Thoughts, Musings, Reflections, and Ramblings of a campus minister, father, husband, and a Jesus-follower
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I am saddened after reading [tag]Dan Neil[/tag]’s opinion piece in today’s edition of the LA Times. His front page column (in the opinion section) titled, “And then there were two” chronicles the decision he and his wife “had to make” aborting two of the four living fetuses, fifteen weeks into their pregnancy. He doesn’t feel guilty nor shame terminating the fetuses because it was a medical imperative.
The article explores how the abortion debate became less academic and more real. The Neils were always pro-choice and this experience forced them to truly make the choice. An issue such as [tag]abortion[/tag] is real and not a theoretical debate for millions of women. I agree with Neil that the abortion debate stops when it’s my family. When Layla was born, I had a new level of respect for life. I had always been against abortion (I refuse to use the term pro-life because it has come to mean a particular theological/political marriage with which I disagree). But after Layla was born, I came to regard abortion as a gross violation of God-given life.
But I disagree and am saddened by Dan and Tina Neil’s decision and thought process. He felt no guilt nor shame Continue reading ‘An abortion worth mourning’
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Layla had a fall recently, and she managed to bruise herself pretty well. Her eye is swollen, and she’ll probably be sporting a black eye for a couple weeks. She still looks cute and her personality hasn’t been affected (which is how we know that she is going to be alright). As a parent it feels a lot harder on me. Her physical blemish communicates a lot more pain to me than it does to her.
Our pediatrician friend assures us that she’ll be fine, and that she’ll probably be experiencing a few more bangs and bruises as she grows. Of course, we should be making sure to avoid some of the big ones.
I have been praying for Layla’s healing, but much more I’ve been recognizing my shortcomings as a parent—I will never be able to protect her from all pains, ills, and falls. [tag]Parenthood[/tag] is surfacing my weaknesses in new ways. Even when she is in my immediate care, I will moments of failure as a parent. In Psalm 27, the poet recognizes, “If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up” ([tag]Psalm 27.10[/tag]). I don’t think Layla had any sort of cognitive or even emotional conclusions that forsaking her caused her injury. And over my life, I don’t aim to forsake my daughter, but I recognize that my depravity may lead me to have lapses in my parenthood. And she will feel forsaken
I am grateful that I can trust in God to take her up. When I fail, God will not. When I cannot protect her, God can.
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On my family’s website, we post lots of pictures of our daughter–mostly as a way for family to see her growing up. I title the pictures with cute tags like, “Cute Layla” and “Layla Cutie”–very unique identifications. The other day, when I was looking through the logs of people who visit the website, I noticed there were many people coming from Eastern Europe. When I clicked to find out more, they arrived through a search engine. On this particular website, when you do a search for “naked girl” you get a link to a picture of my little girl who was running around without a shirt on.
I am sure (and hope) that most people who were doing that search did not intend to see a toddler. However, I quickly retitled those pictures and eventually removed them. It is concerning to me that publishing pictures of my family and my daughter could expose us to a world of people who have things in mind other than seeing how darn cute we are. I recently heard a story of someone who published a video on You Tube of their toddler son playing in the bathtub. They forgot to mark that video as private, and received several inquiries from strangers asking that they publish more of these videos online. Apart from feeling both angry and disgusted, I also feel I was too naive in handling publishing pictures on the Internet. Some tips from my experience:
Finally, this is a word to any stranger who arrived to this post searching for “naked girl” — there is a better way. Visit www.settingcaptivesfree.com.
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I love the time I get to spend with Layla. While integrating family and ministry has been an art-form that I have yet to perfect, one of the God-sents of this age are the naps. A nap is a beautiful thing–the toddler needs it and the parent needs it. During those two hours I have held meetings, cleaned my office, prayed, and played games. The nap was a beautiful gift. At nearly 18 months, Layla is not ready to drop a nap, but she thinks she is. In the past two weeks, she has gone about 3 days without napping. That means a loss of two hours of “Eddy time”.
Add another rule to the rules of life: When you figure out how to make life work, the circumstances change and you’re back to square 1.
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I love Layla’s age/stage. I am watching her learn new things everyday as she grows into a little girl. And Christmas is very fun with a little one in the midst–it’s fun to see her be loved by the rest of the family. When Layla was first born, wise people kept telling me, “enjoy every minute because they are at this age only once”. I did try to enjoy every minute but not necessarily because of her age. Over this break, however, I realized that how I relate to her as a father will shift over the years. She will soon be a young girl, a teenager, and eventually an adult.
As I reflected on my relationship with Layla, I realized that over the course of our lives (assuming Layla and I live long, healthy lives), we will relate to one another as adults. For the past ten years, I have been learning how to relate with my parents as adults. How do we prepare for those adult years? I’m not sure. But for most of us, we have to learn how to relate with our parents and children as adults because they will take up the majority of our time spent together.
These toddler years are fun, but the way that God orchestrates it, parent-child relationships are mostly spent in the adult years. This would have implications on how we read passages such as “honor/obey your parents”, but more importantly it focuses me to have to stay on the learning curve, both as a child and as a parent.
There will come a day where Layla will no longer allow me to slobber her with kisses, but I am hoping and believing that the upcoming days will be as satisfying as these days now.
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Before being a father, I had this impression that babies cry. They cry all the time. They cry for no reason. They cry for reasons that I’m too slow to comprehend. They just cry. But after a few weeks and months with Layla, I was (pleasantly) surprised by how little she cried. Sure, she cries when she’s constipated (don’t we all?!?). She cries at the immunizations. She cried when she was sick. She whines/cries in the mornings when she wakes up. But if we anticipate and adopt a policy of pre-emptive care, we generally can eradicate most of the crying. I was a happy father.
But something has changed recently. Layla is becoming a toddler. Toddlers cry. She seems to be a lot less patient when she wants something (especially something that she shouldn’t have). She’s a lot picker of what foods we give her, and she just bangs herself a lot more. At least once a day she’ll try a maneuver that will result in utter failure on her part, only to bang herself. I know some of those gorwing pains are pretty painful, but basically, I think she also has figured out that she should just cry when she fails, regardless of whether it hurts.
Lesson #1: The Lord loves to teach us humility. I thought I had parenting down–the less she cried, the better I felt about myself. I take that back.
Lesson #2: Risk-taking involves failure. Failure involves pain. Pain can lead to crying. That’s ok!
Lesson #3: As Layla ages, I can control less of her environment and her decisions. She will fall and hurt herself. This is where I learn to trust her to the good Father.
Lesson #4: When Layla’s in pain, it’s good to be right there and hold her and comfort her and encourage her to keep going.
Lesson #5: Toddlers cry way more than babies! At least mine does.
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I can’t believe we’ve lived life with Layla for a year. She is such a joy to us. I figure it’s fine to devote an entire post to celebrate her!
The Ekmekji Family
For more pictures, check out http://www.ekmekji.net/
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Layla had her one-year doctor’s appointment today, and she was up for four shots–three in her thighs and one one in the arm. The nurse told us that the one in the arm would be the most painful one and so she would do that one last. The nurse came in and one by one stabbed Layla with those vaccinations. After every shot, her screams got louder. And then with the fourth shot, the nurse asked Rhoda and I to hold our daughter down as she tried to stick the needle in her arm. As she went in for the shot, the needle broke in Layla’s arm and the vaccine sprayed out.
Nurse: “Oh, I have to do this one again. I’ll be right back.” (No apology)
As she left to get a new needle, Rhoda and I began comforting Layla who I’m sure is totally confused as to why we would allow her to go through such pain. When the nurse came back, Layla immediately tried to push away. We put Layla back on the bed, and the nurse now sticks the needle in the other arm.
Our little baby left with five band-aids and a lot of pain. She didn’t even get a lollipop for all of her courage.
Attention all future nurses, if you’re gonna give someone a shot, make sure you get it right the first time; if you can’t get it right the first time, apologize; and if you have to miss, don’t do it on the one that promises the most pain.
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