I’m currently sitting in my son’s bedroom at 2:03 a.m. on a Saturday night. I have to be up for church in the morning, but at least I don’t have work. He woke up with a leg ache, a common problem for my kids when they have run themselves silly during the day. For him, it is often pushing a toy truck back and forth between the kitchen and living room, over and over. For my middle daughter Ellie it would be doing cartwheels over and over.
Either way though, the result is pain and a crying child in the middle of the night. After getting him some medicine for the pain, I sat rocking him and thinking. I have three children and along with my wife, we have spent many an hour awake at night with babies; truthfully, she more than I. That being said though, it has often upset me or made me cross; being awakened from sleep, drug out of bed, changing midnight diapers or soothing a crying child for any number of reasons. But as I sat here tonight, my little son, who just turned three, cuddling into my chest, I made a point to realize that I am lucky.
First of all, I have a child to wake me up. Beyond that, I have three. I have three amazing children to worry about, be awakened by, and be able to provide care for when they need me. I and my wife are good parents and we can care for three children well. I work in the school system and get to see the children of many different families, as such, I see both the good and bad results of different families. I am thankful that my children are part of an amazing one.
I have help. My wife is an amazing mother and a stupendous spouse. She sacrifices and pursues excellence in all her endeavors. However, her charge as a mother is one that she has not only mastered but continues to teach me as her fellow parent. My parents live down the road, they are always there helping and loving my kids. My mother and father-in-law are there as well, providing support and love, always. Aunts, Uncles, Godfathers, Godmothers, friends, church members, teachers, and so many more.
They say it takes a village and my kids have one. I am often discouraged by the news these days. The hate, discourse, and outright violence of humans are at times scary and bleak. But when I look at my kids, I have hope. They are and will be a bright spot in that darkness. Christ’s love will shine out from them as I hope it does from their parents. I recently joked with my good friend that all Christians should have at least three kids if at all possible.
That way you can make more Christians than are going to go on to glory when you leave this word. But truthfully, no one can predict the course of one person’s life, even a life that is brought up in the church with loving and good parents. But dang if it doesn’t help. I am thankful for my son’s leg aches and the opportunity they provide. I am thankful for a crying child at night. God thank you for letting me hold my children and be a comfort to them. May I never forget the blessing of lost sleep.
When I was around five years old, we still lived in the little red house on White Oak Dr., but now the house is white. However, as a child, it was a stark red color with wooden shingles and a leaky basement. When you entered the house and turned to the left, you would go down the only hallway in the home. My room was the last bedroom on the left.
One night, my dad put me to bed and said his customary “love you” and then turned off the light and went to his room. I sat there in the dark and being a little kid, got scared. I can’t tell you beyond just saying that I was scared of a monster, what that monster really was, but it was terrifying enough for me to call my dad back into the room with a loud call of “Dad”! He came back into the room and asked what I wanted.
“Um, I’m scared that there might be a monster outside of my window.” To be fair, my room had two windows and while one of them was a story up over the top of the garage, the one I was scared of was about four feet above the backyard. Dad went over to the window and beckoned me to come over and look out the window. “No…” I said, still slightly scared. “Get over here.” He said. I came over to the window. “Look out that window. Do you see any monsters out there?” He asked. I shook my head no. “That’s because there’s no such thing as monsters and there certainly aren’t any outside of your window. Now go to sleep.” I went back to my bed and dad walked from the room giving me a slightly gruffer version of “I love you; goodnight!”
Several minutes went by while my little boy brain continued to spin tails of monsters clawing their way into my room via the window to the backyard. Finally, I yelled again, “Dad!” … slowly he appeared in my doorway. “What?” It was a question devoid of desire for the actual answer. “I’m afraid a monster is outside my window…” Dad looked defeated. His logical argument had failed to suppress my imagination in the darkness and boredom. “Come here.” He said again. “No…” I said, shrinking back from his gruff utterance.
As scared as I was of the monster outside the window, I was much more scared of dad and the possible solution he was churning away at in his head. “Come. Here.” He said in a deliberate and just slightly menacing way. I slinked from the bed, sliding out from under the covers without even throwing them back. Like a magician pulling the tablecloth out from under a dinner place setting without even clinking the glasses.
Dad opened the window. “Stick your head out there and tell me what you see.” I slowly peeked my head out the window. The light was still holding on in the evening. It was summer and there was still mugginess to the West Virginia evening despite a slight tinge of coolness in the air. Thinking of it now, it was an evening that should have created a sense of comfort and home. Of sitting outside on the front porch in the evening with a glass of sweet iced tea and talking with a neighbor.
Instead, for the little boy in that room, the evening was full of possible fear. Fear in spite of the knowledge that my dad was there, protecting me, sheltering me, loving me. “Do you see a monster?” He asked again. I shook my head “no” once more. He closed the window. “Go to bed, I don’t want to hear from you again. If you aren’t bleeding or dying, I don’t want to hear your voice. Got it?” I got it and nodded my head.
I sat alone in my bed once more. It should have been a peaceful aloneness. Darkness that comforts you and wraps you up in the silence and stillness of a night. There’s the knowing that you aren’t alone in a house where your loved ones are safe and sleeping or just being quiet in another room just beyond your door. But this wasn’t my way of being this night. I lay with my head draped over the side of the bed with my face looking up at the dome of the ceiling light. The patchwork of textured ceiling melded together and blurred out as the blood would pool in my brain. The white of the glass globe slowly slides into and melds with the white around it. I sat up again, the blood cascading back into my body. I sat there… crisscross apple sauce on my transformers bed sheets, waiting for sleep that didn’t come.
I honestly believe I made it around fifteen minutes before the fear crept back into my mind. It was long enough for dad to believe his tactic of opening the window had worked and perhaps even time enough for him to go to sleep as well. However, given that I went to bed fairly early in those days, I am assuming dad was not only still awake, but just relaxing in his room with my mom. I debated for some time in my mind whether or not I should risk calling my dad into my room again. For a little boy, this was a very difficult decision. In the end, my imagination won out and I called out again. “Dad!” … It took him some time to get to my room. I could hear him having a discussion with mom in the next room. In the end, I could hear him as his feet pounded down the hall. He was mad…
He came into my room without saying anything and went straight to the window. Opening it, he gestured for me to come over to it. I shook my head “no”. He didn’t open his mouth, but hissed the words through his teeth, “Now…”. I came over.
Dad then proceeded to throw me out the window.
Now it wasn’t a graceful action in any sense of the word. Let’s be clear, I fought tooth and nail to stop him. When the dance of the adult man and wiggly little boy was done, I was clinging to the window sill crying for all I was worth, molten tears creating an emotional river on my cheeks. “No daddy no!” I screamed. He was holding onto my wrists and I tried and failed to climb back in the window. “Look here. Listen to me.” He said, in a calmer voice than he had any right to use after doing what he had done. “I’m going to prove to you that there are no monsters out here.”
My eyes were wide, and I listened very carefully to what my dad said next. For all I knew, my very life depended on following the directions he was about to give. “I’m going to shut the window, and you are going to go over there to the back door and knock on it. I will let you in the house through the back door. That way, if there are any monsters out there, they will have ample time to eat you up before I get to the back door. However, if there aren’t any monsters out there, then you should be fine.”
My eyes were the size of softballs and I glanced towards the back door. In reality, it was maybe fifteen feet away if that, but as a little boy, it seemed as though the back walk was made of lava, and getting there was an impossibility. “No! No, daddy!” He pried my hands from the sill, still holding my wrists. “See you in a sec”, he said. Then he shut the window. I might as well have flown to the back door, grabbing the handle to jerk on it to see if perhaps it was already unlocked; no luck there.
I began pounding on the door. My father, on the other hand, meandered out of my room and stopped in the hall to stretch and yawn. He turned into the kitchen and stopped to check the fridge to see if any of the mac and cheese from dinner was leftover; there wasn’t any. Closing the fridge door, he walked over to the back door and calmly unlocked the deadbolt, and then opened the door.
I slid into the kitchen like a Hall-of-Famer getting home as the pitcher crashes in just behind him. Getting up I went after dad, pounding on his chest and crying hysterically. He was laughing at me, a big smile on his face. “Hey…” he said, in a much too jovial tone. “You’re alive! You made it!” … I looked around the kitchen. I looked up at my dad. “You didn’t get eaten.” He said. I stopped crying and wiped my nose. Walking me back to my room, he got more serious, “Now, go to bed.” He said.
I walked into my room and laid down on my bed. You might say the adrenaline surge had tuckered me out. You might say that the rush had spent all my brainpower so I was able to then sleep. Or, you might say that I was not much more afraid of my dad than imaginary monsters, and all that might be true. Or you might say that my dad had taught me a valuable lesson in trust and reality. I believe the latter. In any case, I slept soundly that night and many more in the future and was no longer afraid of monsters outside my window.
Let me talk about the end of 2018. Kyle and Natalie, our music pastor and his wife, came to us and told us that they were pregnant with their third child. I don’t remember the exact date, but it was mid-2018. In my heart of hearts, I can assure you (my reader) that I was done having children. All through college and perhaps even before that, I had always said that I wanted two little girls; no more, no less. And at that moment, I had my two girls and beyond that, Ellie was already seven years old. Having another child wouldn’t make sense at all.
However, when our friend’s words rang in my mind, a spark began to burn inside of me. I couldn’t shake the idea of another child from my mind. It nearly consumed me. God was pulling at me, causing me to question my conviction. At first, I didn’t talk to Alicia about this. How could I? If I told her about it, she would get excited and if these feelings turned out to be nothing, just a passing fancy, then I would have hurt her a great deal. Inside myself though, I knew she wanted more children. She had always said four, but we had compromised on two. She always said no way to three because she didn’t want the third to be left out. Or for there to be a middle child.
I went and spoke with Kyle about my feelings and thoughts. His immediate response was, “You need to have another kid!” Now I know he must have been a little biased since he and his wife had made a very similar decision. I spoke to him about my hesitations. About all the reasons why it was a crazy idea, why we shouldn’t do it. And then I said that despite all that, I was still convicted about it. I didn’t know why. He told me that he had similar feelings before they had made their decisions and that he had come to have peace about it through prayer. He told me I needed to be in prayer and that I should seek Christ’s will. While I appreciated his enthusiasm and advice, I was still unsure.
I went home and spoke to Alicia about it. I came out of our closet just before bed and said, “What would you think about us having another kid?” She stopped. “Are you being serious?” she asked. “Now, you can’t just bring this up with me, if you are serious you need to let me know. Because I had a peace about us not having any more kids, even though it’s something I have really wanted. You can’t just throw this out there you know.”
I paused in the doorway, considering why I had even mentioned it without having come to a solid conclusion just yet. “I haven’t come to a consensus yet on how I feel, or what God is telling me about it. I don’t have peace, but I felt like I needed to tell you what was on my heart. What do you think about that?” I can’t be sure, but I remember her beginning to cry. “I have a peace about it, I say let’s do it!” I regaled her with all my logical reasons as to why I thought it was a bad idea, and still she held firm. When I spoke to my mom and dad about it later, they held to my beliefs about the bad idea of having another kid. It would be too hard, too expensive, and just overall not a good idea. I didn’t have peace about it. I wasn’t sure.
During this time, I was working up in the sound booth for our local church. I can’t tell you what the sermon was about. I can’t tell you what really was even going on in my own mind at that moment. However, while working the sound for our Facebook live feed, Pastor began to speak and my heart suddenly lurched. All I can recall is that for a moment in time, Pastor was no longer speaking to the congregation, God was speaking through him to me.
All my fear was gone. All my reservations were gone. The logical reasoning, I had built up in my mind seemed like foolishness. God had a plan. I didn’t know what it was, but He had one. I needed to trust in His ability to see us through the challenges. Which is interesting. Nikolai was born on August 31, 2019. It was a mostly uneventful birth, but just a day after he was born, he had to be taken to the NICU because he had an infection in his blood. He was there for about a week until he was strong enough to come home with us. It wouldn’t be the last time one of my kids had an extended stay in a hospital.
Looking back at this time now, after Niko was born, Alicia was able to take off enough time from work so that she could get all the way from the beginning of school in August to Christmas break staying at home with him, fantastic. But God took us a step further. One month after Christmas break, the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020 hit and we worked from home for the most part until that Summer, giving Alicia just about a full year of staying at home with Niko.
Even when we did have to go back to work (sorta) in the next school year of 2020 in September of that year, Niko was able to only go to daycare part-time, Mom and Dad kept him two days a week, saving us money and allowing him to spend a lot of time with family. God has a way of working these things out. In ways, we will never understand and will often never see until a long time later.
Now, I continue to look at my son (he’s two and a half now) and Kyle’s little girl and I think about these kids. Who they are becoming and who they are right now. The world is a better place with them in it. A friend of mine recently went through a similar situation as I did and I got to hold his little girl (just a couple months old now) in my arms. We were at dinner with them the other night and I looked over at my son and then down at this little girl in my arms. What a blessing children are. I feel like the meaning of life and love and laughter are brought into clarity through these kids. They will grow up in our church, they will be loved by everyone in it, and they will be loved by us. There will be difficulty, pain, heartache, and tears, and it will all be worth it. All the difficulty that comes with having kids and raising kids will be worth it.
I’m going to be headed home today to meet with my wife and two kids, along with my parents to cut into a cake. It’s not a birthday cake or a retirement cake or anything like that, it’s a gender reveal cake.
My wife will give birth (God willing) to our third child in September of this year and she wanted our current kids (8 and 6 years old) to have some fun guessing the gender along with us through this now iconic practice of the pink and blue inner confection hidden inside a cake.
Maybe I’m just a weird dude (I admit it, I am), but I can’t help but think about my own death today, hopefully, years down the road. With the new life rapidly developing within my best friend and lover, I wonder what I am actually leaving my children. I’m not a rich man, so money isn’t going to be a legacy I leave behind. I’m also not a powerful man, I don’t leave them a company or family business to run. I’m not a politician or influential man.
I am a Christian man.
I hope before everything else, I am leaving them a legacy of living out Jesus in front of them. The leftists often accuse the right and Christians of “brainwashing” our kids into following our religious beliefs.
-raises his hand-
I’m guilty your honor. I am doing everything within my power to lead my children into a relationship with the God of all creation. Let’s be honest, if you held the belief that God became a human being and came down to earth to save everyone and actually did it through His death and then resurrection, you would be a fool to NOT lead your children into a relationship with this being.
The reality is, the left doesn’t believe there is a God and therefore doesn’t believe we should teach our children this “myth”. The reality is, they indoctrinate their own children just as strongly into the myth that something came from nothing.
It’s not a matter of faith or no faith, but rather where one’s faith is placed.
I also am a writer. So far I’ve written nearly three books, only one of which is physically published, Modern Chivalry (can be found on Amazon), the other two I’ve published on this site for people to read and enjoy.
Many of the articles that I’ve written I wrote with the knowledge that someday my kids will read them. I have a series of letters I’ve written to my girls, just in case I am someday gone too soon. I’ve written down all my good dad talks about life, love, relationship, God, etc. in case I’m not there to give these talks in person.
I’m so excited to know if I will be having my first little boy, or if I am going to be so outnumbered by girls that I have no hope of surviving 😳.
However, more than anything else, I pray that God will allow me to continue to write so that someday my kids can read my writings and find comfort in having a small part of their dad still alive. Still fresh. Still vivid upon a page.
A long time ago my dad received a cedar trunk with a latch holding it closed. It was his dad’s trunk. Opening it, it was full to the brim with yellow spiral notebooks and newspaper clippings. My grandfather wrote thousands of letters to the editor of his local paper. There were poems and letters and short stories and histories. I remember sitting in my dad’s attic for hours pouring over these writings and even though my grandfather died when my dad was just 13 years old, I felt as though I knew this man.
I think I can honestly say, I know this man.
Someday, I hope to meet him when I die. I believe I will have that chance. This is the power of writing, to live on after death, not in a spiritual sense, but in a very real physical sense, for those who get to know you after you are gone.
D. Michl Lowe - Author 