Wednesday, March 15, 2023

He is

 Holds my hand when he gets scared. Isn’t that incredible? Four years ago he did not exist, except in the knowledge of our Creator. 


His passions include power drills, the woods, his little brother and sister, and excavators. He wants to be just like his dad, who can’t always say the same. 


The look in his eyes when he watches his dad work is so sweet, so fascinated, focused, adoring. He doesn’t yet know how God blessed him with the earthly dad he has. He doesn’t know a lot of things though, that’s the thing about being just three. 


He can’t tie his shoes or read a book quite yet. But he lets the dog out in the morning all by himself. He says sorry to his sister every single time his mom is actually trying to tell his sister to apologize to him she likes to bite). He sleeps in his big boy bed and uses the potty (almost) all by himself. He swings his brother and consoles him with a binkie when he cries. Sometimes he feels so guilty, he admits to ripping a page out of his book before his mom even realizes he’s done it. He is fearless and funny and wonderful. 


We try to model Christ as his parents. We fail quite often. But you can’t stop trying ‘till you’re dead, so hopefully each day we grow a little closer to who we’re supposed to be (detours aside). 


The look of love in his little eyes spurs me on. To be better, to do better, to learn. Because I’ve only got one shot at this.


I hope I make it count. 

Your Eyes

 


It was the look in your eyes. That’s what I remember the most. 


Your laughing, wrinkle-edged eyes had gone blank. 


But that’s not quite right. They weren’t blank - blank eyes would have been a mercy, blank eyes might have had an explanation I could swallow, blank eyes would have been a question mark. 


No, your eyes were not blank, they were dark. Cold. You looked at me and I swear I saw something like hatred. They were not a question mark at all. They were a period after a short, harsh sentence.


And the sentence scared me. Most of all because I couldn’t quite interpret it. 


What were you saying with that look? I’m not reading into it, I know that. It was not in my head. You were not simply overtired, having a bad day. 


No.


You were angry with me. You were  challenging me. But why? And why were you doing this when I was alone?


Except I wasn’t alone, of course. There was a room full of people, with their eyes on both of us, a room full of people witnessing the anger in your eyes. Could they see the anger in your eyes? Maybe not. Maybe that anger was just for me. My own personal torment. A Dante-style punishment for the sins you saw in me. 


And maybe that’s the problem. The reason that your final look of hatred hurt so badly.


Because deep down, I knew. In the stillness of my heart, I heard that short, cruel sentence, punctuated by the dark in your eyes.