Don't Lose Your Marbles
by Stephen Muse, Ph.D.

Journal entry - January 24, 1990:
After dinner, Gregory (age 7) wants me to play marbles. I don’t want to. I’m tired after working all day and my mind is still focused on details of my doctoral dissertation. Thinking of playing marbles feels like distraction as well as more work – another request after a full day of meeting demands. I immediately feel guilty for not wanting to play with him.

I compromise by suggesting chess. He says he doesn’t want to play chess if there is something else. If not, he will play chess. I started teaching him to play chess at age 4, but he quickly got angry with himself when he couldn’t beat me and it spoiled his fun. Did I inadvertently teach him that?

“How about reading?” I suggest he get a book he likes and reads well. That hits the mark. He picks one and reads it to me. It is better than I could have done at his age and I tell him so. This pleases him. He’s forgotten about marbles now and wants to know other things about my life when I was “like him.” Come to think of it, I got a whole lot of enjoyment out of
playing marbles when I was 7.

No longer separated by 30 or so years, we had found an emotional time warp that enabled us to meet on level playing ground. No competition. Each of us is enjoying the gift of belonging. Being together in this way is a necessary ground that stabilizes a child’s love and idealization of the parent which inevitably engenders powerful forces of desire to measure up enough to make Dad proud. It also evokes in me a desire to be the kind of dad who loves his children
enough to free them to become themselves and not sacrifice them on the altar of trying to
measure up to what I want them to be.

I am conceived as a Daddy by my child’s incredible longing and need for me. It’s such a powerful force that it puts me in touch with a deep desire to be the best father I can be. At times being a good father is like playing chess with God at 4 years old. Sometimes I don’t want to play because I feel too helpless, inferior and outmatched. Thankfully, God often visits
me in the plaintive longing of my children to be with me anyway.

Our dear children are God’s invitation to come and play, not in order to “improve” or to accomplish a five-year strategic plan. It isn’t a job or a duty or a means to a paycheck. Indeed my children are God’s love language inviting a tired soul to drink from a fresh cup of cool
water when I don’t feel I have the energy.

Maybe I should do my dissertation on how not to lose your marbles after a long day, by simply being with your children who simply want to be with you.

Stephen Muse, Ph.D., directs the Counselor Training Program and Clinical Services for the D.A. and Elizabeth Turner Ministry Resource Center of the Pastoral Institute, Inc. in Columbus, Georgia. He and wife Claudia have been married for 25 years and have raised four children.