Two columns in one mailing

I forgot to mail the column last week, so here is two at once. These columns are about two of my children.



Children must find their own way to God

October 17, 2009

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

"I'm not even sure there is a God," said one of my children.

It was about the most hurtful thing a child could say to a chaplain dad.

The questioning reminded me of two patients I met during my rounds as a hospital chaplain. Both patients were pastors' children.

The first child was a 10-year-old boy with cancer. He lay in his bed, using controllers to throw punches at the villains in his video game.

He gave me a cursory glance to see whether I was medical staff bringing needles or anything else that might hurt him. I had no such instruments, just a harmless Dalmatian marionette.

He shot me a dismissive look that referred me to his father standing at bedside. I took my cue and turned toward his pastor dad.

"My guess is that you're finding a place for prayer during this illness?" I said, leading the conversation.

"Yes," the father answered, while stroking the head of his distracted son.

We spoke a few more minutes about the support faith brings to illness until a phone call took him out of the room.

Left alone with the patient, I asked him the same question about prayer that I'd asked his father.

For the first time, he took a long gaze away from the video, over his shoulder and past me toward where his father was engaged with his phone call.

Making sure his answer would be confidential; he silently shook his head.

"Not at night or when you're scared?" I pressed.

He did a double take toward his father and repeated his negative gesture.

A minute later, his father returned, and we cordially finished our visit.

Ready for some grown-up conversation, I caged my Dalmatian and went to see a woman with a high-risk pregnancy.

Upon realizing I was a chaplain, the woman discarded the common salutations to announce, "My father is a pastor."

No pleasantries. No "How do you do?"

I inferred from her tone that her spiritual needs were met in her DNA. Her dad was her holy guy.

Responding in a half-mischievous tone, I said, "Oh, really? We're both PKs (pastor's kids). Can I have a seat?"

She studied me and decided it might be OK to talk.

As we spoke, it quickly became apparent her dad was not her holy guy. In fact, her new spirituality was such a radical change from her Evangelical home that I was sure her dad now saw her as a member of a cult.

There is an old scriptural proverb that says, "Start a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."

But what's a parent do to do when your child no longer sees any wisdom in your faith?

There really are only two things you can do. First, accept that we cannot choose our child's spiritual DNA. We can no more choose faith for our children than we can chose their love.

Second, take comfort in your own faith journey and recall the path God laid out for you. In doing so, your confidence will be renewed that God also will lay out a journey for your child, just as he did for you.

It's hard, of course. It means letting go in far deeper ways than just letting your child drive off to college. You have to let go at your core.

Letting go doesn't mean you approve of the route your child has taken, it simply means that you trust your child to the heavenly parent who gave you this child in the first place.


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October 10, 2009


Treat marriage vows as you would your commitment to God

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

Standing under a family of firs -- white, red and Douglas -- our family paused before beginning the wedding.

This was not just one of the dozens of weddings I've officiated; this was the wedding of my firstborn daughter among the sacred aroma of sugar pine and the incense cedar of the El Dorado National Forest in northern California.

I began the ceremony by sharing my long-held secret to a good marriage:

"If you were to ask me what is the most important lesson I've learned in my almost 30 years of marriage, I'd have to tell you that love is a choice, not a feeling."

So today, I wasn't going to ask this couple about their love. I knew they loved each other. Attesting to love is only a testimony of the present.

No, today I would ask them to make radical promises of their future will. That's a much scarier proposition.

On this day I asked them to make willing promises about loving, comforting, protecting and forsaking all others. Would they be faithful? Not until love parts, but rather, as long as they both shall live?

"I will," they declared.

I once was approached by a couple with handwritten vows that declared their promise to stay married until "love do us part." I politely asked them to find another officiator, because this chaplain always will say, "till death do us part."

Eighteen months later, the love she had for another man parted the newlyweds.

Why didn't this marriage last? Why do so many fail? I wish I knew the complete answer to that question, however, I believe it often is because people don't realize that wedding vows are everyday, not just on the wedding day.

If taken seriously, the future promise of the will means that they look for ways to perform acts of kindness and compassion, whether practical things like doing their fair share of housework, or relational things like good listening.

In my house, this is the kind of willing love that keeps on going whether I burn the toast or burn my temper. It is the kind of love that tells me I am forgiven before I can ask. It is the kind of love that "halves a sorrow and doubles a joy."

Like many couples, my wife and I sometimes go to bed dead tired. We easily can find ourselves too tired for the fun I seek and too tired for the cuddling she requests. But we rarely are too tired to talk out our day and absolutely never too tired for our three good night kisses and "I love you."

It's the intentional building of a relationship where independence is equal, dependence is mutual and our obligation is reciprocal. This kind of daily choice -- day in and day out -- brings something deeper and far more lasting. It brings Jesus' words to pass, "The two shall become one flesh." (Matthew 19:5)

Without a daily commitment of the will, relationships easily degrade. It's too easy to become like the husband who stopped telling his wife he loved her.

When she confronted him with this deficiency, the husband replied, "I told you 'I love you' on our wedding day. If I change my mind, I'll let you know."

At the end of the day, not only must we declare our love regularly, but we have to assert our will to make things work -- till death do us part.

Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an Air National Guard chaplain. Write norris@thechaplain.net or visit thechaplain.net. You also can follow him on Twitter, username is "chaplain," or on Facebook at facebook.com/norrisburkes.