Theoddity

Last week I passed a threshold of fatherhood that I didn’t realize was there. It was like an initiation going from brand-new-wet-behind-the-ears fatherhood to oh-God-oh-God-I-am-someone’s-FATHER fatherhood. 

It started with wrestling and deep tummy laughter as Kai, Ivy and I brawled our way from room to room, the girls armed with pillows and myself armed with “The Chin.” My weapon of choice is perfect for digging between ribs and shoulder blades extracting shrieks of breathless laughter. I like my little friend, my little friend “The Chin.”

It was in the middle of this cacophony that Kai screamed she was bleeding. As we paused I saw on her lip blood and then she wiggled her font tooth. And it seemed to me that it would wiggle straight from the gums into her palm. And then the other wiggled. I nearly crapped myself. It’s too early for her to lose her baby teeth!

Apparently not, because a few days later I was sitting in front of her looping thread between thread scouring my mind to remember how my dad tied the knot he used to pull my teeth. That’s when it hit me, my baby isn’t a baby, she’s a kid and more importantly, she’s going to remember this and she’s going to remember what her dad did for her first teeth and she’s actually like, a person-person. Not just a baby person but a person with opinions, and memories and more opinions. Crap, that makes me a dad-dad, not just a baby’s-dad but a dad-dad that has to walk his daughter down a wedding isle someday, and scare her first boyfriend dad-dad. 

When did this happen!? When did I become a dad-dad—then Kai’s tooth went flying through the air and tick-tacked itself to a stop on the hardwood floor. Just like that it was pulled out of her mouth and lay still. Just like that she had gone from baby to kid and she could go as easily from kid to…teen…to adult?

How swiftly the string of time pulls us from infant to adult. If I’m not careful it could I could miss it like a pulled tooth sailing through the air. I’m a dad-dad. I need to slow down enjoy my kid-kids before they’re gone-gone.

Sometimes while I’m reading the Bible I come across an odd tidbit that goes just beyond my understanding. They’re insights into a world we know very little about and what we do know are glimpses of something so much bigger. These small passages often stop me in my tracks and set me to day dreaming of the possibilities. This is one of those scriptures. It comes just after Jesus has cast a demon out of a mute person and defends himself against some who thought he was using the power of Beelzebub [Luke 11:19]

24 “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’

Jesus goes on to say that the unclean spirit brings with him seven more who are worse then himself in verse 25 but it’s verse 24 that really smashes me in the brain pan. Do you see it? A demon, coming out of a man, goes through dry places … where in world is that? 

Really, what does this mean? We always think of the Hollywood version of where demons hang out, they’re in hell chillin’ in fire and brimstone or they’re inspiring cults to give them sacrifices. Whatever. Jesus says they’re passing through dry places seeking rest and finding none. It’s like they’re roaming through a desert without a canteen. So they return to a body? And it feels good to them? 

Do you see where I’m going with this? From this small phrase that Jesus drops we begin to wonder just how much fallen angels are fascinated by humans that they take comfort or pleasure in being in our bodies and how miserable their plane of existence is without us—outside our bodies they seek comfort and find none. It also makes me wonder what other “place’s” lay beside us and all around us that we just can’t see.

And I wonder, these fallen angels, separated from God live in unrest and the only place they seem to find pleasure is by inhabiting man, who was made in God’s image. How strange. What more must we be then we see in ourselves?