet, intelligent, kind-hearted. We spent hours together, and he filled my heart with warmth. I gave that warmth back to him, and he understood fully what he meant to me. Yet when he passed, I wasn’t left with the comfort of closure. Instead, I felt the deep absence of the peaceful space he created for me with his presence.

So I’m left with this lingering question:
How do I teach my children how to say goodbye?

This thought lives with me every day. In parenting, I try to be deeply honest with my children. When I lead with a heavy hand, I explain myself—not to be excused, but so they don’t carry unnecessary resentment. When they hurt me, I tell them—not to guilt them, but to show myself humbled, trusting in their kind nature to redeem me from the pain.

In thought, word, and deed, I try to prepare them for the day I leave—when a slamming door might echo behind me.

This leaves me anchored in a quiet, persistent melancholy I can’t quite shake.

Still, in my devotion to them, I find hope. Like Washington, I pray that the “faults of incompetent ability will be consigned to oblivion, as I myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.”

But I am not George Washington.
I don’t know how to say goodbye.
That’s the truth.

What I do know is this: I have laid my heart bare. In the deepest places of love and devotion, I’ve never failed to let my children know what they mean to me. Other children may take better vacations, have better toys, live in nicer homes—but I take comfort in this:

No child will ever be more evidently, unmistakably loved.

All you need

 I often will spend time contemplating relationships. How they fit? What makes one successful and the other not? Yet, it seems I am left with a successful relationship that leaves me stumped. My own.Now as you are reading this, I ask that you try to consider the things I have to say as a neutral observer. Believe me or not, I’ve done my best to consider things as neutrally as possible.

A good way of understanding the differences between my wife and I is understanding languages. Language has flow and it has structure. Understanding flow is difficult because it is something you have to feel. Structure is different. Structure involves rules. Structure is logical and is required to convey meaning. One can bring about structure from flow and the opposite is true as well, but both are required. My wife is flow and I am structure. The other part of that is we have both always held onto the belief that flow people or structure people carry with them some profound flaw. Neither of us believes that rationally, but emotionally that is certainly the case. I desire to be understood and she desires to have someone match her energies and we are often frustrated.

So, if on the most fundamental basis of our personalities differ, how are we still together? Not just that, but also how are we still happy? We love each other. That's cliche, but let me explain. I think the reality of love is that love suffers. It is great suffering to look deep on yourself and realise there are parts of you that need to change. Love confronts you with a person who is different than you in some of the most hideous ways. Then, through the crucible of human connection, you come out on the other side something different. The difference we feel now is distinctive because of the people we were going into our relationship

She comes from a world where asking questions is anathema to life itself. I had to bring about question after question with someone who hates questions. I scrutinised everything. Not with the intention to make her feel judged, just in an attempt to help us survive. She had to get past the sense of judgement she felt when I questioned her. She had to trust that asking questions didn't mean she was unworthy or that she was unsafe. She had to listen to me and to structure. When she figured out that structure, the gas sputtered out of our arguments when, after explaining myself she would say, "I can understand why you feel that way and I'm sorry." 

My problems were different. I came from a world where my feelings where anathema to life itself. I came from a belief that my feelings were a constant thing I had to hold back and that everything needed a veneer of intellectualism to validate it. She had to make me believe that my feelings were safe. When I realised I could be unhappy, angry and sometimes even savage I was more often happy, joyous and encouraging. When I knew the judgement of my character had already been made and the state of feeling wouldn't change that, I could really give her "me." "Me" in the most honest and brutal fashion. We could find flow together and it so very easy to be with her. 

I remember one of my favourite movies where a guy is asked to describe "the girl of his dreams." After listing some aspects where his girlfriend falls short, he summarises with, "Shes better than the girl of my dreams-she's real." Would I have chosen someone who knew structure? Would she have chosen someone with better flow? Well we didn't did we and I know I speak for both of us when I say that the reality of what we ended up with is exceedingly better than what we fantasied in our youth. 

What then is the conclusion? What makes us work? Patience, a deep river of emotion, humour, forgiveness and shared values. That is what I am going to tell my kids. If I have taken the right lessons, that is evidently all you need. 

A Place for Rage

“Anger has no place in a family.”

This was the phrase my counsellor spoke after I told him my 5 year old son attempted to hurt me and I responded in anger. Now he was a person who came from a family where rage was often used as a tool to manipulate. He felt anger represented the worst possible aspects of the human condition. He grew up in a household where his father held the family hostage with his anger. 

This was not an opinion I shared. I was lying between my boys and my son was upset at me for some slight. He then chose to get up and jump on my arm in an attempt to hurt me, he was probably 40lbs and lacked the ability. His ability to hurt me not withstanding, I recognised that this type of behaviour needs to be addressed. He couldn’t hurt me then, but that would not always be the case. One day he would have the same desire to harm another person with order of magnitude more power to back it up. I got angry at him because I wanted him to understand that if you try to hurt someone they will get angry. It is a valuable lesson to teach a boy to show the consequence of violence without showing him a violent answer. 

I have always felt that keeping the line of the relationship between myself and the kids raw. That goes both ways. My daughter has taught me that a child’s inability to make their own decisions (who to visit or what to do) can be frustrating because you don’t have any control.  As a child you feel like every decision is made for you and you can’t really get what you want at times. The reality of living a life where you have no control must be hard. I admit, I try to empathise, but I really don’t have a strong memory of that time in my life. I do have other parts of my development that I understand the need for empathy a lot more.  

Unfortunately, due to the nature of my childhood having been so far away, the point I do recall where it felt like expectations were given to me without consideration of my feelings was in my twenties. I do remember talking about sex in my early-mid twenties with authority figures. I believed preservation till marriage was absolutely crucial. Hence I was celibate, but I wasn’t dead. I was lectured on sexual conduct by people in active sexual relationships and many had been so for decades. They seemed to portray it as exceedingly unimportant. This seemed strangely detached from reality. I remember talking to my best friend and he asked me what I would want to do before I died, “have sex,” was my immediate response. Having been in a married relationship for almost two decades, I can now come up with a longer pre apocalyptic list than that, but at 23 it felt important. The reality of having people who enjoyed the benefit downplay its value made me feel like the circumstances were unfair. It drew into contrast the unfamiliar relationship they had with the phase of life I was living through. It made me feel exceedingly lonely because I wasn’t sure they even understood me. The authority figures lost the chance to share my humanity and left me emotionally isolated with my problems. When dealing with my kids, I am trying to find an honest way to talk to me and share what they are living through. This avenue is not meant to absolve them of responsibility. My leaders in my twenties gave wisdom, but because my reality was never part of their consideration the wisdom they gave felt like death. This left me with the need that if I am to serve the well-being of my children I have to allow them their humanity. If I demand their obedience without providing a space for them to feel or experience feelings in return then I am providing wisdom with no consideration. In other words I am giving them death.  

My children need to have space for my feelings and I actively try to give them space for their feelings. I have a very real, very visceral relationship with my children. They know when they succeed and when they fail. I do my very best to take accountability for my perceived successes and failures in their life too. I allow a visceral relationship because it is the most peaceful. If you learn to accept your feelings as neither good nor bad and understand that your father is a safe place to navigate these feelings, I dare say you have a super power. I try to see the world from their eyes. I have earned their respect because they know for all my intensity, if they conduct themselves rightly, I will turn that intensity on their adversaries. 

My anger, my passion is not a vice. If I am using it correctly, It is one of the many tools I use to teach my children about themselves and the world around them. I had parents who were very different, one was very cerebral and the other was very emotional. I am trying to combine both of those approaches in hopes my children will become the most honest, sincere, loving and respectful people possible. The reality of parenting often leaves parents and kids charged with unresolved emotions. I have found having a space for real feelings to flow in both directions is like seeing a thunder storm on the prairies. They are violent and intense, but necessary. Unlike my counsellor who would have feared the storm of rage, I find well used emotion can leave the relationship as clear and crisp as a prairie field after a thunder storm. 

Helped by God

 Hello again dear reader. I am here at the behest of wisdom. It is necessary to write you a story so that I can look back and read it and remember.

Doris and I had been married for about a year and a half. We had moved into a new house, renovated it and I started a new job. Quite a lot to back in to such a short time. I remember she turned to me and said, "I want to have a baby." I am strong willed person. I am not easily pushed over and if I dont have an opinion I am happy to do almost anything. I liked kids and I thought "right, we are married, having babies is a thing." So I shrugged and said yes. After about 6 months of "working" at it, we were as yet unsuccessful. 

She had snuck a pregnancy test when I wasn't looking. She had done this several times so I assumed nothing. I was using the bathroom and I saw a used pregnancy test in the garbage. Upon completion of my business I picked it up and looked. A dark pink line and a soft second line stared back at me. I referenced the near by box and realised it meant she was pregnant. I made my way out of the bathroom and went to join her on the couch. "I saw a pregnancy test in the garbage," I casually remarked. "Yah, but it was negative," she remarked sadly. I told her to look again. This was our introduction to our son, "expect the unexpected." 

As she became decidedly more pregnant we had need to pick a name. A little relational glimpse into the sausage machine of our relationship, picking a name involves me spewing out a 100 different options and her saying no to all but one of them. At least that was the case with our first two. If I am correct, she came up with the name. I dont think I ever heard the name Azariah. It is the name of a priest in the Bible and is the Hebrew name of Abendago from the book of Daniel. I had certainly heard it, but it didnt register in my mind. I did love it. Obscure, unique and beautiful-not unlike my son. 

So, I will fast-forward to the present day. A unique, beautiful creation is not always considered a gem. It requires the right circumstance to find its value. He is passionate, creative, and deeply anxious. He has a depth of maturity in his soul and a hunger for knowledge. He is profoundly insecure and has a diagnosed challenge in bringing to bare his glorious faculties on the world around him. He wants to be a master of the universe, but relishes the simplest things. But now to take our conversation in a totally different direction. 

I grew up without an intuitive understanding of what people expect of me. It took a great deal of time for me to realise how people wanted me to behave. I had a deeply embarrassing experience when I was around 12 years old. My parents owned a restaurant and I was outside of it talking to my female cousin and some of her friends. Near the end of the conversation I said, "well I'm going to go upstairs." One of them said, "dont go, stay and hang out with us." Confused I asked, "why?" The answer was because they were having fun and wanted to be with me. This memory was embarrassing because I was lonely as a teenager and I think about those times where I missed obvious social cues and it makes me feel sad. People I could have had fun and good memories that I miss out on. 

My son, is similar to me. He doesn't get social cues. I decided to test this theory. He and I were sitting together and I told him the story. I then asked him, "what do you think they meant when they said stay and hang out with us?" His eyes glazed over. I clearly stumped him. He then came to a conclusion and said, "please dont make me say it." Confused at his response, I gave him the answer after which he was relieved.  He can be a bit of an over-thinker and he was dwelling on an overly complex version of events. 

As he evolved into a teenager, we are now faced with unique challenges. He has been diagnosed as having a learning disability and I have attempted to recognise that and take it into consideration. Testosterone can be a vicious, unrelenting hormone that drives you to the deepest cravings and the most intense aspects of your humanity. In his current state, his brain is bathed in high amounts of the hormone. Added to the fact that he has social challenges, this creates a distinctly difficult environment for a boy to become a man. It is difficult because you cannot withdraw expectation in parenting, otherwise you run the risk of normalising its absence. People (boys in particular) need to know whats expected of them to believe that they are in control and they need some sense of personal control to be happy. It is tempting to simply remove all expectation with the explanation of his challenges to justify it.  

Azariah means "Helped by God." I have recently come to believe that everything moves towards purpose. The belief that he is "helped by God" is the belief that the purpose for which he is going to see is a good one. I hope in my heart for white shores and a swift sunrise for my son. Believing that he is helped by God requires me to relinquish my fear. It requires me to live in the moment. It requires me to be his adversary in one breadth and be his helper in the next. In my continue effort to love him, I am also required to let him go (albeit slowly). I will let him go and whenver I speak his name I will remember that his name means helped by God and even though I cant be everywhere, I know someone who is and he is in his corner. He'll be ok. Helped by God. 

  

Truth

 "And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" - John 8:32

I have found the concept of truth to be a difficult one to live and I have found it to be a difficult one to teach my children. As a child, concepts like "honesty is the best policy" gave me a sense of direction where I felt none before. I would confess myself because I believed that being honest was the most meaningful way to live ones life. I found as I got older that this idea came with caveats. Truth has consequences. 

The first time I felt those consequences was when I was in kindergarten. I am little bit older and I grew up when chalk boards were a big part of the school experience. Chalk boards were everywhere and so to were chalk brushes. On one particular occasion the teacher left the class and a number of us grabbed the chalk brushes and beat them together. The resulting mess was quite dramatic or at least it was dramatic for her. She returned to class and demanded that we confess who did it. I confessed myself immediately while some of my other classmates stayed quiet. She was from a generation that believed in corporal punishment so she lined us up and smacked each of our hands with a ruler, myself included. I had difficulty contending with the idea that I, the honest, received the same punishment as the dishonest. My parents shared my difficulty and made it known as only adults can. I learnt the effects of truth do not always produce positive results. In her case I understood that she was mad and it didn't really matter that I was being honest because she wanted her anger satisfied. I concluded from experiences like this that it was emotions opposed truth.

As I got older I was more exposed to more Christian faith. It suited me perfectly to believe that a moral God held moral responsibility to all, even post humus responsibility. The moral dictates seemed plainly evident and so as I believed in gravity I also believe in Christ. Yet it was in the deepest places of my spiritual childhood I had an encounter with a friend. As someone who sits on the autistic spectrum, many of my friends were girls because they tended to be a little more tolerant of my unique traits. One person in particular befriended me when my Dad died. She shared her experience when her mom passed away and I became quite attached to her. She was deeply committed to her faith and I admired that greatly and so we attended the same church and had the same friend group. Our church had a prayer meeting once a week at 6am. I had seen her there at one or two, but she had missed several. I asked her why and she informed me, "God doesn't want me to go." She came to this conclusion that in the past when she came she simply woke up at the time. She said she didnt feel compelled to put in her own effort by setting an alarm. It was deeply disheartening to me that she would cloak her own desire in a spiritual dress. She didnt want to get up at 6 am and leave the house. That was the truth. She clearly had an agenda and, whether she knew it or not, was framing her faith to suit her desires.  It was then, perhaps, that I realised how often emotions can drive the car of faith. I sought an education to counter balance the prevailing winds of a deeply emotional world. 

In the process of education I encountered titans of intellectual prowess. Men who held a seemingly effortless ability to tug on the threads of complicated ideas to unravel them at their leisure. I listened, admired and argued with many. While the lessons I learned did not translate into a career, they have shaped how I handle my life and how I think about it. They may yet serve me economically, but they have most certainly carried me through many personal struggles. In my path I met a friend who shared many of the same values as me. He cared about people, he valued truth and the truth of faith. I had great affection for this man. He informed me sometime ago that he had abandon his Christianity. His fundamental reason came from disillusion with Christians. People who held in high regard failed to listen and show compassion and love. His disillusion came, not as the result of personal examination, but out of his emotions. He surrounded himself with enough people who were alien to Christianity that, in a form of spiritual osmosis, he became exactly like them. I don't fault him. I have found an absence of community and an unwillingness to claim ownership of other peoples problems and by extension the people themselves. I cannot fault anyone for turning from this reality.

I have come to realise that emotions are not the enemy. I got sent a video recently where someone said parents shouldn't get angry. I have been admonished to limit my anger. In reflecting on my experiences of parenting and being parented, I have concluded that a parent is a role you play as well as retaining your own individuality. I realised that kids respond to both. They respond to the rules you attempt to put in place and the lessons you teach as well as how you interact in the world around you. A parenting adage that I heard from my grandparents was, "do as I say and not as I do." This was silly and they knew it. They knew kids would do what they did and that is why they needed to say it. You are a lesson as a parent. Perhaps the main one. So when you show yourself weak, both in keeping and communicating boundaries, they react. I cannot change the fact that my kids reaction to my intensity is well founded. I wish it wasn't the case, but there is a fairly big gap between my demeanour when I am wound up about something and my disposition at large. 

Unfortunately, there is an incompleteness to life that I just always find vexing. You cant parent perfectly, you have to settle for your best. You cant love perfectly, you have to settle for your best. Having said that, language is also a tricky thing. I am trying "my best" implies that it is impossible for me to do better, after all how can I do better than "my best." I suppose my intention is to express that "my best" refers to the quality of my effort, but even that falls short sometimes. I'd be disingenuous if I didn't confess that sometimes I would do anything to be away from my kids. Of course I love them, I am also a selfish and lazy creature. After all, it's "the truth."