5.12.2005
Love Abounds
I fell in love this past weekend. This fetching woman showed up at my house on Saturday wanting to debate me about the validity of the tithe for the New Testament Christian. She came prepared, all right, a 34-page online white paper covering every explicit message in the entire Canon of Scripture regarding the laws, principles and ordinances of the tithe.
This woman had heard that I had begun to put 10% of my gross into my church's coffers, and she was concerned that I wasn't paying enough attention to more practical matters, like my retirement and the education of my children in the face of my Chapter 13 and at least 25% of my gross going into taking care of my children's immediate needs.
You see, my children now number 7. A and I, henceforth AI, were officially added to my brood this past weekend. Love abounds, people.
Love abounds.
The decision to do this has been gradually arriving for the past month or so. I've learned to harness the immense, destructive energies of these two for my own, pure purposes. They make their mother put on her seatbelt when she rides in my van, simply because I want it so.
It's so cool.
Two more male children abandoned by the father that looks like them, they cling to whatever form of male mentoring and affirmation they can get. They also adopted my eldest son, D1, so named because his name... No. Fuck it. I'm going to out my boy (and by extension myself) right now. By name. Because his name is the coolest male name in America, and I came up with it.
Dechlan Michael.
Both ch's sound the same. First's a variation on the Irish Declan. If you're Irish, you pronounce it slightly to the soft side of 'DECK lan', to where it almost sounds like 'DAY clan'. It's lovely to listen to in the native tongue, but we go with the straight hard version, because we're hard, American men.
It's the Gaelic equivalent of David, which ironically enough is the first name I share with my father, considering that we got into a ridiculous fight over the naming of my second son, Silas Rex. Si is named after Paul's traveling companion after his split with Barnabas over John Mark for the second (not sure on the number) missionary voyage. Rex is his maternal grandfather's name, a guy I really dug hanging out with.
Well, dad didn't like my tribute much.
For the uninitiated, my second wife and I did a naming thing with our four kids where their first name had to be unique. The standard was to ensure that they would be the only person in their daily peer group with that first name. And it had to pass the sniff test for artistry, meaning that we had to image it to a virtue or virtues that we, as Christians, espoused.
The middle name was always an homage to an individual whose life demonstrated those virtues put into practice. Our oldest daughter's first name was chosen to instill a sense of the majesty of life as God intended it. Her middle name was given in honor of my maternal great-grandmother, an saintly Irish Catholic woman born in Dublin, orphaned, adopted and taken to a life of wealth and prosperity in Woodlawn, Aliquippa, PA.
Sense a bit of an Gaelic theme here? You bet. Being almost a third Gaelic by virtue of Irish and Scottish ancestry, with the wife 100% Scottish, we were WASP's with an attitude. My great-grandmother must have been as well, defying her WASPish, adoptive parents to marry a working class Irishman steelworker. Not such a great decision, it turned out, as there was whiskey involved. The Murrays had 3 daughters, Patricia, Mary Agnes and Theresa, who went by Tess, and one son, the baby James.
While from all accounts, the children grew up well cared for, and safely. It was early adulthood that became the killer for the Murray children. It started when Tess had a nervous breakdown at age 19. I was never told the exact events leading up to this break from reality, but from the times I knew her afterwards, I could tell she had left something behind.
Patricia was next, following in her mother's footsteps and marrying a working man who loved drink a bit too much, despite the fact that his mother was DAR. There was a definite class structure in the Pittsburgh region back in the day, and my mother, the eldest product of this tragic union was always very proud of that.
But poor Pat would not have to endure the lifetime of trials with the wrong man. She died when my mother was 12, and the bereft girl was given over into the care of Gran'ma Murray because her father only wanted to raise her two brothers. More likely he couldn't stand the pain of seeing the emerging beauty that reminded him so much of his beloved.
Didn't matter, though. Not to her. She still needed his love and involvement, but he had his boys, his hunting camp, and his alcholism to soothe his pain in utter obliviousness to the pain of his own children. Children don't care about your issues, they need someone to be a grownup for them.
Anyway, my mom carried on the family tradition by marrying the next wrong man, my father, and I am the eldest product of that tragic union. Creepy for me, huh?
So my father was the wrong man, too. And stayed pretty much that way his whole life. Poisoned by anger over hurts too long gone and too trivial to cling to, my dad made me miserable.
There was no way he was going to make the list.
But back to Dechlan, the thing about his name is that I have been this huge fan of U2 since War came out in 1983. A huge part of my attraction to their music was, in addition to the obvious Christian worldview, that I perceived a deep, brooding spiritual ache in their very Irishness -- something with which I identified heavily. Therefore, I wanted to give my oldest son an Irish name that would set him apart from the crowd. His mom and I came up with the name Gaelen in the weeks before he was born, but I never really quite settled in on it. It seemed faux. Just the day before he arrived, I came across the name Declan in a byline from Hot Wax, an Irish rock journal that was all over the lads in the '80's.
See, I think that U2 is, and has been, the single, most significantly Christian, voice in popular music for the past 20 years. Their music is filled with rich, deliberate images from the Bible. The Joshua Tree? C'mon! Despite their public denials that it was a metaphor for the Cross, you'd have to be half brain dead to believe it's only a cactus from the American Southwest in their world.
So when I saw this name, I knew God had sent inspiration. I changed the spelling to look harmonious with the middle name Michael, which he shares with me.
So, dad, you got the left-handed honoring of having your name translated into Gaelic and used as a first name in the eldest son of an eldest son of an eldest son. Which I'm very cool with, because it's a metaphor for the transformation that's helped be from becoming the wrong man myself for the third time in my life.
Anyway, this mystery woman shows up this past weekend with her 34 pages of refutation for my decision to tithe. And, damned if she didn't convince me. At least in the aspect that obeying a purely Old Testament law is not an obligation laid on the Christian. Rather, God lends us His grace to give as able, with no pressure to drop our basic needs or neglect the financial consequences of past mistakes.
I do believe that the tithe is a standard around which Christians should order their finances and monetary priorities, but I saw that the stress of trying to give my tithe while struggling under the weight of bankruptcy, a too-large mortgage, and child support was robbing me of the joy of giving.
To the point where it was no longer giving, as I now saw.
This woman smiled at me with a warmth and kindness I have not seen in many a month. She sat straight with the dignity of a debate well fought and won, and the winning of a brother who began to recognize the real tithe of giving begins under one's own roof. As I gazed into her eyes and saw the gentle confidence and sweet concern, I fell through the ceiling and into the dream for which I've been praying for over a year now.
I looked up at this wonderful new woman with whom I had suddenly become smitten, there was something very familiar about her. When I rubbed my eyes and looked again, I realized that 25 months after the ceremony, my bride had finally shown up.
The next two hours were spent having the kind of fun we've been denying ourselves for what seems like forever. Let me tell you, there were some Hall of Fame moments this past weekend. I found myself lost in my mate, my partner, my best friend by the end of the day.
No one can tell me that God still doesn't do miracles. I found love with someone I wanted out of my hair only last week, and tender compassion for two boys who desperately need a man who cares for them, and will show them how to find their own love in this world.
I'm listening to "Love Rescue Me" from Rattle and Hum, and I can't think of a better thought with which to close.
Love has rescued more than one person in this house.
Shalom!
- posted by The Drake @ 5:05 AM
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keep on going.....i wish and pray for your continued success........
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# posted by 
: 5/12/2005 12:40:00 PM
: 5/12/2005 12:40:00 PM<< Home
