Tag: Dad

I Am Not Enough

D. Michl Lowe2 Comments

I’ve concluded that there is apparently something deeply unlikeable and untrustworthy about me. There is a reality of who I am that others must see, that I do not. Maybe those who truly care about me know. Maybe they have tried to tell me. Maybe they have tried to help me understand, and I have stuffed cotton in my ears and closed my eyes to their kindness. Maybe I have been willfully blind to my own shortcomings. Maybe I still am.

For the last couple of years, I had been through over twenty job interviews and had had no luck at all until just recently. For over ten years, I have been nominated for a leadership position but have never been voted into that position. And I don’t blame the voters; I believe they are voting truly and in good faith! It is myself that I see as a failure. It is an observation of my own persona. I would say I am lazy, but really, I don’t think that is it. I value being able to live with the money I make, but I struggle to see my efforts as valuable.

So, is this a depression, then? I assume so. I have heartache and am searching for passion and purpose. I would like to be a true writer, but I have never felt as though I am good enough to truly be called by the title author or writer. Am I proud of my books and writing? Yes, of course, but in the back of my mind, I continually downplay them and question their validity.

I love my family; they give me unending joy and satisfaction, but I feel inadequate at the task of being a father and husband as well. I wonder if this inadequate feeling comes from a lack of my ability to fully support them financially, but then again, maybe it goes beyond that.

I seek purpose in God but feel a failure there as well. I wrote a book in an attempt to harden my devotion and zeal for Christ, but even in all I have done, I feel a failure. As if I should have done more or not done enough. I understand there is continual growth in Christ, and I do see that growth within myself, but then I look back on where I was before. Back then, I thought I was wise, but truly, I was very foolish and didn’t know it. So how am I to believe I am now wise, knowing in ten years I may look back and see my current foolishness for what it is?

They call it a mid-life crisis, but the crisis is a realization of a lifelong inadequacy. How do you make a life worthy? How do you understand what you can change to make it better? There are some things you are locked into, some things that cannot be changed. How do you turn listlessness into motivation and purpose? I don’t trust myself to know that my answers are right.

So what am I to do? Am I meant to meander along, continuing to live in a miasma of stale living? Should I continue to be burdened by a raw and open self-inflicted wound to my ego? Or should I accept the truth, accept the truth that I am not good enough? That I am not worthy of praise? That I am not enough? Because I will never be enough. I can’t do it.

However, when I am weak—because I am weak—He is strong. When I am not enough—and I am not—He is enough. When I am lacking, and I am lacking, He is full and true. When I am down, and I have been down, He is more than enough to raise me up. When I am through with giving effort, and at times, I feel as though I am through, He is there to carry me on.

I am not enough, and I never will be. The reality is no one is enough. No one is truly able. We are all frail and slowly dying, the conscious dead. It is only through the light of Christ we become anything else. In truth, we are only ever meant to be the marionettes of God, allowing the Master to bring us to life and give us His purpose. Am I enough? Yes, but only because I am His. Do I have meaning? Yes, but only the meaning He brings to life within me?

I am the resurrected corpse, Lazarus. I’m stinking but smelling better as the light hits my gaunt face. Undecaying from my death – being brought back into the world of the living, color returning. It is not I who now lives, but Christ who has chosen to live within the destitution of my life, giving it a robust and full justification.

He is worthy, so I am worthy.

My Father-in-Law’s Ethics

D. Michl LoweLeave a comment

My father-in-law, Larry, is an interesting man. I have a significant amount of respect for him. Much like my own father, he comes from a background where he invested a lot of time, effort, and diligence into providing a stable and good life for his wife and kids. 

I hesitate to call him a self-made man, in that I assume many people assisted him throughout his life in achieving what he has, not the least of which would be his amazing wife, but still, I would say he is as close as they tend to come. 

Anyway, my mother and father-in-law are moving, and my wife and I abandoned two of our children to head up to Rochester, NY, to help them finish packing to be ready for the movers to load everything up and get their things into the new house in Columbus, OH. So for the past three days, my wife has been in the house, packing away items in boxes and wrapping them in paper to protect them. I have meanwhile been in the garage with Larry. 

At one point, we were finishing power washing some of the more oversized items in the garage when Larry announced he would go and till the garden with the rototiller. I was confused. To be fair, I am not a mechanical-minded person, and my father-in-law is a master-mechanically-minded person. So I will default to his expertise, but this didn’t make sense to me. So I told him, “Larry, why are you going to till the garden? This isn’t your house now; you aren’t going to plant in that garden”. 

In my mind, this was a waste of time. He was leaving this place, starting a new life. In many ways, it was going to be a better life. It brought him closer to many of his kids and grandkids; the new house would be better in nearly every way. So why waste time tilling a garden, he would never use? He looked at me and said, “It will look nicer for the new owner if it’s tilled.” 

And was no other explanation. I could have just taken it as is, but my mind wouldn’t let that explanation rest. Throughout my time helping Larry pack away his things to prepare for the move, we have been cleaning the garage as we go to the point of vacuuming the baseboards at the edge of the concrete floors. Now I wouldn’t leave a filthy house for someone to buy, but it’s a garage; to me, that’s a naturally dirty place expected to be a little dusty. 

But I think several ideals are in place in my father-in-law’s mind. He is a generally kind man who wants to do kind things for other people, even people he doesn’t really know; like those buying his home. The other ideal, though, I believe, goes a little deeper. He is proud of his home and the life it represents and for good reason. This home, in many ways, represents his and Carolyn’s success in raising a family and providing for them in the manner Christ has called parents to do. 

I have seen many parents who have failed at that calling. Because of drugs, alcohol, failed marriages, unresolved mental health issues, etc., they have failed in their calling to be good parents and spouses. I can’t tell you the number of kids raised by grandparents or single parents because one or both biological parents have failed to step up and do what needs to be done. In essence, to grow up. Now I realize many extenuating circumstances in many people’s lives have led them to where they are, many uncontrollable. 

However, I think I understand why my father-in-law tills the garden for the new owner of the house he is selling. He understands the value of what he is selling and wants to present it so that it shows the value it truly has. It is a memorial stone to a life well lived.

D. Michl Lowe

The Monster Outside My Window And My Dad

D. Michl LoweLeave a comment

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. 

D. Michl Lowe

The Coming Of Nikolai

D. Michl LoweLeave a comment

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.

D. Michl Lowe