Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy by Donald Miller

Author:Donald Miller [Miller, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2015-02-02T23:00:00+00:00

WE ATE TACOS BECAUSE PARENTS HAVE TO EAT. We talked about the stages of life and Jamie apologized for looking tired and joked with Betsy that this is where her life was headed, toward tacos and sweatpants and breast pumps and sleepless nights. She said all the beauty of falling in love and posturing and flowers and walks on the beach was a path headed toward worried prayers and sleeping in the car outside a hospital until visiting hours commence. Even as she said this she smiled, as though sacrifice is what makes a story beautiful. Hard but beautiful.

We had the usual conversation about what it’s like to become parents and how our perceptions of life change and so on, and then Jamie said something I’d never heard a parent say before. She said, “You know, Don, I’ve become protective of what people say to my children. It’s surprising how many people already want to name them.”

I told her I didn’t know what she meant and so she explained.

“They’ll pick up my son and say something like, ‘Oh, look at you, you’re going to be a little rebel. You’re going to make trouble for everybody, aren’t you? You’re going to be a firecracker.’ ”

“Okay,” I said, having heard a thousand people say that stuff to a thousand babies.

Jamie said it infuriated her, though. “Nobody is going to label my kids,” she said. “They’re not even out of the hospital, for crying out loud.” Jamie said as soon as somebody does that she politely takes the baby back and when the person leaves the room she whispers to the kid not to listen to them, that they can grow up and be whoever they want and nobody gets to tell them who they are except God.

Marshall agreed. He said before they had the twins he thought of himself as a provider and protector, as somebody who was responsible to protect the physical world around the people he loved. But after having kids he realized that was 10 percent of the battle. What he really had to protect was the twins’ identity. He said there was a primal thing in him that wanted to stand between his children and the world and fight back all the lies.

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