Arms Wide Open: Love in Action

Recently, I have been listening to music from the late 90’s/ early two-thousands. This, by the way, is essentially the last era of music I listened to and had familiarity with current bands. For most people I do think that comes somewhere in your late 20’s as it did for me - as you move on from youth to the responsibilities of adulthood.

In any case, one of the bands I’ve been listening to again is Creed. In my playlist is Creed’s song, “With Arms Wide Open.” The song shares the experience of the singer Scott Stapp finding out he will be a father and the emotions, thoughts and dreams that come with it. The song was out on the radio the same time I found out I would be a father. Listening to the words again for the first time in a long time flooded me with emotions. Twenty-three years and eight children later - there is so much life and family experience that has happened.

You go into parenthood with such idealism. You resolve to be an excellent parent whether you had great parents (like I did) or not, wanting to be an even better parent than them. You want to give them more than you received. You want your kids to go further than you and to give so much to them.

The song’s lyrics hit that idealism:

The chorus says: “I’ll show you love. I’ll show you everything.”

And in the bridge: “If I had just one wish, only one demand, I hope he’s not like me; I hope he understands that he can take this life and hold it by the hand; And he can greet the world with arms wide open.”

I remember singing those lyrics and wanting them to define my fatherhood.

Then life happens and it can be very hard. As Dostoyevsky says I think in The Brothers Karamazov (which in all honesty I haven’t read, I just know the quote), “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

Before I had kids, if I saw a parent yelling at a child or getting upset with them in a store, I would shake my head and think, “What a terrible parent!” Now if I see that same encounter while grocery shopping or at church or running errands, I think, “I’ve been there.” I was a much better father before I had kids.

So in listening to the words of “With arms wide open” again for the first time in a long time, I felt my failures as a father. I know there are many times I haven’t shown love to my kids and that I didn’t always have the drive to show them everything life has to offer. And there was a bit of a feeling of regret as if I didn’t live up to the ideals of that song.

This was further confirmed when my oldest son Max sent me a text to watch a YouTube video on father wounds. The video quoted John Eldredge who said that every son bears a wound and it is most often delivered by the father. As someone who has read Eldredge, I knew the concept and was aware of it and knew I had definitely wounded my kids.

I told Max I would watch the video and we would discuss it. Max is a marine and was stationed in Japan when he sent it to me. We talked the next day. We discussed a wound I had given him. When he was about three or four years old, he grabbed the hose and put out the fire on the grill I was heating up for dinner or even cooking food. He did it to be funny. I didn’t find it so funny and I punished him so that he couldn’t go out the rest of the night.

That was definitely an overreaction on my part. I wish I could go back and do it differently. Max has shared this incident with before. And while other times I could see a pain in him, this time, there was less pain. He even chuckled about it a bit.

On top of that, my daughter Elsa came up to me and asked “do you know what I like about you? You don’t wait for life to come to you. You go do things.” So maybe I have shown my kids more than I thought.

I’m also learning that I’m not done fathering my kids. While there are many experiences that I would do differently, there are still opportunities to father my kids even though they are older. I can still teach them to greet the world with arms wide open.

If you are a parent or care for kids, it’s not too late for you either. None of us will love kids or the next generation perfectly but our failures shouldn’t keep us from doing what we can in the present.

Rooting for you,
Tom