Meryl's Real Question

"I'm not sure I believe all this stuff about Jesus and God like you and Daddy,"  stated Meryl, as she looked through her dark lashes deep into my soul.   "How could Jesus do miracles?  How did he have powers?  I don't have any powers, and I don't know anyone else who does."  I listened carefully and I  answered specifically, but her doubt remained, like a cloud of suspicion between us.

The communication of our beliefs is part of our job as parents.  In both intentional and unintentional ways, we all tell our kids what we see as truth about themselves and about their world.  Whether our belief system comes from an old religion like Christianity, or whether it is something we have fashioned from our own experience and pieces of meaning, what we believe runs so deep within us that we can't help but teach it in every interaction with our children.

Meryl has heard about our faith since she was a very little girl, as have all of our girls.  We are not casual or cultural Christians.  We are Christians by choice, by careful study and evaluation, and by conviction.  For Greg and I, our Christian faith has implications into every aspect of our lives, and we teach our children our faith because we see it as our privilege and our obligation to tell them the Truth.

My answers to her questions about faith were were complete, but Meryl still looked at me with doubt, and as I stood there pondering her stated questions longer, I heard the question she never asked.  My heart heard what was in her heart.  The real question Meryl has is this--"If I don't accept your faith, will I still be your daughter?  Will you still love me?"  It is a question that all children ask in one way or another.  Sometimes the question is asked after massive failures.  Sometimes it is asked with actions that seem to intentionally force distance into the relationship.  Sometimes it is asked by moving across oceans to new lands and new opportunities.  This night, right before bedtime, it was asked by a wisp of a seven year old girl with doubts and questions about faith so deep as to nearly obscure the real issue.

And so I looked back through her thick, black lashes into her deep ebony eyes, and I answered her with all my heart.  "You are precious to me.  You will have to decide for yourself what you believe about God.  It is really between you and Him.  I am here to tell you the Truth, as much as I understand.  No matter what you believe, I will love you.  If you don't share my faith I will love you.  My relationship with you does not depend on whether you are the same as me.  I love you no matter what."

"Really?  You won't love me less if I don't believe in God like you do?"

"Nope," I answered.  And just like that, all the suspicion was gone from her little face, and she kissed me and went to sleep.  She still has big thoughts, deep doubts, and ponderous questions, and I expect that she will be doing her own investigation into Christianity for quite some time.  I don't know if she will arrive at a conclusion that matches mine, but I do know that every time she investigates my love by asking me about my faith, she will hear the same answer,  "Meryl, I love you because you are mine.  I love you no matter what."

Bright Colors and Impossible Gravities of the Imagination

When I was a little girl who saw fairies and monsters, superheroes and the impossible, my very best friend was an alien named Jeremy. (I know what you're thinking--but not that kind of alien--the real kind, from outer space.)  Jeremy was four months older than me, and he was from the planet Crypton, from whence he had traveled to earth via an asteroid. His parents found him and adopted him when he was very little, and (yes, amazing that this story happened on t.v. also) he possessed magic powers. Jeremy looked like a normal boy, but unlike your average little boy, he flew through the air when I wasn't looking, and he could defeat any bad guy--except our friend Daniel Seale, who, we suspected, might have access to Cryptonite, after he gave Jeremy a real shiner. When we were children, Jeremy had a charisma that made me see what he could envision; and, though he possessed super-human strength and flight, I suppose his power to imagine was the one that impressed me the most.

If not for Jeremy, I might never have known Condorman, but before I tell you about Condorman, I must tell a little backstory on my dad.  My dad loves little children. He loves them because they are brutally honest, because they only bite close friends and family members, because they will tell you all their personal business and their family secrets, but more than that, he loves them because they see beyond what is to what could be.  My dad loved Jeremy especially because Jeremy's imagination was always growing to re-interpret what he saw with his eyes.

Jeremy went to our church with jelly beans. I'm not exactly sure why he had so many jelly beans in his pockets, or whether the jellybeans were sanctioned by Ellen, his mother, but for a long time, those jellybeans were his prized possession. Since my dad had a soft spot for both Jeremy and his jelly beans, my dad convinced Jeremy that he possessed two stomachs, one that ate food, and one that stored and multiplied jelly beans. Jeremy wasn't keen to share his treasures with me, but he would give my dad a few jelly beans each week to store in his extra stomach.   Every few weeks, Jeremy would ask my dad to return his jelly beans with interest. Every so often, I would watch with wonder as my dad coughed up a whole bag's worth of jelly beans. Jeremy was, of course, unphased by the fact that these had been stored for weeks in an extra, jellybean-multiplying stomach, and instead was delighted with the amplication of his investment.

My dad loved performing this trick, but as Jeremy grew a little older, Jeremy began to suspect, that perhaps my dad had a weak spot for jelly beans and few extra dollars instead of an extra stomach. My dad had to up his game if he was going to retain his magical powers, so, one Sunday afternoon, in a carefully planned explanation, my dad told  his greatest secret to Jeremy, while I listened on.  In tones, hushed to prevent my mom from knowing the truth, my dad explained his double life as a super hero, while I peered from behind Jeremy into the hall closet.  There, folded like an ordinary lampshade, was a set of manila-colored wings.  Those paper-colored wings enabled my dad to fly between buildings late at night when I was fast asleep, because my dad was CONDORMAN.  I can't remember what planet my dad had come from, but the important part was that my dad, like Jeremy, was from another planet, even farther away from India (where he used to live.)  The story was easy enough to believe, in light of the magical wings tucked in beside the flowered sheets of our linen closet.  Jeremy was completely convinced, in one glance, that both the wings and the story were factual, and we both lived in wonder for years at the superhero who appeared, to the untrained eye, to be a common Indian architect.  

I often wonder what my childhood would have been like without Jeremy.  As a child, he re-worked common, everyday facts and objects into the whimsical world of his imagination, and he took me through the looking glass by his faith in the impossible. Without Jeremy I might prefer the Notebook to Spiderman 2, or You've Got Mail to Indiana Jones.  Without Jeremy, I might never have appreciated Hootie and the Blowfish, or searched the night sky for aliens, or worried about alligators coming out of the toilet, or become (mutually) obsessed with the ark of the covenant.  Most importantly, I might never known my dad as Condorman.

Jeremy is my oldest friend, and after we stopped being Dr. Jones and Marian, he was there to talk me through school switches, high school break-ups, finding my identity apart from my parents, and hard questions about faith.  We visited each other at university, and he smiled on at my wedding, genuinely happy for me to find love with Greg, because life-long friends do that sort of thing.

While I have been chasing the dreams that come with marriage and family, my oldest friend has spent the last ten years sleeping a few hours a night in a tiny apartment in Hollywood and working an ordinary day-job while chasing his dream of writing.  After years of diligent work and intense sacrifice, Jeremy has recently sold his first screenplay.  No one could be more proud than me, his oldest friend.

So, Jeremy, I write our precious  memories in celebration of your amazing creativity, to commemorate the moment that the world begins to recognize what those who love you have long experienced.  I hope that soon everyone can enjoy your mystical visions as much as I have, that soon the people of the world will have the opportunity to have their sight enriched with the bright colors and impossible gravities of your imagination.  Congratulations on this new chapter of your life.  I have always believed in you, and I saw this day coming from afar off.