When you’re a parent everyday seems to be filled with little moments that make the rest of the time you spend slaving away at the office worth living. Weather it’s the giggles you get while changing his diaper or how he insists on throwing his two cents into every conversation even though he can only seem to get out a bunch of squeaks and coos. There are always those nuggets of magic tucked away between the miles of paper work or the loads of laundry piled up all over the house.
Though these moments are great and will always be cherished…occasionally God decides to give you a glimpse of paradise. You’re going along living you’re life, happy to be in a loving family with a good job and great friends. Sure the price of gas is killing you and you’ve forgotten to roll the trash to the curb so often that you have to use a wheel barrel now. Your boss acts like your best friend until it’s time for a raise. It’s that time of the year where if you cut the grass every week it dies but if you wait two it’s too thick for your push mower. Then suddenly as if you have been living in a tunnel with only the light of the coming weekend to guide you, circumstances change and your moment of joy…goes into overtime.
For the first time in a year Lucy and I went to a movie baby free!!! Gigi offered to baby sit last week but a lot can happen between a Monday and a Friday. It’s been two days now and I’m still savoring the flavor of the large popcorn I engulfed. I still have a headache from laughing my butt off. I’m still thanking the Gigi for allowing me to see my wife through the eyes of a newlywed again. Fred and Gigi spent his first evening alone laughing it up and playing with cups of applesauce. Lucy and Charlie spent the evening holding hands and not a baby.
Skip ahead to late Saturday. The Blockhead family took it easy for a change. Not wanting to disrupt the relaxed vibe circulating around the house. A drive for some fast food turned into the perfect sunset over a river so still you would swear you could ice skate across it. What had been another day in the upper 90’s miraculously become a breezy night in the upper 70’s. The park was empty except for the three of us. The sky was on fire with pink and gold. As Fred’s first sunset crept towards the horizon, it just as slowly burned the image into our hearts.
Then there was Jeffery. Normally I would give him some alias such as Tom or Mike, but the story just wouldn’t sound right if I didn’t use his real name. Like any other part of life, you experience your ebbs and flows. Work is just ok and then the next week work is fantastic. Church sometimes becomes routine and then it blooms into the thing you’ve been missing most in this world. Man you should have heard Jeffery up there singing on Sunday morning. I’ve recently just re-met Jeffery. I worked at a grocery store some ten years ago and he was just another vendor. Lately we have been going to the same church and this week he lead the singing. Jeffery walked up there, opened that songbook we’d been using for the last hundred years, and made me forget there’s no dancing in the Church of Christ
Yep just when you expect it the least and need it the most, God opens a window to paradise.
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