Yes

"Joe, would you clear off the table for me," I say.

"But I wanted to play you chess," he says.

"Well," I say, "just put everything else away."

"Ok."

I settle into auto pilot, check the girls dialing back a disagreement in the bedroom, then eat the remnants my lunch still beach on the pull-out cutting board.

"Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne," Joe sings. He lines up chess pieces and sings. "Hark how the hea-ven-ly anthem drowns all music buuuut its own." He's up on the table, crouched over the chess board. He fishes a full set from the big black bowl.

"King," he says. He pauses, the black king. He gives it a shake and sets it in its square. "The king is in his castle," he says. "The KING is in his castle." He places piece by piece. Absent-minded, song effuses from him the scent of fresh cut grass.

"There," he sets the last white pawn. "This game is so good. I'm gonna be WHITE," he says.

He piles the other chess boards and the big black bowl, balances, then lumbers toward the stairs.

"Muscles," he says as he goes by. "SEE," he says. "Do you SEE my muscles?" he says. He wobbles and bobbles the Dr. Seusian stack, pauses. "Mom, can you carry this down?" he says.

"Just do it one at a time," I say. "Here," I pluck the bowl off the top.

"Um, ok."

He tritt-trots downstairs and back, then clucks his tongue as he waits in the sunroom for me to finish my work. He dives into a pile of decorative pillows shored up in the corner.

"Mom, Jonah is dead," he says. "Mom, did you know Jonah is dead?"

"Yep."

"How did Jonah get dead?" he says.

"He just got old."

"Oh, or MAYBE the fish..." he trails on. Sprites of commentary flit in every direction.

****


"Here, put this on." I nudge pj's across the floor to Joe. "And then," I start.

"And then I can have MILK?" he blusters.

"And then you can have some milk," I say. "I said you could so you can."

"Yeah," he says, "'cause you CAN'T change your mind."

"Well, I could change my mind," I say.

"But," he nods, raises one shoulder, "your 'yes' shall be 'yes' and your 'no' shall be 'no'."

"Yeah, I guess that's true." He scoops up the jammies, trots off. "Don't forget your pants," I call after him.

Your 'yes' shall be 'yes' and your 'no' shall be 'no'. He plucks it out of thin air. But, there it was the whole time, theology ever-present, the empty nothing holding all the air in the room.

Gratitude:

5760. Green tea. Chai tea. Craig and I get each other tea for Valentine's Day.

5762. Fleece lined leggings. They buffer the wet cold of almost-spring.

5763. Spaghetti noodles. They fill in the cracks in meal planning.

5764. World Magazine. I discover a late Christmas gift, perfect for election year.

5765. Jack wraps up one wrestling league to participate in another.

5766. Jane, Jack, and Lu but heads in conflict. They finally distill the solution: start the morning with Bible reading and prayer and return to it if necessary.

5767. The slow plod of winter-almost-over, Jack and I dream of our spring garden.

5768. As days gradually grow longer we set our minds to be diligent in the small things.

Revelation

"Oswald Chanbers says that obedience is what makes scripture make sense," I say. The night cold, ink black, we drive to Grammie's house. Thanksgiving. Fog hovers around the car. And we talk.

"Yeah," Craig says.

"Chambers says sometimes you read a scripture 365 times, but it's not until that 366th time that because of some obedience in your life, the meaning unlocks, and it makes sense to you," I say.

"Sometimes it makes sense to me the first time," Jane says from the seat behind me. Rum steamer in hand she cups the mug to her mouth, sips.

"Or maybe," I say, "your conscience is so sharpened to direct you to obedience that it makes sense the first time." A tray of sweet potatoes slides on the console between Craig and me. I steady it with my hand.

"Like if I do something wrong," Jane says, "I can't BEAR to listen to Revelation."

"Yeah," I say.

"So we should put that on every night?" Craig laughs.

"You can," Jane says. We snicker. She softens.

"That's a good thing, Jane," I say, "a very good thing."

A troubled conscience is a very good thing. How much worse to be comfortable with evil?

We read some things in the Bible three hundred and sixty-five times and they mean nothing to us, then all of a sudden we see what God means, because in some particular we have obeyed God, and instantly His nature is opened up. ~Oswald Chambers





Gratitude:

5685. We gather with family for Thanksgiving. We each labor in our arenas of responsibility. Progress by small marks takes shape, another year gone by. We each share what we are thankful for. Universes of thought unfold.

5686. We find small moments of laughter in the midst of a messy house.

5687. We share treats, desserts and hors d'oeuvres, relationships weave between shared blessings.

5688. We continue to challenge our children to show grace to each other. We continue to flesh out gravity defying grace, love totally divorced from performance. It's like walking on water.

5689. We make peppermint patties from scratch.

5670. Craig gives me a package of gourmet hot chocolate.

5671. We invent an hors d'oeuvres: sharp cheddar, mashed sweet potato, and a dilly bean stacked on a cracker.

5672. We find contentment a welcome guest sitting there on our door step, down our hallways, stretched over the walls, and beneath the rugs, slipped snug between the sheets. The more we sacrifice, the more we love each other.

5673. We nearly finish a pot of burned soup, when I relent and throw out the last bit. The new pot of chicken soup tastes sweeter and saltier and richer than ever before.

5674. We pull each of the children a little closer and enjoy their shining faces.

5675. We prepare our hearts for the Christmas season.

BIG

"You are going to get very BIG," Myra says.

"Yeah," Joe says.

"'Cause people about your size get VERY big," she says. They nod, a collection of facts lolling between them.


***

"So if you forgive someone, does that mean they don't have to DO anything? Anything at all? Everything just goes back to normal?"

"Well, surely they have respond in SOME-way."

"But if they have to respond are you really forgiving them?"

"If you expect anything, is it really forgiveness?"

A debate. Theology circles our dinner table. Pizza and salad, brownies, pie, leftover dessert, we weigh and flex scripture against experience. Conversation flits like a flock of birds. Murmuration ensues.

"Surely they have to do something," someone says. "What if I punch you in the nose, and you forgive me, but I still say you deserved it? What then? Ya can't just go back to normal. Can you?"

"But God forgives us before we even ask," someone else says. "Forgive them for they know not what they do."

"But some people DO still go to Hell," someone else says, "even though he forgave them."

We turn it over again and again like a coin with two sides.

"When you forgive someone they don't have to DO anything," Jane pipes up. Childish candor becomes her; she speaks in step. "But in order to RESTORE the relationship they have to acknowledge it in SOME way," she says. Acknowledge. Restore.

The room hushes around her words. As if gathered from the four corners of the room, she synthesizes air down to a single breath. Forgiveness. Restoration. They form a bag of waters around us, sustain us and hold us, give us our first breath.





Gratitude:

5606. Myra and Joe make me breakfast.

5607. Jack and Joe debone a chicken for me.

5608. Betsy continues to roll all over the house, pulling stuffing out of a hole in the couch, chewing on rogue flip-flops, biting up bits of paper, and calling whole conversations of Hi there.

5609. We wait with anticipation for the birth of my nephew, the children one big hoorah of excitement.

5610. We attend a funeral in Craig's hometown, his aunt laid to rest.

5611. New yarn.

5612. A polkadot headband for Betsy.

5613. Guacamole, we develop a signature recipe.

5614. We continue to pray for the fruit of the Spirit and watch our lives conform to the particular challenges that cultivate character.

5615. Each night rings in another victory: life together laid one brick at a time. We build castles of affection.