Automatic Attachment?
Reality TV like Long Lost Family tends to obscure the truly dramatic with melodramatic manipulation. A dry-eyed recollection that the featured guest's adoptive mother didn't notice when her charge fell out of the car doesn't require any overwrought music to rivet the attention. Her recollection that her mother figure frequently had to be awakened by a call from childcare providers to remind her that her adopted daughter had not been picked up yet is not made weightier by long pauses inserted by provocative editing.
My wife's accompaniment to this televised version of real-life drama was equally powerful, and subdued. With perfect pitch, she joined the matter-of-fact confession on the television with, "One of my most frequent prayers is that I will bond with the child we adopt." She couldn't have said more, or more powerfully, if the Divine Scriptwriter had decided on this as the point at which to end one part of a two-part cliffhanger. Jennifer isn't given to introspection. She is not comfortable discerning or naming emotions. This step of faith toward verbalizing her innermost vulnerability was profound. The applause of Heaven have been building to a crescendo ever since, especially after she gave me permission to share this with those who might be reading.
Most of us would envy Jennifer's already evident ability to build and strengthen bonds with other people. God has blessed me with a wife who gives a considerable portion of her operating RAM to the active search for tangible ways to affirm others. Others look for the appropriate gift when the occasion demands. She has been known to turn a September shopping trip to a secondary purpose when she spies the gift that would make a nephew's Christmas. In season and out of season, she is a meticulous student of needs and wants, expressed and unexpressed. The portion of my wife's thinking given over to other people's particulars is so expansive and uncrowded that she still remembers a galaxy of birthdays for people who, strictly speaking, aren't having birthdays anymore.
By every predictable metric, the measures of motherhood described on the TV show we were watching should have made no impression, because her history has already shown that, for a wide expanse of people she cares about, she makes a practice of protective responsibility. Unlike the show's stand-in for a mother, Jennifer already doesn't sleep so long as there is tangible good she can do for those she cares about. She has been training to excel at this role for decades.
Praying for deepening and strengthening in areas others already affirm and admire is a profound discipline. Real estate developers may measure the value of what they have based upon comparable properties, but my wife isn't satisfied with surpassing comparisons to superficially similar mothers. If my bond is stronger, if my preparations for this relationship are more intense, her prayers seem to say, my child will benefit. My God will be glorified. What are human rankings compared to that? Putting the needs of those we love, or even will love in the future, ahead of the pride of our own self-satisfaction is the stuff of earnest discipleship.
Television which prompted these thoughts also nurtures an ongoing challenge even if I concede that I may never be as others-focused as is my wife. Toby, the gloomy Communications Director on my favorite show from years past, The West Wing, uproots complacency for me just as he does for the fictional president he serves. Like me, he faced first-time fatherhood at middle-age. Like me, he believed he was particularly sensitive to the brokenness of the world. These settled aspects of his character forced him to confront the possibility that well-expressed fatherly love is not automatic, that, indeed, it may not be as easy for some as for others. Assurance from his coworkers that his love for his children is a "mortal lock" doesn't negate the role of learning and discipline in healthy relationships. Even within the idealistic world of The West Wing, as natural a human connector as the President himself admits that bonds are not to be assumed. Two of his kids, he says, just bought his act. With the third, he had to work to connect.
Prayer, as Jennifer exemplifies, is part of that work. The ready confession that I don't automatically put others first, even those I readily say I most care about, is a solid beginning. Jesus taught His disciples to pray for workers in the harvest and perhaps counted on the Holy Spirit to show them that they WERE workers in the harvest. Perhaps concentration on prayer's renovating work will show me current relationship-building choices I can make to build my empathy muscles for their biggest ongoing test, parenthood. Perhaps as I look to more engage Mother Teresa's method of doing small things with great love in today's opportunity, I will be more prepared to adopt that as a lifestyle when decades of so-called small things compound in their impact on my child.
My wife's accompaniment to this televised version of real-life drama was equally powerful, and subdued. With perfect pitch, she joined the matter-of-fact confession on the television with, "One of my most frequent prayers is that I will bond with the child we adopt." She couldn't have said more, or more powerfully, if the Divine Scriptwriter had decided on this as the point at which to end one part of a two-part cliffhanger. Jennifer isn't given to introspection. She is not comfortable discerning or naming emotions. This step of faith toward verbalizing her innermost vulnerability was profound. The applause of Heaven have been building to a crescendo ever since, especially after she gave me permission to share this with those who might be reading.
Most of us would envy Jennifer's already evident ability to build and strengthen bonds with other people. God has blessed me with a wife who gives a considerable portion of her operating RAM to the active search for tangible ways to affirm others. Others look for the appropriate gift when the occasion demands. She has been known to turn a September shopping trip to a secondary purpose when she spies the gift that would make a nephew's Christmas. In season and out of season, she is a meticulous student of needs and wants, expressed and unexpressed. The portion of my wife's thinking given over to other people's particulars is so expansive and uncrowded that she still remembers a galaxy of birthdays for people who, strictly speaking, aren't having birthdays anymore.
By every predictable metric, the measures of motherhood described on the TV show we were watching should have made no impression, because her history has already shown that, for a wide expanse of people she cares about, she makes a practice of protective responsibility. Unlike the show's stand-in for a mother, Jennifer already doesn't sleep so long as there is tangible good she can do for those she cares about. She has been training to excel at this role for decades.
Praying for deepening and strengthening in areas others already affirm and admire is a profound discipline. Real estate developers may measure the value of what they have based upon comparable properties, but my wife isn't satisfied with surpassing comparisons to superficially similar mothers. If my bond is stronger, if my preparations for this relationship are more intense, her prayers seem to say, my child will benefit. My God will be glorified. What are human rankings compared to that? Putting the needs of those we love, or even will love in the future, ahead of the pride of our own self-satisfaction is the stuff of earnest discipleship.
Television which prompted these thoughts also nurtures an ongoing challenge even if I concede that I may never be as others-focused as is my wife. Toby, the gloomy Communications Director on my favorite show from years past, The West Wing, uproots complacency for me just as he does for the fictional president he serves. Like me, he faced first-time fatherhood at middle-age. Like me, he believed he was particularly sensitive to the brokenness of the world. These settled aspects of his character forced him to confront the possibility that well-expressed fatherly love is not automatic, that, indeed, it may not be as easy for some as for others. Assurance from his coworkers that his love for his children is a "mortal lock" doesn't negate the role of learning and discipline in healthy relationships. Even within the idealistic world of The West Wing, as natural a human connector as the President himself admits that bonds are not to be assumed. Two of his kids, he says, just bought his act. With the third, he had to work to connect.
Prayer, as Jennifer exemplifies, is part of that work. The ready confession that I don't automatically put others first, even those I readily say I most care about, is a solid beginning. Jesus taught His disciples to pray for workers in the harvest and perhaps counted on the Holy Spirit to show them that they WERE workers in the harvest. Perhaps concentration on prayer's renovating work will show me current relationship-building choices I can make to build my empathy muscles for their biggest ongoing test, parenthood. Perhaps as I look to more engage Mother Teresa's method of doing small things with great love in today's opportunity, I will be more prepared to adopt that as a lifestyle when decades of so-called small things compound in their impact on my child.
I wonder lately who is the better father... Me today? Or me ten years past? Hopefully better yet is me tomorrow
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