dreams and reality (at 2 a.m.)

I think it’s pretty common for new parents to go through something of a “mid-life crisis” as they come to grips with their new daily reality. It can be a very joyful time, but also one of boring routines, in which the parents’ hopes and dreams are no longer center stage (unless maybe it’s the dream of having a baby). The question “Is this what my life is going to be?” can hit pretty hard.

In many ways, this is a critical part of maturing, realizing that the hopes and dreams of our early adulthood aren’t the ultimate goals they seemed to be then. Learning that, to a large extent, they were indeed dreams. And accepting that this child’s care is more important than trying to make the world fit the grand image we had in our heads, or make others believe that we are the heroes we eagerly imagined ourselves to be. This real child helps us set aside the unreal imaginings of our youth.

Too often, though, I think people try to replace those fading hopes and dreams with new ones, based on their new relationship to their child. “I can’t save the world, but I can save this child.” Which is perhaps a little more realistic, but ultimately just another hopeful figment of the imagination. Isn’t it? The child may indeed be saved, but in the end, if we’re honest with ourselves, we won’t be the ones who can take much credit for it.

The best result of this (or any) mid-life crisis is if it turns us away from dreams to reality, especially the reality of finding ourselves in relationship—but in relationship to God. Our adolescent desires aren’t very trustworthy guides. But God’s desires are. And we can’t rely on our resources and abilities to provide and protect and guide our child, but we can trust God to do so, just as we trust him to provide and protect and guide us. The truest longing to save the child is good, as long as we recognize that what we’re feeling doesn’t originate with us. And the purest of our early desires are good also, as long as we realize that those also didn’t originate with us. These are good and real and trustworthy because they are God’s desires for us.

And we open ourselves to God’s desires when we “turn and become like a child,” desperately clinging to God like this baby now clinging to us.