Why I wear my Father's coat.

Jack in his Father's Coat & Hat
Originally uploaded by Greg Blosser.

Earlier this week, I spent the day at home with the boys. I try to do that every once and a while. Just me and the boys. And sometimes, when the cartoons are off and the weekly video game allotment has been reached, we actually spend time together. (There are usually couch forts involved. And nerf).

This week Jack put on my corduroy jacket and my hat. (I've got a hat like men use to wear, back when men wore hats. Sometimes I wish men still wore hats). Anyway, Jack puts on my coat and my hat and then he wants my glasses. I reluctlantly surrender them. He stomps around the room, feet flopping in size nines, sleeves swaying by knees, hat cocked, head tilted to keep the over-sized glasses in place on a nose barely big enough to balance them. And then he speaks.

With his chin now pressed against his chest and the glasses now slinding down his little bump of a nose, he lowers his voice to a six year old's best approximation of a baritone and belows forth authoritatively. This is how daddy sounds to him. His phrases are punctuated with fits of giggles and slobber.

It's fun to pretend. (Remember when we use to pretend? Mr. Rogers use to call it "make believe". I like that better, I think). But when Jack plays dress up in my coat and hat, he'd doing more than just playing make believe. Someday Jack is going to grow up. Eventually he'll fit that coat. Someday those shoes won't flop. He'll fill them out. So it is make believe, but it's make believe with a purpose. He's learning to become who he's destined to be.

I use to think that when I prayed I had to use my own words. I thought that to pray words someone else had written was somehow insincere or less than authentic. It felt like I was pretending to express something I didn't really feel. It felt like make believe.

I still think it is to some extent, make believe when I pray the words written by someone else in some other place (usually a long time ago). But now I'm okay with it. Especially when I pray the words of scripture, like the Psalms or the Lord's Prayer. The way I see it, I'm just dressingup in my father's coat and hat. I'm walking around in his floppy shoes, chin like voice, lowered.

For now, the sleeves mostly hang down around my knees, and the hat slides to one side, to big for my head to fill. I have to keep pushing the glasses back up the bridge of my nose. But these clothes- the words, the prayers, the poetry- these clothes are his clothes. These words are His words. They will never fully fit me, not in this life anyway. But the longer I wear them and the more I make believe, the more I grow into them. Even now, they fit a little better than they use to. Wearing them actually makes me look a little more like my Father.

I pray the words of God for the same reason I wore my Father's coat as a child. I'm learning to become who I'm destined to be: a child of God, with a striking family resemblance.