On most blogs this should be some kind of obligatory new years post. But as Christmas, the passing from one arbitrary day to another signifies very little to me. If anything, I live on the CCF calendar where January 1st means nothing less than the number of days before retreat or the number of days before I return to school (for which I am ill prepared). Ironically, I believe my non-Christian friends were much more excited about Christmas day than I was. So this isn’t a post about my entire year in retrospect. Youtube, Google photos and wordpress have attempted to summarize my year but it is mostly just symptoms and paltry at best.
The famous empowering quote goes that
our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. – Marianne Williamson
And it’s a fabulous poem, the whole thing. It’s been recited by epic people and at one point I think I had it somewhere on my Facebook profile. Maybe it’s still there. But what if our fear is actually that we are inadequate? That was rhetorical.
I realized today that one of my greatest fears, probably not my greatest, is that I will be my father. That could probably use some exposition. It is not that he is the worst human being on the planet, for I am sure that there are greater depths of depravity, but it is that he is a very bad representation of a husband. I say this having seen and recognized that my parents have a very dysfunctional relationship for many years and it is only because of particular circumstances that they are still living together. And it’s not even that the circumstance brings them together, at least not any more. I should also clarify that I do not regard his entire being as horrible. He is what I would expect of a worldly man. He is a decent father and I am grateful for many things in my childhood like him teaching me math early and reading with me before I went to bed and for the most part not bugging me about marks or how well I am achieving in school. For those things I am grateful and I will most likely carry many of things forward. But the role of husband, the one where you are to love someone and at the very least care about them and desire to share in life with them, for that one he is a poor representation. Because his depiction of marriage in this stage is that they are simply two very separate entities and that they only come together for big things or whenever it is convenient. And in a way I am kind of angry and frustrated because this is supposed to be the man that shows me what it looks like to love a woman. I mean I know he’s not a Christian but were the values of marriage so far off? Or did he become the prototypical example of individualism? I care not that I am the one left to hear my mother’s venting. For that I am fine. But I am also left with the debilitating feeling that I am completely useless in the matter. That as much as my cooking and assisting in cleaning can help to momentarily relieve the symptoms, there is no rest because there is nothing to go to when the cooking and cleaning is all over. I am frustrated by a man who I haven’t heard apologize for an argument maybe ever. Who spends at least half of his home time on his best day hidden behind a pair of headphones, a tablet screen or his phone. My sister and I joke that there’s a mid life crisis happening and as much as I joke about it, I hope it crashes soon. Because that’s the only way I see any real change coming. But I’m scared the world won’t let him down in time and everything will simply disintegrate instead. I realize counselling only works for someone who wants to change.
I’ve joked before that maybe the reason I’m so touchy with other guys is because I’ve never had affection from the usual Western place for that, the home. Maybe that’s why I try so hard to be transparent with people. Or maybe why I have such an affinity to Disney movies and romantic comedies because before the gospel, I didn’t know what it looked like to be in a marriage relationship. So my greatest fear is that one day I will become like my father in husbandry. And while I can’t comprehend how someone can marry someone without being at the very least interested in them and what their joys are in the same way that I can’t comprehend why people would make out but not date, very much like the latter I know that it can happen.
Philippians 1:6
The Unforced Rhythms of Grace 