For reasons known only to the Holy Spirit, I had the Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon running through my head the other day. Being an extrovert, I sang it out loud while I was cooking dinner for my kids. My daughter (6yo) told me to 'stop it!' (common); but instead, I pulled up the ridiculous music video from the 80s and made her and her brother watch and listen.
(This created an amazing teachable moment about gender, trans*, and sexual diversity as well, of which I am unashamedly proud... but that’s a story for another day.)
Two days later, I was driving her to the Y for an afternoon of swimming. The song was still in my head. So I was singing it. With all her 6yo (but eerily adolescent) sass, she asked me to explain what the song was about.
Thankfully, she’s seen Tangled, so we had a place to start re: chameleons. They can change color depending on their environment.
“So what do you think it means to call a person a ‘chameleon’?”
“I guess,” she ventured, “it means they’re different people in different places. But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Have you ever seen someone act one way one day and another way another day? They’re nice to you one day, but the next day they’re not?”
She paused, and then she told me a story. About how - in the 1st grade - she’s already run into the Mean Girls phenomenon. Two friends from last year have decided they like other girls better than her, so if those other girls are around, they don’t like to play with my kid. When they aren’t around, then her old friends are all kinds of friendly. I may have been imagining it, but I believe I heard her voice crack a bit. I was glad I was driving, so I couldn’t see her face. I think it made her feel more free to talk.
So I told her my own story. About my two best friends in third grade who decided in fourth grade that I was no longer “cool.” Unless, of course, the more cool kids weren’t around. It broke my heart. But it taught me to be kind to people who other people don’t like. And, eventually, it taught me to believe that my value does not depend on what the cool kids think about me. I know now that what really matters is how God feels about me.
And she said, “Jesus loves you, Daddy. And so do I.”
This is the blessing we share every night before bed, while tracing the sign of the cross on each other’s foreheads.
I returned the favor - and I believe she may have heard my voice crack a bit. I was glad I was driving, so she couldn’t see my face. I think it made me feel more free to talk.
Then she asked, “but Daddy, what’s karma?”
Sweet. Eastern religion on the way to the Y, on the heels of a heartbreaking conversation about mean girls and boys and the endless, unconditional love of God. What more could a pastor/theology-nerd/father ask for?
“It’s an idea,” I fumbled, “that says that if you do good things, good things will happen to you. And if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you.”
(Yes, I understand it’s more complicated than that... but, seriously, she’s six years old.)
She didn’t skip a beat. “But that’s not true. I was nice to those girls, and they were mean to me.”
She was dead right.
“Yup. And sometimes, I do really dumb things - like lose my temper and yell at you, or forget to listen before I talk - and every night, you tell me that Jesus loves me, and so do you. And I can’t tell you how much that makes my heart happy.”
And that, my friends, is Grace. Capital “G” Grace.
People are mean - and wonderful. Life is hard - and beautiful. Friends, enemies, frenemies, dads, daughters - they are all complicated. And logic, karma, whatever - it doesn’t always hold.
But what holds the center - and our selves together - is this: Jesus loves you (for reasons known only to Jesus), and so do I (although some days that is really, really hard).
Being a dad is at least as theologically formative as a seminary education. And probably much more expensive (which is saying something). But so, so worth it, IMHO.
