Step onto the Tilt-A-Whirl
So, our State Fair is going on here in Arizona. It’s not quite like State or County Fairs in places like Wisconsin or Oregon. I imagine in those places all manner of fall magic: real cider, pumpkin soup and fresh smells of cinnamon and roasted corn with churned butter. I picture colorful warm lights strung across meandering lanes bordered with canopied trees and the happy exhibits of local creation. I can picture children bobbing for apples from real wooden barrels. I see a colorful old guy with a flannel shirt and suspenders who’s been guessing people’s weight there for 50 years. Here in the desert it’s a little different. We have such autumn themes as a metal shed entitled “The Creep House” and exhibit halls probably featuring such lore as the history of bunions and an interactive sequence of tuna spoiling in a Tupperware bowl. Livestock milling around in tiny enclosures on a hot Arizona day gives off an odor that forces you to breathe through your shirt.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just bitter. Growing up in Southern California, my dad first took us to the fair when I was about 10. I think mom forced him into it. He didn’t like it at all. He saw it as a frivolous, colossal waste of money, time and dignity. My dad was all about “educational experiences.” So we walked through rows of high-pitched, fast-talking vendors with microphones strapped to their necks, hawking towels that could permanently keep steam off your bathroom mirror. We spent long chunks of time at exhibits of campaign pins of past presidential elections. I’d love that now, but back then it was like being forced to learn the etymology of adhesive tape. Outside these stuffy convention halls, in the “real” fair, was pure, breath-taking, dangerous magic! There were rides that could terrify your soul and sights that could fill all your senses with wonder. In the 60s there were few governing policies on good taste imposed upon the Fair. Mysterious tents were prominently displayed with “barkers” out front, on a box, luring us in to see the “Bearded Lady” or the “Lobster Boy.” Dad wouldn’t let us within a quarter mile of this section of the Fair. I remember one booth sold chameleons. Can you imagine? Chameleons! Lizards who could change colors! I knew if I could just have one I would need nothing else but food and clothing for the rest of my life! I begged, pleaded and whined for a chameleon. I think they probably cost less than a buck, sold by a sketchy looking guy who might have painted them earlier in the day. My dad wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t “educational” or “practical”. At the end of my ride-less experience at the Orange County Fair, he begrudgingly purchased a bumper sticker of the Fair’s mascot pig. “You can put it on your school notebook!” I would have rather worn a shirt made out of ashtrays.
My dad was a really good man, but he lived with a lot of fear and a lot of control. He didn’t want to look foolish. I think he inadvertently passed his fear and insecurity on to me. He was a child of the depression and was always fighting against the other shoe dropping. I’m coming to grips with the reality that I guard my heart from pain, from what “could” happen, from being caught off guard and embarrassed. I’m an odd combination of a playful, humor filled wild-man, with this incongruent sense of self-protection.
Understanding and trusting Christ’s outrageous delight of me and His wonderful, moment by moment protection of my deepest fragileness has been the only remedy for this Adam transmitted disease. Grace and trusting my true identity and His complete and loving sovereignty over my life gently takes me from hiding in the corners. Such intentional love walks me away from my fear of fear, of guarding my heart from the eventuality of sadness, all the way to trusting that God will be right next to me, facing it fully with me, as I face whatever comes upon me. This alone allows me to stay in the moment, enjoy the event in front of me and love those in front of me.
Resting in these truths, I find myself almost longing to stroll through our State Fair and step onto the Tilt-A-Whirl and maybe finish off my evening with some cotton candy and a deep-fried Twinky on a stick. …Then again, maybe I’ll just purchase a bumper sticker.
John, did we have the same dad? Wow, our fair was the L.A. county or Pomona Fair. Pretty much the same deal you described, except I often was mesmorized by an outdoor model train layout that was huge. I remember hoping to get a taste of the cotton candy that was everywhere, but dad couldn’t spring for a stick of spun candy.
Thanks brother for again sharing that my identity is in the One who has never stopped loving me from before time began.
Vic
As I read your words, what hit me was that hidden in your father’s pragmatic approach was the best shot he had at love. The love he felt from God seemed stingy, and he passed along all he had.
And somehow, God’s truest love broke through to you, and it was in the intense and deep knowing of being loved that the generosity of love was born in you.
It happens so often, that a good father who has lived his whole life in the stinginess that comes from conserving love, of passing on the warped sense of love conservation that was passed to him… that a son or daughter is fathered directly by God. When God fathers us, when the extravagance of the true love of God deluges our lives, there is SO MUCH… it just can’t be contained.
And from this abundance I’ve seen an incredible pattern develop. First, Christ opens our eyes to the truth of our dads… HE shows us the truth of their lives, and the truth generally turns the corner from anger and regret, and into grace and love. And then the most amazing thing happens… God opens the door for us to father our own fathers. We are given the specific generosity, the specific kind of permeating love, that our fathers have been conserving every day.
It’s like our fathers believe we’re in a desert, and they hold the garden hose carefully, only dribbling out a few drops each day for each of us, because he LOVES us, and he knows that if he squanders the water, we’ll all die of thirst.
And then one day, as we’ve become older, even dads ourselves, we discover the garden hose is hooked directly to the Hoover Dam… and that conserving water is BEYOND ridiculous. And we take our dads on a tour of the Hoover dam, and we point out the familiar garden hose that they’ve spent their lives conserving and guarding.
And in the time that follows, we weep together over the loss, over the unnecessary thirst for so many years, and we weep about the present, of being no longer thirsty, and we weep for the future, where dad and us together can father our own kids and other kids, the thirsty kids of complete strangers… because we’re connected to the Hoover Dam.
I made this picture once… http://www.hyndman.tv/HooverDam-Hose2.jpg
Wow. Reading this: “My dad was a really good man, but he lived with a lot of fear and a lot of control. …This alone allows me to stay in the moment, enjoy the event in front of me and love those in front of me.” Nearly blew me away. It was like you were writing about me in a way. My daddy was the same way and I was following his leading step-by-step. It took almost dying to get me to the next part…”understanding and trusting Christ” well I am trying to understand and trust but I think I’m being detoxed at present.
Thanks so much for keeping it Real, John!
Paula
Lord I repent of all the “ash tray t-shirts” I gave my children. help me to spot the cotton candy of their lives, and deliver.
Your summation of Understanding and trusting God’s Love for us fit right in with what I’ve been reading in Andrew Murray’s “Your will be done”. To understand that our Father is right there with us to face anything that comes against us, and he will not let it be something to big for us to handle, at first like a Dad watching a child take its first steps, then running along side as we learn to ride a two wheel bike. then watching us get on the bus for our first day at school. Then, waving to us as he starts that five hour trip back home, empty trailer in tow which carried all your worldly possessions to the apartment that you will use as a home base to attend college from.
I’m coming to think of my heavenly Father as some one Who wants to see me grow and walk and run, and He will be right there to enjoy seeing it, give me guidance, encouragement, and when I fall down, He will be there to pick me up and to protect me as is needed. How can you not just naturally Love a Dad like that?
I think that the more I see God as He really is, The less I have to try to Love Him, and the more I do.
Oh; and by the way John, deep-fried Twinkys on a stick are just not right in any universe.
Vic-I believe we did have the same dad. I can’t believe how close we lived to each other in those days. All of us living out our worlds oblivious that someday God would find us and put us together to help heal broken ones around us. Go figure.
Hey John…when I read your story…I felt like i was reading about my father and I…I always had a longing to have fun and there is this wild part of me that wants to run free, but somehow to my dad and some of my family, i come of as rebellious and because of that I have learned to protect myself with anger. I live in shame and guilt because of my anger and my lack of self control. I want to love and please my parents but at the same time I want to enjoy true grace and freedom and truly understand that Jesus is my biggest fan and that he loves me regardless of anything that I might say or do. I need transformation from the inside out.