The What If Quest

Today, Tyler and I made our first trek beyond a one-mile radius of Lesley Avenue since we've been back in England--and the journey was peppered with the newest question his Frontal Lobes have learned to employ: What If?

Quest is a playground/park/shallow-brown-river-filled-with-47-ducks/field about two miles from our house. I'm actually not even sure that it's actually called Quest, except that word stands boldly out in the middle of the playground in letters that are bubbly and set against a rock wall.

En route to Quest, Tyler wanted to walk rather than ride in his stroller. After twenty minutes to make it five-hundred feet, I began attempting various ploys to try and get Tyler into his stroller.

Daddy: Your stroller is ready to go fast, WITH YOU  IN IT!

Tyler: What if my stroller goes fast WITHOUT ME IN IT?

Daddy: Then your stroller would be WAY UP THERE and you and I would be WAY BACK HERE.

Silence for contemplative time.

Tyler: Daddy, What if I was that truck driving right there?

Daddy: If you were that truck driving right there, you would be zooming down the road, away from right here.

Silence for more contemplation.

We saunter ahead another five feet, until Tyler spots a series of rocks all embedded into the side of the sidewalk.

Tyler: Daddy, what if we could pull all of these rocks out of here?

Daddy: Then there would be no more rocks there, and the people who designed this sidewalk said, WHOA, THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL WITH ALL OF THESE ROCKS RIGHT HERE.

Contemplation time. We saunter ahead two more feet.

And an inner voice bubbled up inside of me, suggesting, You're never going to make it the two miles to Quest at this pace! Move! MOVE NOW OR GIVE UP ON QUEST ALTOGETHER!

I contemplated this inner voice as Tyler gazed back at those embedded rocks, probably wondering what the people who put them there were really thinking.

The inner voice I'd just heard didn't sound very peaceful; it didn't sound very calm; in fact, it sounded downright unquesty, and if were were on a quest for Quest, another voice suggested the following: Shouldn't you attempt a more questy approach to today's journey?

Fast forward one hour: we still have yet to arrive at Quest, but our journey thus far has afforded Tyler and I ample time to consider more What Ifs than I'd previously thought possible to articulate in a single walk:

• What if that man was a woman?
• What if a digger tried to pick us both up, Daddy?
• What if this airplane [toy airplane] was really a REAL airplane?
• What if I had wheels on my feet and my feet were not feet, but they were just wheels that did like vrrooooommmmshh?
• What if Quest was that place right THERE [Tyler points at run-down, neon-lit Cash Advance Loan Store Front]?
• What if I was the REAL Spiderman?

By the time we arrived at Quest, my inner voice had turned questy. Highly questy. And after a picnic on the grass (food prepared lovingly by Mommy, complete with two love notes for Tyler and I--of which Tyler held his super-tight the rest of the day, (as did I)), a couple of hours on the swings and play equipment, we finally made it to the small river where 47 ducks darted in search of bread.

Seriously, they darted. I had previously assumed ducks waded here and there--but these ducks darted everywhere. Tyler tossed chunks of bread into the water, and then called the ducks boldly to come and get it (though they needed no encouragement).

Befitting a day of what-iffing, Tyler looked up at me as the ducks became arrows, and asked, "Daddy, what if we went in there and swam with all of those ducks?"

I laughed in a questy kind of way. And it dawned on me then that all of these what ifs had nothing to do with goals or results or desires. In fact, they were totally void of ambition. Which is vastly unlike the what-if questions I often find myself posing--wondering about what vocations might work out, what opportunities will present themselves, how finances will unfold.

But, truth be told, the kinds of what-ifs I normally ask aren't very questy at all. Rationality and aspiration often trump imagination and randonimity. And sometimes, this is a good thing. In fact, it's probably what classifies me as an adult.

But the balance can become skewed, and when this happens the questiness goes of out life, out of the very endeavors that most crave that kind of imaginative attitude.

Today's quest with Tyler showed me that it's possible for neither to trump the other: stuff can get done--places can be reached--in a questy manner that is peppered with What Ifs as long as we're content to watch things unfold slowly, watch events and experiences occur less in the light of lightning, more in the glow of lightning bugs.

What Did I Do, Daddy?

Tonight, during goodnight kisses and hugs, I said to Tyler, "I'm so proud of you son, and I love you so much." Jennifer and I both tell him this every night--we believe that his knowing these two things is essential. That no matter what has happened during the day, we still love him; we're still proud of who he is.

But tonight, the look in Tyler's eyes told me, essentially, this: frontal lobes, dude. Frontal lobes are kicking in. It's true. All the toddler books say that around the third birthday, the frontal lobes of a child's brain really start coming in strong. (The frontal lobes, by the way, are the area of the brain that involve reasoning and step-thinking and action-result analysis, in other words, the parent's Hallelujah! lobes of a child's brain.)

So tonight, on Christmas Eve, as I said the words to Tyler, he looked back at me and I could see his frontal lobes doing somersaults. Olympic rings. Synchronized swimming. And Tyler said to me, "What did I do, Daddy?"

"You mean, what am I so proud of you for?"

"Mm-hmm."  Tyler's wide eyes really wanted to know. The lobes had spoken.

I returned Tyler's gaze and said, "Because you are you. I am proud of you and I love you no matter what, because you are Tyler and you are my son."

He smiled, asked for another kiss, and that was that.

Walking out of his bedroom, it struck me as highly appropriate on the night before we celebrate Christ's birth--the fact that Tyler's frontal lobes decided to really kick up just now. Because the Creator of the universe loves me and you and all of us in exactly this way--unconditionally and because we're His kids.

Not because of how much money we have or don't have; not because of the fact that we haven't cursed at all in the last seven years and three months (or because we have cursed every day of the last seven years and three months); not because of our successes or our failures.

There is no other love like this--so unconditional that it encompasses all we have ever done or thought and all we ever will do or think and it fully holds us just the same. Few modern books have been able to really touch the heart of the gospel message in this regard as poignantly and boldly as Francis Chan's Crazy Love or Shane Caliborne's The Irresistable Revolution. They reveal the wonderful absurdity of this kind of love and return a question to us: what will we do with it? How will we receive and use this love to help heal, grow, and restore the earth? How will we use this unconditional love of God to care for the broken, the poor, the hungry?

God's love is crazy because it is freely given with no measures and no standards. A love like that can't be contained--it can't be measured by hours on a Sunday, or group meetings on a Wednesday. Instead, a love like that throws logic to the wind, bids propriety adieu, and says to the status quo, No. Instead, a love that responds to this kind of crazy love does one thing: it keeps going.

This Christmas, I want to look at my Creator and ask the same question Tyler asked me--my frontal lobes kicking in, all my reason, all my logic, all my measure-for-measure standards--What did I do, Daddy? Why are you so proud of me? Why do you love me?

I want to ask so I can hear the words in reply--those glorious, unearned words: I love. I love. I love. You.