Do We Make the Father Cry

I feel like the formative years of my faith, my personality type, and my professional career have prepared me well for this stage of fatherhood.  The stage I'm referring to is the one we're in with Asher, who is a typical five-year-old boy, and is also prone to behavioral issues for which he receives special services.  The prep I'm referring to is the notion that things that might be painful to hear are not always meant to be personal to receive.

Let me back up a sec.  I love Asher deeply, and most of the time he is the sweetest thing.  What I'm about to say doesn't negate that.  In fact, maybe it's what makes this phase of his life so emotionally fraught for me.

Most of the time, he's a handful but does not otherwise bring me to the end of my rope.  But when he doesn't get what he wants, he can get downright explosive.  And, as a big and strong boy, his punches - to the face, the gut, the groin - do inflict real pain.



But perhaps harder to absorb are the words he mixes in with his desperate cries - to get a toy at the store, to watch one more cartoon, to stay up 15 more minutes.  If you're a parent, you've heard these before, although maybe not as often or with as much force.  "I hate you."  "You're stupid."  "I don't love you anymore."

In the moment, I've learned to go to a certain place, where I don't know, from which to draw a sense of serenity and rootedness and commitment.  It's no use to fight fire with fire, fists with fists, or yells with louder yells.  Rather: I still love you.  I know this is hard.  Sometimes we can't get what we want.  I don't like it when you say that.  Please listen to me.  I will always love you.

I am not naturally this calm or loving, so I suspect that the "special place" I am going to in order to do this is actually God helping me be Asher's parent.  And I suspect that because I suspect that this is how God is with us far too often, bear-hugging us when we are out of control with rage and hatred and pain, assuring us that He still loves us, and that while He knows best He knows it is hard for us to understand sometimes.

Sometimes, if Asher's had a particularly explosive tantrum, and it is right before bed, then I am able to go someplace after and just cry it out.  Because no matter how much my head and even my heart know that he doesn't mean those things, and that an out-of-control child sometimes doesn't reflect on the performance of the parent, it still hurts in a deep place.  Or maybe I am also projecting into a future in which an older Asher's behaviors are in a place and around people who will not afford him the same unconditional love, and that scares me to tears.

I wonder if we make the Father cry in this way.  If it pains Him when we hurl invectives at Him and otherwise demonstrate by our attitudes that we don't trust or love Him, that we refuse to receive the good and perfect (yet sometimes tough) love He always has for us.  I wonder if He winces at what prolonged behavior like this will yield for us in the future if we remain obstinate and ungrateful.  My heart is far from His and my mind far more limited, so I simply don't know.  What is like to be a Heavenly Father?  I do not know.  I do know I need His help to be a better earthly dad.