The Beautiful Contradiction

Posted on February 21, 2008
Filed Under Parenting, Fulfillment |

My youngest son Cole never ceases to surprise me . . . in nearly ALL things. He is at times, and I say this with great affection and even greater envy, a walking contradiction. Or at least that’s the way it seems to me.

While he sits on the couch with ear buds in his ears listening to hip-hop and playing video games, he’ll intermittently join me singing “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever” from the kitchen . . .warbling oh, I feel like dancin’ in the way that only he can. He wears pants that only sometimes stay up, dreads that are growing past his shoulders, and an iPod that I think has attached itself to his head . . . oh, and he also is in AP classes that include Physics, Calculus, and History and has scored in the top 1% of the nation in standardized tests. He is shy and engaging. He is young and mature. He is yin and yang. He is, and has long been, a hero of mine.

Last night I went to dinner with a girlfriend of mine and we were discussing my kids. In talking about Cole, I think I described him as the contradiction that is Cole. And I love it. He’s an exact representation of the truth of this life we live in God. We are flawed and perfect. Present and arriving. Repentant and forgiven. Human and divine. Realized and hidden. Slaves and free.

Or, you know what, maybe those things aren’t so opposed to one another after all. Maybe those seeming contradictions have more integrity than they appear. If Jesus was very God and very man . . . well it would make sense that we too would inhabit that same glorious duplicity, redeemed of course and minus the negative connotations of the word.

Here’s what I’d like. I’d like to embrace me, all of me, the same way I embrace all of Cole and his contradictions and am embraced by God in all of mine . . . understanding that in Christ, just as I am, I am who I’m meant to be. You too!

Psalm 139:13
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Peace and Blessings,