Another Lesson From My Son

Years ago, we were having a bit of puzzle mania at my house. Over the course of several days, every single kid puzzle we owned was put together on our basement floor.

On one of those days, my four-year-old was talking while he was working on a puzzle of Lassie with puppies. "Don't worry, little puppies," he was saying, "I'm putting you together. And you will love me because I'm making you." He paused a moment as he put a few more pieces together. Then he said in a low voice, "I am God."

I sucked in a breath, expecting lightning to strike, but then I realized that he had grasped what so many older and wiser people never do: The creation will love the creator simply because he made them and gave them form.

This is the basics of relating to the Father. Without that simple appreciation, we can never move on to anything closer.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, "Be joyful always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

There have been many times in my life when giving thanks seemed all but impossible, but even in those times, this truth remains: I will be grateful to the Creator who made me, simply because he did.

Lessons From My Goofy Son

A few weeks ago, I drove my son to the hospital for a surgical procedure. Although it wasn't a particularly risky surgery, he would need to stay in the hospital for several days after.

I parked in the valet parking lane after the 80 minute drive, and my son gets out, grabs his bag out of the back and says, "Thanks for the ride."

"Well, I'm not leaving you!" I sputtered incredulously.

He looked genuinely surprised. "Oh! Okay."

What a goof! Did he really not know me any better than that after 26 years? Did he think I'd let him go through anything that required anesthesia with no one there waiting for him on the other side?

When he was 7, I held his hand and sang to him while the  technicians forced a tube up his nose and down his throat to his stomach when he had his first intestinal block. I was there for the second one when he was in his early teens and the third when he was 19--one week after my mother died. I spent the night in a ridiculously uncomfortable chair in the ER for that one.

When he was 11, I tried to hide tears when his doctor said for the first time that his lungs weren't sounding as good as usual, and he wanted to admit him to the hospital, and I was there, mad as hell, when we found out he had steroid-induced diabetes.

My husband and I have been there through so many hospitalizations with him, I can't even tell you how many, and we've sat in quite a few waiting rooms when he had biopsies and bronchoscopies and hernia surgery and gall bladder surgery... How could he possibly think I'd just turn around and drive home while he went through a G-tube installation? Didn't he know me at all?

And in my indignation, I heard God laugh. Because I do that to Him all the time.

Even though He's been walking with me for 50+ years through every single crisis of my life, when the next one hits, I'm convinced that He is nowhere around. That He's dropped me off at the curb and said "So long, sweetheart, this time you're on your own."

But He hasn't, and He never will. He's going to walk with me wherever we need to go, holding my hand and singing me songs.

You'd think I'd know that by now.