A Jeep In Summer

Like A Flower To The Rain

A random encounter in the library led to a dinner invitation, with people from church that I'd never hung with before. Tortillas. No beer, though. The Alabama/Tennessee game. Quintuple overtime. Chocolate cake and some Greyfriar's decaf. And playing with the kids.

The two year old kept running from the front door into my arms. So I'd lift him up or flip him around or just tickle him, saying, I got me a little boy. They say that kids can tell if you're a trustworthy person, a person who loves kids, loves them with all you've got in you. So maybe they run into your arms or they go to the other side of the room. Usually I get down on the floor, to their level. Just start playing, ask them what they're doing. Enter into the moment.

I tell you, it heals something in me to have a kid in my arms. I wasn't there for the conversation, but it was reported to me that I was walking around church with someone's child, and one of my friends said, 'You know, Mike just has this huge love for kids, it's like he likes to hold my baby more than I do. He just has something in his heart that loves.' The rest of the conversation was about how I don't have what's necessary to have progeny of my own--a wife.

So in one sense I have one thing that is necessary, but not the other thing.

But in the end all that is necessary will be provided or cease to matter. I will be able to run across the countryside without breathing hard, I will be able to swim up waterfalls, I will be able to see all things clearly and not as if I'm peering through a grimy window. The shadowlands will be only shadows that were temporary, and the great holiday will have begun. All train wrecks will be over, forever.

In the meantime, good night and sleep well, little two year old boy. God be with you. God protect you. May you live another day to run into my waiting arms.