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Author: Jordan Spano
My name is Jordan, and I love words.
If God lets me, I hope to entwine my passion to your heart and stoke your desire to evangelize to the ends of the earth.
I Became a Dad
Three weeks ago today I became a dad, and everything has changed.
All of my life I had dreamt of becoming a dad—particularly to a daughter.
I’m not sure why I’ve had that desire. I’m convinced parenthood is over-dramatized in movies as some new, idyllic stage in life.
Hallmark lied.
When the shrill, tender cries of a baby arouses you at 2:37 AM for her seventh ration of food that night, love feels different.
In movies, love is this ineffable feeling that, against your control, enraptures you day and night. You have no defense. You are an emotional wave tossed to and fro.
But when that love is toward someone who is utterly dependent on you, the adage “Love is a choice” becomes real.
You become part of that new life, and it’s a whirlwind.
My dad always said, “Just wait until you become a dad.”
You’ll start to get a glimpse of how much God truly loves you.
Wow, God is more tenacious then I thought, because the love of a parent requires the most enduring, patient love possible.
The night Sophie was born, I didn’t have that.
The moment she was born, she was alien to me. Not only did she look strange (though I’m convinced most newborns do), she didn’t feel like mine.
It was as if that crowd of nurses who surrounded us at delivery each took a slice of ownership with them.
Somehow, they were more enamored with my flesh and blood than I was. I was disheartened.
Why didn’t I love my child?
But the more time I spent with her alone, the more I saw the love of God in her smile.
Her occasional smirks—perhaps caused by an upset stomach—reveal her debonair personality. Those fleeting moments are winks from God.
In this was manifested the love of God toward us.
Though the love of God in Christ dying on the cross is insurmountable… I get a glimpse of it each time Sophie smiles.
It also means I can shamelessly rock a dad bod.
The Day I Lost My Sock
Have you ever lost a sock? I’m not talking about some random wearable vessel of fabric that adorns your feet while imprisoned by your shoes.
I’m asking you if you’ve ever lost that sock you loved?
The one that has, in decade-long loyalty, always clung to its significant other after a load of laundry.
The one that has hugged your feet in the darkest and coldest nights, only to be recklessly tossed into the hamper in the most irreverent, foot-flicking way?
The sock that could, without a moments notice, self-destruct, tear the very fabric that holds itself together, and render your foot without its mercenary against bugs, hardwood floors, and out-of-blanket bed monsters?
I lost that sock.
I don’t know what happened. The moment I realized it was lost was so brisk: but the horror settled itself in like an imminent timebomb sure to wreck my heart.
Kind of like when you foresee the ending of a Netflix series, but you’re too cravenly to admit it to yourself; so you move on, watching the final few episodes in God-filled hope that the story’s motif flips on its side and reveals that the character you had a crush on doesn’t die.
But she does. The hot one always dies.
She was the protagonist (the sock, not Jessica Day from New Girl).
She prevailed as the leading role and victor in the daily adventures my feet would lead.
No puddle, no torrid summer asphalt, no poorly-filled concrete slab would cause this sock to falter.
She would always valiantly protect me: I her angel, she my sock beloved.
But alas, no story ends well. Even Jesus, the Lord and Savior of all existence, was crucified for our sins.
(What’s this about? Read more.)
The anatomy of the missing sock.
This sock was white: not that I would care about the color of its composite fabric (and frankly, many socks are now sold with chromatic designs, whether that’s rainbow, treble-striped with complementary colors, or a not-so-dull mixture of white and gray gradients. Classy.)
About half of my socks are white, the other black. What’s dire here, though, is that my black socks are running thin.
While concurrently true that my black socks are newer and thinner, because from my youthful days I have graduated, wisely, to socks with thinner linings–I still need my durable, long-lasting white socks to remain with me until my thirties.
I can’t summon enough prejudice to compare her to her peers, for her markings were indistinct.
Generally, when you buy socks, you buy packs: which means you are not fashioning for yourself a drawer-ful of snowflakes but copies–facsimiles of toe-enclosures with blurred personalities.
Each is bereft of its uniqueness, because all you care about is your sole.
Selfish.
But this sock I lost stood out. She earned her badge of courage the day I wore her: almost, she wore me. She wore my heart on her sleeve, if we can personify deeply enough. (Since we’re in the subject of articles, this is not too far-fetched, but we are edging dangerously close to lunacy.)
The ribs on on her neck, so to speak, abutted my Achilles tendon. (Granted, it was not a daily caress, as I am not a sordid man who wears socks consecutively.)
But it was sweet: a hot tub for my heels; and had she lotion at her disposal, the backside of my lower calf would be as soft as a baby’s bottom.
Okay, I found her.
Welp. This story ended more abruptly than the love your parents had for you the moment before you turned eighteen.
She, my love, my sock, has returned. To her I shall cleave, leaving mother and father in reverence to my Lord.
If you have ever had your heart broken because of an article of clothing, please do share below.
How Big Is God’s Paintbrush?
The other day I took a stroll to the docks–the wharf, as the elegant call it. Elegant it seemed: the demographic was older, refined, with each–usually a couple–getting in their leisurely exercise like we youth should be doing.
Perhaps the locals were on their way to a semi-casual dinner at a crab-serving restaurant (I can’t recall the name, and I’m too cheap to buy a plate there).
I found it serene, almost; but the experience was also strangely speckled with sorrow. Not of other-sorrow, but my own.
I saw….
- Families being active and gregarious, like paddling kayaks with each other.
- A man endeared by the sun as he lay shoe-less on the grass abutting the pier.
- One couple with a handicapped son in a wheelchair next to them, who flashed their thankful smiles as I passed.
- The grooviest of vans, adorned by chromatic rocks glued everywhere. I believe he was a time-traveling evangelist.
All of these sights tugged at my heart, each with its own force, its own associative memory-box. Each triggered a nostalgic moment that lives only in my head.
As I was walking back to my car around the circuit of paths surrounding the bay, I saw a sight more sightly than ever.
I saw the clouds.
The clouds looked both opaque and translucent, as if a magician’s hand had graced them, leaving fingerprints of majesty that couldn’t be erased.
Like the friend’s arm around your shoulder in a time of fragile emotion, so this sky was warming to my heart.
It drew me to deep wonder…
How big is God’s paintbrush?
The kid in me–the person who will never be a mature adult so long as my eyes dilate at the size of our unfathomable universe, laughed.
What kind of heresy is that, Jordan? That’s personifying God.
God doesn’t have hands to paint the skies. He just did it with his voice.
But I don’t think so.
I believe there’s a deep, insatiable curiosity within us each time we look at mystery–each time we remember that our frame, our desires, our intellect, and our compassion is mirrored by a person.
It has to be, for our hearts are wells that have to be filled by another heart.
How long did it take to paint?
Time is as bizarre to us as it must be to God. It doesn’t make sense.
There’s A-theory and B-theory in time, depending on how linear you believe time is.
Metaphysics aside, I’m sure God “spent his time” moving his paintbrush with a grin wider than our oceans.
Kind of like me–go figure, as my pangs of writer’s block are alleviated with each successful line typed. It’s a type of caressing of the soul to spend your time doing what God created in you to do.
I can imagine a burly, soft, iridescent hand at sunset before the sun set stage:
- Left to right.
- An upstroke, an oblique stroke.
- A pause. An oddly beguiling smile.
- A divine satisfaction of what is and is to come.
We can only imagine the time, care, and joy spent in each stroke, each brush of creative power.
In our eyes it is magic. In his eyes, a work of art.
See, we are the work of art–except instead of being painted upon a blue, expansive canvas, we are painted by the [blood red] love of Christ.
In each of us lives a speckle of divinity: this ability to create art with our lives.
And I’m not talking about paint, brushes, pencils, and paper.
It is the very ongoing of our lives that paints this world, with colors of ancient, wildly-mutating love.
When God said “It is finished,” I believe he was talking about his paintbrush, not us.
We, you see… We are just beginning.