Two Ways to Hold a Child

I didn’t grow up around babies. The first time I really interacted with one was after I’d graduated high school. I couldn’t tell you how old she was at the time, or if she was a happy baby. I didn’t know how well she fed or what her quirks were. She was the child of a high school friend, A friend who I looked down on for having a child so young. Getting his girlfriend pregnant and starting a family right out of high school wasn’t something I wanted for him.

With no fairness or grace to either of them, I publicly condemned them for their actions from a place of (what I thought was) justified anger. My piety bled out, filtered through arrogance on their wedding day, months before the baby was born.

“How dare he ruin his life,” I said aloud, well within earshot of numerous friends and family to my friend and his partner. “He was my best friend,” I added, furious at the discovery made only minutes prior that she was pregnant and they hastily married as a result. At the time, them “covering up” their mistake churned my stomach.

Raised in a cultural context to “hate the sin, not the sinner” led to a false dichotomy in my heart. From the comfort of my double mindedness I made myself a judge of character and intent for decades to come, unwittingly becoming a hypocrite in the process. It was easy to say then, that they should have weighed the risk and evaluated what was worth it, but I was younger, less learned. Less experienced. I hadn’t yet brushed against the harsh teeth of the real world in such a way.

These friends, pregnant at seventeen and facing insurmountable odds, made the best decision they could have made for themselves at the time. It was impossible for me then to justify their decision, to stay together and have the baby, to get married and start their new life. I knew of course it was what they “had” to do, given our particular worldview. I never once stopped to think that either of them wanted that life.

A few months later, after their daughter was born, they came to visit and that friend specifically made a trip to my place to introduce me to their child. Barely nineteen years old myself, I greeted them and he offered for me to hold her. I refused, and refused, and eventually he said he wouldn’t leave until I took her and held her.

“What if I drop it?” I asked.

“You won’t drop her.” He said with a confidence I couldn’t vouch for, as if he didn’t see the fear in my eyes.

Still, I took the baby and held her with trembling arms. Afraid my bones themselves would go limp. Or perhaps I would twitch or move just so and ruin this fragile thing for the rest of her life. I held her for maybe thirty or forty seconds before I demanded he take her back, no longer able to stomach the worry or the weight of it all. I remember as clear as ever, after he and his family left I went back up to my room and sobbed, ashamed at my actions and words to them, my inability to do simple things, like hold a baby, or support my friend during the most difficult time he’d known yet.

In the years that followed I’ve forgotten more than I can remember, and still that memory remains etched into my skull as a warning, aged and weary and untouched by the creeping moss in the overgrown tomb of my mind.

That friend moved on then, to continue the life he started. To commit to partnership with his wife, to love his family. Fifteen years later he’s been a father to more than just one child and I found myself earlier this year facing that nineteen year old me once more. At the edge of a hospital bed, a nurse passed my son to me as if he wasn’t this fragile, tender thing that could shatter against a breeze. I couldn’t stop crying, I was so terrified that I would drop him, my limited experience manifested in an overwhelming fear at his pouting face. In the end, I sat beside my wife as she held him and cooed over him, and I couldn’t stop worrying about how I would overcome this silly hurdle that has haunted me since I was young. I couldn’t stop staring at him, wondering how God let me get from there to here.

I’m not so afraid of holding him now. It was a process that took a few weeks for me to learn, but I figured out quickly that they are a lot more resilient than they look, and I learned as well during this time that I am, too. Thanks to my wife’s guidance, through her stifled laughter, she helped me manage this silly fear. After some days I learned how to hold my son without fear of dropping him or hurting him or anything of the sort.

In fact, as days became weeks and he grew and grew, it became cumbersome to hold him. Every other day I had to find a new way to cradle him so we could both be comfortable, and I slowly learned how to release the iron-clad grip I’d held him with for his first days of life. Over time, the shaking slowed and the tension faded until I was able to pick him up and trust that I would not let myself hurt him accidentally.

At the end of our parental leave my wife returned to work a week before me, and against the backdrop of first time fatherhood the five days alone with our baby were among the most daunting times I’ve gone through. I tried, as hard as I could, to get chores done around the house and tend to the numerous needs that popped up through the cracks on the other side of our whole world being swallowed by our beautiful baby boy.

I tried to put him down but he didn’t want that, and would fuss and chirp any time I did. Because I am the busybody I am, I couldn’t leave our chores untended so I worked out how I could keep a grip on this little baby and wash a dish, or load the laundry. Eventually it became second nature to me and I was able to work through the days without realizing that I was doing this thing so easily that I was terrified of only weeks before. On one day in particular, he was fussy and I hefted him into my arms, propping him up half cocked against my belly while I watched a show or played a game or whatever I was doing at the time.

I realized after some time just how precariously he was suspended against me, a little wiggle the wrong way and he would fall onto the floor, and I couldn’t bear the thought. I adjusted, and flashes of that fear returned, but I fought it and popped him safely back into my arms and resumed what I was doing while he lazily slept in dad’s arms.

It was the smallest thing and yet, my brain got stuck on it.

It got stuck, specifically, thinking about my old friend and his daughter, about my current friends and the families we are starting. It got me wondering how God can lockdown and see us, sleeping and dumb and ignorant of so much and He has never once been careless in the way He holds me.Every single time, He swaddles me, He embraces me and reminds me I am safe. Yet every time I fuss a little, or a lot.

My son had no idea that he was in danger of falling. He couldn’t even begin to fathom what “falling” was. He couldn’t see, or have a concept of the sensation. There is nothing about the experience of being dropped that a baby would understand in the way an adult does and yet they still know that it is scary. It is scary to be left alone, to be abandoned, to be neglected, to be dropped. It is difficult and frightening and unfair and we do it to the people we are supposed to love all of the time.

A decade plus since that friend and I last spoke and I am still the big, dumb baby I’ve always been. Wobbling around, clueless and obsessed with myself. With eyes that don’t see all there is to see, with no concept of what is out there beyond the sensation of peace that comes from my Father. I am so concerned with the lives of others and their failures even still, I neglect to show them love and grace when they need it. Like so many years ago, when my “best” friend confessed the pregnancy and I didn’t comfort him, or help him, or understand him. I merely cast him aside as another in a long line of sinners that should “know better."

Still, he forgave me for that. At least enough for me to visit him at college. He invited me back into his life despite my treatment of him and his wife, and he did so nearly without a second thought. I haven’t spoken to him in a long, long time, but I think of him every single time I pick up my child.

I think of the way Jesus sends people to us for certain things. To be His arms, to hold us. To help us understand what we are struggling to understand. To comfort and bring peace. To teach us that there are two ways to hold a child:

The way I did then, unsure and anxious. My own fear swelling in the chest of the baby who knows nothing about this world and even less about pain or suffering or shame or sorrow. Then, there is the way Our Father holds us. Running out of His house to meet us on the road every time we wander off and back again. Embraced, comforted, warm.

These both have nothing to do with the act of holding them, but is something deeper and far more important:

How the children trust us.

My son couldn’t care less, back then, if I held him loosely or propped him up on a pillow. He didn’t care so much if he was naked or clothed or in a warm or cold room. He paid little attention to the sound of dogs barking or the blare of music. All he knew, all he needed to know, is that he was with his dad, and he was safe. He didn’t care about my weakness or my failure or my shame. He doesn’t know that I still feel like the weight of being his dad is too much for me to bear. All he knows is, I am his dad, and all he sees is love for me. A caution-less, perfect, simple love that lights up his face every time he finds me in a room.

I am learning to look at God the Father that way too. I don’t need all of the peripheral things. I don’t want to want them. All the distractions and nonsense set to keep our minds frazzled with worries like what we will eat, or where we will go, or how we will hold our children…

I just want to be next to my Dad. To learn from Him, to see His strength. To love like He loves. To forgive like He forgives. To hold on to others in the midst of their difficulty and refuse to let go. To say to them, “I don’t know any more than you but I know the One who does.” To be near to those who ache and mourn, like He has done for me so, so many times. To be a place of rest for the weary. A place of hope for the despaired.

My prayer today is this; that we all start to see one another like God sees us. Not merely as bundles of mistakes and hopes and desires and failures and successes, wandering aimlessly through a life marred with sin and death. Instead, that we might see one another as beloved children. Sons and daughters, more precious to our Father than we can possibly imagine, to whom He wants nothing more than to meet us on that road back home and embrace us tight. That we might learn to hold our children with the same universe bending love that He has for us.

To remind us that no matter how far we go, there will always be a space saved for us at His table, or by His side, or in the arms of the only One who can carry anything, no matter the size.