Where’s God? Try Looking Into a Child’s Eyes

You duck inside the hospital chapel to thank God, something you wouldn’t have done 11 years ago when your first son was born.

But now the chapel at Hoag Hospital seems like home. You stand before the tiny altar and say your prayers.

“Thanks, God, for Oliver” are the first words out of your mouth.

Oliver, your fourth son, came into the world a few hours earlier.

And now, after the C-section, after the video, after Oliver’s first bath, you take a seat in the chapel and you remember--with some lingering shame--how different you were little more than a decade ago when Taylor was born.

You didn’t know the hospital had a chapel back then, and you didn’t give God much thought. You had a Ventura-ian view on all things spiritual: faith was for wimps. And you, damn it, weren’t a wimp.

You fiercely gripped the wheel of your life and steered it wherever you pleased. You never dreamed of letting anyone else sit in the driver’s seat. But then you woke up one day and found that you’d driven your life straight into a ditch--with a wife and young son aboard. The details, fascinating as they may be, aren’t important. You know them. You have to live with them. That’s enough.

But somehow you had to climb out of the ditch. You went looking for a path back, and it turned out it wasn’t hard to find.

Your first baby provided one clue. You looked at him and couldn’t help but think: Maybe it’s time to take this God thing seriously. You hadn’t been to church in years and had a vague hostility toward anything religious. But when you looked at Taylor, your firstborn, you saw him as a gift from God. Deep down you just knew. The evidence would continue to mount with the arrival of your next two boys, Tristan and Matthew.

Next, you got a peek at God at work in the most unlikely of places: at an awards ceremony honoring high school scholars. The students came in all shapes and sizes and dressed from Gap preppy to Quiksilver grunge.

But they had one thing in common: these remarkable eyes. Bright, clear eyes. Happy, peaceful eyes. The kind of eyes you’d want your son to see the world through when he becomes a teenager.

So what gives? How did they get those clear eyes? As the students got up to accept their awards, their principal ticked off their long list of accomplishments. Varsity football, first-chair violin, debate team. Somewhere on nearly every list was involvement in a youth group at a church or temple.

These kids didn’t look like wimps. They looked like the kind of kids you’d want your son to hang out with in high school.

That Sunday, for the first time since Mom and Dad forced you, you walked into a church.

Eleven years later, you’d like to report that you’re a completely changed man, but you’re not. It’s been an uneven journey. Sometimes God seems close, other times he seems to disappear. Eventually you discover it’s not God who moves but you. Still, that doesn’t always help.

You often wonder when you’ll better reflect the spiritual gifts promised in the Bible: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Instead, you gossip about a neighbor, are short with the kids or look a little too long at the woman across the way. God tries to keep it pretty simple for you, boiling it down to this: love him with all your heart, mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself. But every day you mess up. And maybe that’s the whole point; that’s why you need God. To lift you out of the ditch--whether it’s a tiny rut or the Grand Canyon.

For you, your faith hasn’t come all at once, but little by little. You don’t really think of yourself as changing, but you look up after a decade and you see that, in fact, you have. At least a little.

You’ve been out of the ditch for a long time now, and you realize you’re happier than you’ve ever been.

In the hospital chapel, you wipe the tears from your eyes and thank God.

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William Lobdell, father of Oliver and his three brothers, looks at faith as a regular contributor to The Times’ Orange County religion page. His e-mail address is bill.lobdell@latimes.com.