Witness
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Three weeks ago my wife gave birth to our third child. As with his older siblings, his arrival has completely changed the landscape of our house, our day and our night. Like getting back in shape, my body is remembering all the newborn information that it hasn’t thought about for over a year and a half. The holding, the bouncing, the tiny diapers, the quiet breathing. Likewise, as anyone feels when helping someone in need, my mind is forgetting about many of the problems that it was previously consumed with. Naturally, I am recalling times when his siblings were babies. While many things are familiar, it isn’t exactly the same as before. As nothing ever is.
One particular moment I’ve been revisiting is when my first son was born almost four years ago. Having resigned from my full-time job three days before his arrival, and having no other children at the time, I was as involved as I could be. I vividly remember the hours in the middle of the night performing diaper changes. White noise in the background, a dark room slightly lit by a blue night light, a silent world asleep on the other side of the wall. At times, amidst the tiredness, a sense of loneliness would arise. Just me and a baby that won’t remember this moment.
Privacy is a natural part of life at home. The chance to close the door, kick off your shoes and reclaim the autonomy you can’t get elsewhere. The freedom to not have to be “on”. The cost, though, is the lack of witness to your life, feelings and struggles. This is what I would feel during those midnight diaper changes, which is just a small glimpse into what every nursing mother has felt during the first few weeks of her child's life. The other night I saw this in a new way. My wife asked me to come out to the living room while she was trying to soothe our newborn in the middle of the night. She didn’t ask me to hold him, or even need me to. What she really needed was for me to witness the challenge she was facing and the effort she was putting in. Just doing that made it more bearable.
At times, though, no one is available to be our witness. It is in those moments that the home steps in to be the watcher we need. I remember this invitation as a new dad alone in the middle of the night changing my son’s diaper. The first invitation was the chorus of fatherhood that I had entered. The thousands of dads before me who had also been summoned at night in their home, in their cabin, in their tent or in their cave to tend to the needs of their helpless children. The role itself was a witness to what I was experiencing. The second invitation, much like the first, was seeing that I was once a baby who also needed his diaper changed and a loving adult was always nearby to help me. By helping my child I could witness what had been done for me, and simultaneously feel that my parents and late grandparents were witnessing me in that moment.
There is a deep need for witnessing these days. Look out across your home at those you share it with and witness what is happening in their hearts and minds. Just as importantly, make yourself available to those around you, to those looking back at you on the droves of screens, to those voices talking to you across the scores of speakers, and allow them to witness to you what is happening in your heart and mind. Perhaps, if we take turns witnessing to one another things might be a bit more bearable, a bit more hopeful and a bit more clear.
May you know that your life is not passing by unnoticed, that your days are not empty and your feelings are not unseen. May you witness the fullness of how your life is beheld and beloved. Like the baby peering out with eyes that are learning to see, may you meet the gaze that is staring back you and sustaining you. And may you carry this witnessing presence wherever you are.