When I Get a Clone, and Jaxon following in my footsteps...

Jaxon likes to talk.  Especially when he is in his bed and getting tucked in and I want him to want to sleep, my son loves to talk.  He usually asks me about my childhood.  Stuff like, "What was your favorite thing to do when you were little Dad?",  "What did you like in school when you were a kid Dad?".  Tonight he asked, "What is the most interesting thing to you Dad?"  I'm like, "What's the most interesting thing to me?", "Yes, Dad."  Hmmmmmm, now that is an interesting question with many different answers depending on mood, place in life and all kinds of other jazz.  But because I have been talking about genetics and reproduction and cloning with my classes lately, I settled on this one.  "Jax, the most interesting thing to me is that you and your sisters are the only ones like you that there ever were, there ever are, or ever will be.  Not just you but all of us.  Even identical twins don't act exactly the same."    Jax, "But Dad, Carter(one of Jax's best buddies) said that I kinda look like Nate(one of Jax's other best buddies)."  "O.k. Jax, but you are still the only you that will ever be, and that's pretty cool."  (For the record, Jax looks nothing like Nate.)

Then Jax says this, "Dad, do you want me to follow in your footsteps?"  Like I said, Jax likes to talk and ask philosophical questions like this or make philosophical statements about life, and always right before bed.

Now before I go any further I want you to be sure that I am analyzing myself right now and getting near the point of annoyance with myself for even writing this because I don't want anyone to think that I am always the patient father who fosters this little warm moment with my kids every night.  It's not like we gather around the fire where we sip warm nighty night tea and calmly flip through the pages of a nice book or the Bible or something and all snuggle and discuss the philosophy of life.  We do snuggle, but it's always while we watch an episode of Phineas and Ferb (one of the greatest cartoons ever).  Then it's usually me saying "O.k. let's brush teeth!" with an elevated volume because I am so done at the end of the night that I just want a couple of hours to do whatever I want.  "Come on, come on, hurry up guys, it's bedtime." You know, that kind of thing.  I try and be patient, but some nights I end up feeling like a hammer because I am so impatient. I was being impatient tonight.  I just wanted my responsibilities to be done for the day you know?  Of course, as we are coming upstairs for bed, Grace tries to do some dance move and cracks her finger getting up from the floor. Tears. I get her sorted (sort of) then go and help Soph brush her teeth.  Then I put her on the toilet before bed, and as I am helping her, she smokes her head on the counter.  Tears.  Get her sorted, she's fine, Grace's finger still hurts, but the girls are in bed and I tuck them in, get Jax in bed, start talking, then the girls start calling for me. Now I wanted to lose it, I'm just tired.  Just in that instant I wanted MY time.  The only thing that stopped me from doing that was to remember I thought I would write a blog thing tonight, and I remembered back to one of my other blog posts about being patient, "There's only 10 minutes left..." I had to say to myself and then I was able to tuck the girls in.  No more tears, then start really tucking Jax in, and then that is when he asked me that good ol' doozy of a philosophical question.

Basically, I will not allow you to have the impression that I am that annoying perfect parent who is always doing the right thing and who gives you the impression that their kids are perfect too.  I think I do the best that I can and I get a lot of stuff right.  But as soon as I get something right, I get something wrong, and I think that is pretty much a lot of parents out there.  So I hope you get the message.  I don't want you to think that I think that I am awesome.  Handsome yes, awesome no. (That was a joke there.)

Daggnabbit!  I digressed a GIGANTIC amount just there.  Anyways, back at the ranch......

So Jaxon says, "Dad, do you want me to follow in your footsteps?"  and being the perfect parent that I am, (that's a joke just there...) I said some stuff.  I actually felt like it was one of those moments where the words just came out.  Sort of like God went, "Hey Jared, I'm just going to take over here because if you try and come up with something it may just be a bit convoluted so just go with this..." (I know that some of you don't believe in God, but I do, and that's what it felt like to me.)

I said, and it is truly what I believe, "Jaxon, I want you to grow up to be you.  I hope you learn some things from me, just like I learned from my parents, but you will grow to be a man who is going to make his own decisions.  Sometimes the hard part of life is learning who you are. But the cool thing is you are you, and you are the only one like you ever.  I hope you become someone who loves other people, and who grows closer to God as you do that."  I really want that for my son.

What does that have to do with cloning?  In my class we I always pretend that one kid in the class is going to be a mother of my clone.  Now, if you don't know how the process works, Here's a short lesson. By the way, there haven't been human clones as of yet, even though I am certain that somewhere in the world someone is working illegally on it.  I use the example to explain the idea of the how scientists cloned a sheep from the udder cells of an adult sheep.  Making a genetically identical copy.  If we could do something like it to make a clone of Jared it would go something like this (this is way oversimplified too, but bascially the idea):

1. Harvest an egg cell from a female (who will be the surrogate) and remove her DNA from the egg, essentially making it blank.
2. Take a cell from me, for the ease of example, a skin cell.
3. Fuse those cells together in a petri dish.
4.That egg cell now "believes" it is fertilized and will start dividing.
5.After a small number of divisions, place the new embryo into the uterus of the surrrogate\
6.Nine months later the surrogate gives birth to a baby Jared.

The kid wouldn't be 6'5" Jared, it would be a baby Jared.  Literally it would be me. Well, genetically at least.  One of the great questions we ponder after this little thought experiment is, "What would we turn out like if we were raised again?" I mean, it would probably be tough to raise yourself, there aren't any parenting books for that.  Well not until I write one anyway. But seriously, have you thought about what you would be like if you were raised in a completely different environment than you were before?

The thing is, some things would turn out the same, because your genetics are a huge part of you.  But, scientists don't actually know why you are the way you are. What is the ratio of nature (genetics) and nurture (the way you were raised?)  No one truly knows.  That is pretty crazy, but as they say, "It is what it is."

I think it is truly a miracle that we exist.  It really is the most interesting thing to me.  That each of us is the only one that will ever be born onto this place.  This human life is of value.  I don't know why we are here.  As someone who believes in Jesus and God, there is still no answer anywhere in the Bible that can definitively tell us WHY.  We're here because we're here.  Whether you believe in creation or evolution or seeding by aliens, you are here.  That is the point.  There is purpose to you.

Some of you may be really bitter about who you are. I'm not just talking about looks and superficial stuff like that.  I'm talking about those of you who have had a disease, or know someone close to you who has suffered.  "Why was I like this?",  "Why me?" are questions I think all of us ask.  They are all legitimate from time to time.  There are somethings that leave people in pain the rest of their lives.  One of my friends is a soldier who was in Afghanistan with the Canadian Military.  He was a gunner and went through a lot of tough stuff over there.  He had a lot of stress and lost a lot of buddies in his efforts to protect and help people less fortunate than those of us over here.  That stuff hurt him. He went through a tough time, and a lot of thinking and he decided that he wanted to come out the other side of the darkness and continue to live with purpose.  My mom has chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia and she lives through really tough muscle pain that ebbs and flows everyday.  She doesn't like it, she's not always upbeat about it, but the majority of the time she fights through it so that she can have a positive impact in the lives of families of my sister and I, not to mention many friends she has.  I admire people who fight through tough things.  I think one common theme between all of them is that they have made the choice to not live in fear of the future.

None of us can predict the future.  Having a healthy understanding that we need to plan a bit for our future is good, but fearing that unpredictable future is crippling.  As much as we can't predict the bad that can happen in the future, we can't predict the good either.  That is an encouraging thought.  I have had multiple times in my life where I have had trouble sleeping because I was worried about something, only to realize that when I finally got to the situation I had been worrying about, it was either different than I expected, or not as bad as I had dreamed up. I'm sure many of you have had the same thing.  Let me ask you this,  when was the last time you had trouble sleeping because of all the unknown good that could come your way then next day?  Probably not too often.  I never would have dreamed of meeting Krista, it happened.  When I was a kid I never would have dreamed of having three great kids. It happened.  (I know people that read this may be going through really hard times right now.  I just want to encourage you to remember that not every moment in the future is going to forever be horrible.  If everyday is horrible right now, I will pray for you, and I don't know exactly what that does, but I will pray for peace in your life.  I want to support you in that.  Send me a message and I'll do that, or anything else I can.  But if you don't want to do that, please trust me.  Things can be better at some point.  I hope that comes soon for you.)

This was a long post, you probably stopped reading long ago.  If you are still reading, I hope you and I can both believe what I told my son.  I honestly think I was talking to myself just as much as I was talking to him.  Here is my hope for you and I, but I will write it in the context of you just because I want to: 

I hope that you grow up to be you, that sometimes the hard things in life are figuring out who you are.  That you are truly a miracle just because you are the only one like you ever, and I hope you grow to love others and grow closer to God while doing it.

Goodnight. 

Jared.