Topping one of those piles is what’s left of our cherry tomato crop. Bright red tomatoes still cling to a few of the vines, even now on October 29, even as most of the leaves have withered. There are few spiritual metaphors mentioned as frequently as seeds and gardens and fruit, but as I pulled the roots from the ground and untangled the tendrils from the cages, I was struck by the wonder of it all, as if I’d never before seen a seed sprout.

We bought these tomato plants from a school fundraiser catalog, which is to say we paid about 500% more than they were worth. They were supposed to be those fancy, modern upside-down hanging plants. Apparently that only meant the packet of seeds was accompanied by a plastic bag with a rope attached to one end and some perforated holes. We had to supply the dirt, start the seeds indoors in small cups, fill the bags, punch out the holes, transplant the baby cup-plants into the bags, nurture them flat on a table outside, then, finally, hang them and watch them grow. We did all that, up until the final step, whereupon we did hang them and watch them die.

We had extra seeds, so we decided to plant a handful in the back yard near the deck. These, perhaps grateful to be in a proper, less modern environment, grew. We watered them, and fed them, and they kept growing, and dozens and dozens of little green tomatolings were born.

Though I do not actually like cherry tomatoes, I harvested our bumper crop throughout the summer, filling buckets and bowls every week. I even tried to make homemade salsa with the little buggers, but the product of the hours of effort wasn’t nearly as good as the free stuff at Moe’s. Eventually, vines overtook our deck, escaping their wire cages and crawling along chairs and walls. In the end, we had grown and eaten and given away so many cherry tomatoes that I was content, yesterday, to pull up the vines without even picking the last little late bloomers.

A bitter wind whistles now through that back yard, setting free showers of leaves that paint the ground sepia. They are leaves from trees that we planted, when the kids were young, or not yet born. They were willow oak saplings that fit in the trunk of Amy’s parents’ car, and now they are rooted, and stand taller than our house. And all around them is death.

The melancholy of Autumn is the part of the story that all the metaphors about seeds and gardens and fruit tend to ignore. The leaves whither and fall. The tomato plants die. One day, even those willow oaks will succumb to disease, or wind, or just plain old age. Yesterday, though, as I noted how little effort it took to pull those huge dying plants up out of the ground where we had so recently placed such tiny seeds, I realized it’s all a good thing. God could have made perpetual plants, forever fruit, but this death, this cycle, is a better way. For the sprouting of a seed and the bearing of fruit is a miracle glorious to behold, and we get to do it over and over again.

Creation is the lifeblood of the created, and to be flabbergasted by growth and bounty is a gift. To know that an end is inevitable is to appreciate the present, and to trust in the promise that the melancholy will make way for joy.

Two extraordinary songs, one simple bird:

“And the wrens have returned and they’re nesting
In the hollow of that oak where his heart once had been
And he lifts up his arms in a blessing for being born again”

- The Color Green, Rich Mullins, A Liturgy, A Legacy, and A Ragamuffin Band

“This is the year when laughter douses charred and burnt-out dreams
This is the year when wrens return to nest in storm-blown trees
Is this the year of relocation from boughs of old despair?
This is the year to perch on hope’s repair”

- The New Year, Eric Peters, Birds of Relocation

The former is the first song of the Liturgy section of what many consider Mullins’ finest album. Mullins lists 2 Chronicles 6:18 as scripture to accompany the song: “But will God really dwell on earth with humans? The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!”

The latter is the decisive arrival of hope and light in Peters’ brilliant account of despair and recovery. It praises a God who makes all things new, even things that seem beyond repair.

I assumed that Mullins’ wrens inspired Peters’, so I asked him. As it turns out, Peters did not (consciously, at least) recall The Color Green while writing The New Year. He had his own reasons for his wrens:

“It’s one syllable.” That was his first answer. He has a point. “This is the year when cardinals return to nest in storm-blown trees” doesn’t work at all.

But then he thought for a moment and added this:

“Also, I really like their song.”

The song of the wren is chirpy, staccato happiness. It makes the heart a little lighter. I’m glad it’s sung by a monosyllabic bird.

I read once that there are times when birds sing just because they want to. They have mating calls and warning calls and such, but there are also times when, apparently, birds sing for no apparent reason. Biologists might not understand why, but I do. If the rocks can cry out in praise, then surely the wren can sing a happy song for the Maker of Song.

I pray that I will never fail to marvel at the swaying arms of the oak, or the palette of colors with which God painted the sky and the fields, or the happy, hopeful song of the wren.

And when I need it, it’s good to know that the wrens have returned, and they’re nesting.

This guy named Andrew Peterson said this guy named Frederick Buechner said something that really resonated with me, that spoke to my eternal soul, but I can’t remember what it was.

The abundance of Hutchmoot means that words and moments of sublime wisdom fall all around me like shavings from a whittler’s knife, such that I forget more brilliance in one long weekend than I’ve remembered all year. I feel like Rich Mullins when he sang, “There’s so much beauty around us for just two eyes to see.”

My “dream session” happened on Saturday morning this year. The aforementioned Andrew Peterson, as gifted a singer-songwriter as I have known, and Ben Shive, who possesses a preternatural musical intellect, were discussing the life and music of the similarly aforementioned Rich Mullins, the name I fill in the blank beside “All-time favorite musician”. Stoked, I was.

At the appointed hour I made my official photographer rounds to each session and landed at Rich-fest. Which is to say I landed near Rich-fest. The little chapel room was full. The doorway was full. I was three-deep outside in the foyer, straining to listen. I actually cocked my head to one side like a curious dog hoping the scant soundwaves might better land in my ear.

What I heard was like the fragmented call of a one-bar cell phone. A couple of audible sentences would thrill me – this really was AP and Ben talking Rich! – and then the whole room would laugh warmly at a statement I did not hear. I heard the start of a discussion about the elusive lyrics of “Land of my Sojourn”, and then someone in the foyer ordered some sort of frothy coffee that made all kinds of noise.

Standing just outside the room, forlorn and frustrated, I was suddenly reminded of my place in this fallen world. I don’t intend to deify Andrew and Ben and Rich, but in that moment they represented a glimmer of the Divine. The conversation in that chapel was something I desired because it spoke, in my language, of the beauty and mystery of the Creator and His Heaven. And I couldn’t hear it all because of an untimely cappuccino. I was a Mullins mendicant wandering off toward a cathedral, aching for the glory inside, stuck at the door.

Then, someone left. And none of my fellow mendicants moved to claim the empty seat. So I did. I took my place inside, where I could hear every word. I was no longer an eavesdropper, but a participant. And then Ben started playing a familiar hammered dulcimer part on his keyboard, and Andrew sang, “Well the moon moved past Nebraska and spilled laughter on them cold Dakota hills.” And then my fellow participants and I started singing along, in that infinity-part harmony that only seems to happen at Hutchmoot. And I felt the thunder, and I saw the Lord take by its corners this old world, and He shook me free to run wild with the hope.

I am home now, and Hutchmoot is past. In some ways I’ve left the chapel again, and I am back in the foyer where cars are double-parked and noisy televisions make their political noise. But I have learned that though we toil on this side of Heaven until eternity, though we are soiled and temporal, the doors to glory are not barred. We might be butterflies, fluttering frantically amidst the fumes of a grimy gas station, but by the grace of God we are butterflies nonetheless, and loftier breezes and cleaner air are in our skies.

I am determined to seek the glorious, and to seek it often.

“I am certain that I will see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living.”

Psalm 27:13

In a closet in our house hangs a funny square hat with a funny polyester gown, a strangely still pair in the midst of so much activity surrounding their imminent utility. Outside, the magnolias are finally blooming and the relative humidity inches ever higher, portending another steamy summer in the south. Springtime has yet to take her leave, but we know she will, just in time for a certain weekend at the end of May. Cue the pomp and circumstance. It’s graduation time.

Sarah Kate is 18 years old, our eldest daughter, the object of the impending festivities. As she struggles through her last papers and exams, she does so with a satisfying promise of finality, knowing these will be her last last papers and exams in high school. Nonetheless, she needs the grades as she’s leading a tight race for valedictorian. No rest for the weary, at least not yet.

Twenty three years ago, I was a senior in high school myself, pondering graduation and its manifold meanings. I had a soundtrack: a cassette tape of “Songs in the Attic” by Billy Joel. I got it by mail-order from the BMG Music Service in one of those “10 Cassettes for the Price of One” deals. I played it over and over again that Spring of 1989, thinking about the lyrics and their relevance to my evolving place in the world with a profundity that only a high school senior can muster.

My cassette tapes are long gone, most of them worn beyond usefulness, but just the other day I saw “Songs in the Attic” on CD in a bargain bin at a store. One listen, and oh, I’m that wide-eyed senior again! Here are a few words, then and now.

They say that these are not the best of times,

But they’re the only times I’ve ever known

And I believe there is a time for meditation

In cathedrals of our own

I discovered Charles Dickens in high school, my imagination lit with the opening words of “A Tale of Two Cities”: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Isn’t that true of the teenage years? Life is the see-saw that will never balance in the middle, forever swinging radically from one extreme to another. Like me, Sarah would testify that the best of times have outweighed the worst; we have been blessed. I still believe, though, that it’s that “time for meditation” that is so important. One cannot comprehend the 18 year old’s perspective on the world unless one is 18. I don’t think I can fully remember it; there was too much depth in that present reality. I think it must be captured, and that cannot happen without some time to pause in one’s own cathedral. I kept a journal in high school, to do just that. I typed it on an IBM PC, and stored it on a 5 ¼ inch floppy disk, since that computer didn’t even have a hard drive. Finally, my senior year, I printed the whole thing on a noisy dot matrix printer. It’s all gone now. The floppy failed, so the paper was all I had, and I don’t know what became of it. It would be an amusing read now, full of pretentious vocabulary and overblown sentiment. I would enjoy it, I think, and be embarrassed by it, I know, but it’s no great tragedy that it’s gone. It was catharsis at the time, so it served its purpose, and I think it was all very good writing practice for me. Granted, I’m still pretentious and overly sentimental, but I’d like to think I’m not quite as effusive as I was back then.

And as we stand upon the ledges of our lives

With our respective similarities,

It’s either sadness or euphoria

A ledge, indeed! We never moved when I was a kid. In fact, my folks still live in the same house in which I grew up. I had the room at the end of the hall upstairs. It had red shag carpet and a metal desk we obtained from an IBM surplus sale, where I did hours and hours of homework, even that senior year. It also held my prized possession, a Pioneer rack stereo system with a pair of 110-Watt speakers and a 5-disk CD changer that finally enabled me to cast those accursed cassette tapes aside. Since we never moved, the end of high school was probably the first major transition in my life. Now, here in Georgia, we’ve lived in the same house for over a dozen years, so Sarah has known similar stability. She, like me, stands upon a ledge. As I thought about the fates of my classmates, I liked Billy Joel’s polysyllabic wisdom about our “respective similarities”, the tenuous threads that ran through all of our stories. Sure, we had our cliques, our groups that grew into whatever label or stereotype they chose to define them. I knew it should be the other way around, but I had a cynical notion that there were few among us who really acted as individuals. We were not as different from one another as we though, I realized. Some peered over that ledge and felt the sadness associated with departure, with the closing of so rich a season. The same felt the euphoria of new opportunities, their first real independence, and a coming adventure. Others, I’m sure, flipped the emotions. High school had been euphoric, at times, but the future looked bleak. Regardless, I realize now how difficult it is to have any comprehension, as an 18-year-old, of what really lies ahead. And that’s great! What a joy to make your own way in the world, to test the faith that you hope will guide you, without the weight of preconceived notions.

So, before we end

And then begin

We’ll drink a toast to how it’s been

A few more hours to be complete

A few more nights in satin sheets

A few more times that I can say,

I’ve loved these days

I was a good kid in high school, and I did not drink any toasts or spend bon vivant nights on satin sheets. But I often thought myself older and more worldly than I was, so I pretended to identify with these lyrics. I would hear the lilting piano on my massive Pioneer speakers and nod, knowingly, picturing myself indulging in “things refined”. What a punk. I could, however, look back on my halcyon high school days and say with confidence that I loved them. I had the sorts of friends who would sit with me in the dark and listen to a Dire Straits album and ponder the meaning of life. I had a family who loved and supported me. I had summers at the beach, and a car with a sunroof. (Maybe I did indulge in things refined after all. I was still a punk, though.) And I had a girlfriend who would become my wife.

As a father who has fond memories of childhood, I want to engineer the same fond memories into my children’s lives. But I can’t. I can love and support, but I cannot get inside their heads and affect their sadnesses and euphorias. Thank goodness. What a responsibility that would be! All I can do, and all I hope I’ve done, is to be there, praying and encouraging and providing. Sarah’s off to college in August. It’s so soon! But, it’s time. It’s time for her to transition, to step into a great unknown and trust that her faith will guide her. I have every confidence that her future will be a success. However, that’s not what I’m thinking about right now. I’m thinking about what my life was like at her age, and what she must be thinking and feeling. And most of all I’m thinking about how I’m pretty sure she will find time in the next couple of weeks, before the funny square hat leaves the closet, to pause, and reflect, and declare, “I’ve loved these days.”

There are no raindrops on my window, but there should be. It’s raining outside, and cold and windy, because this is London, and it’s February, and gentlemen need a good reason to wear a cap and a tweed waistcoat. Even without raindrops, though, my view is distorted by the ripples in that grand leaded glass that seems just right for a building like this, a building that’s 250 years old.

This is my office, for two weeks at least. There is a marble fireplace, and16 footceilings, and that stately window. Outside there’s a courtyard with an old clock that always reads one minute past two and dormant ivy scaling stone walls. And more stately windows, returning the gaze of my own, of capricious sizes that suggest floors between floors.

This was all built for some chap called the 2nd Earl of Bessborough because he needed somewhere to put his sculpture collection. Someday I shall commission a Palladian villa be built to accommodate by CD collection. Now, since it’s been taken over by Roehampton University, this old villa houses students and lecterns and books.

There are books in this office on shelves that no one could possibly reach without an extension ladder. There are books on anatomy and physiology, nutrition, training… and one at the end of a middle shelf called “Football: The Beautiful Game”.

I’m tucked into a corner desk among two other professors during my visit, working at a computer that feels so dissonant. Seems I should be sipping tea and reading Shakespeare or listening to Handel. Part of travel is testing the stereotypes, which is why travel is good for you. I love the fanciful notion of old Britain, and I always hope those stereotypes prove true. For this trip, so far, so good.

I flew directly over Ireland on the way here, but the Emerald Isle was safely sheltered under a thick canopy of clouds. Finally descending through the clouds, I saw old houses in rows with little gardens, soccer and rugby fields, and grasslands where royalty surely once hunted deer. I saw the River Thames, partitioned from above by bridges far more opulent than their utility ever demanded. It was all so very British. I was delighted.

On the way to customs, aboard the moving walkway, we proceeded past a wall-sized poster of a beefeater and I saw a little girl turn, salute, and declare “Hello Solider!” in the most charming British accent I’ve ever heard. On the ride from Heathrow to the campus I saw foreboding stone walls that once separated a convent from the rest of the world.

And then I saw my office, with its crooked floors and ancient character.

I used to imagine I would find a part of myself in England, a chunk of my true character inhibited by my New World environs. When I studied for a month at Oxford I threatened to buy myself a vestigial walking cane and embrace that inner Englishman. There I’d be, a pretentious young American with his walking cane and his pocket watch traipsing the cobbled streets and feeling quite at home.

I’ve come to realize that I’m no more British than I am Chinese, and that’s okay. One can appreciate, and even participate in, a culture without the need to feel any ownership of it. I think it might even be better that way. The need to intimately identify with a people or a place can set you up for disappointment when the connection is lacking, and that disappointment can be a robber of rich experiences. So now I happily fling myself into a culture with little regard to how removed I might be from it by station or history. And it is that new rich experience that affects and shapes me.

Oh, but I do love England! And every now and then I become utterly foolish and disingenuous and ask a question of a merchant in my fake British accent. I am content, though, without a walking cane, to traverse the cobbled streets and gaze out the stately window on a place that is not home, knowing what a great privilege it is just to visit.

There is a massive “Royal Park” adjacent to campus called Richmond Park. Hundreds of deer roam its confines, and they’re even celebrities now since appearing in a viral video starring a mischievous dog named Fenton. My free afternoon happened to be adorned by bright warm sunshine, so I picked up a weird British sandwich and some biscuits and decided to head out wandering.

They bought me an “A to Zed”, which is a handy book of maps, and I found Richmond Park, and noticed it’s adjacent to another massive greenspace called Wimbledon Common. Familiar with that name, I looked a little closer and sure enough, there was the “All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club”, right there on map 135. I really have no concept for how far things are on these maps, so I decided just to head in that direction and see if I could make it. Who knows, maybe there’d be a lovely game of croquet on.

I’ve learned over time that the danger of these journeys is encountering obstacles that aren’t really apparent on the map. I hit the first such barrier at Kingston Road, which is a really more of a highway, and not an easy one to cross! Parkland beckoned on the other side, so I dashed across, only to find the pedestrian subway that I should have taken after I crossed.

On my map the parks are covered in dotted lines representing paths, and I successfully navigated my way down a dotted line to the nearest landmark, the Wimbledon Windmill. I don’t know why there’s a windmill in the park. It wasn’t turning or anything. I could have learned all about it at the adjacent “Wimbledon Windmill Museum”, but the tennis courts beckoned, and daylight was fading fast. I crossed Wimbledon Common, hiking along at a steady clip and enjoying the fresh air, and then traversed a posh neighborhood that actually had detached houses, not the typical flats-in-rows. These had Porsches and such in front of them. I figured these were the sorts of places that the tennis stars rent out for the tournament. I also wondered if these homeowners despise the annual zoo of tournament time. I wanted to interview one, but none were out. Rounding Newstead Way I got my first glimpse of the familiar green and purple of Wimbledon, just down the hill. I had made it! It was actually a stunning view, because just above the roofline of Centre Court I could make out downtown London, and the London Eye in particular.

The museum had just closed for the day, so I could do little but lap the grounds and peer through each gate. I saw Courts 2 and 3 first. They are pristine. Good grief, even Court 8 is pristine!

Then I reached some excellent views of Centre Court, which is just massive. In a large room that was part of the complex I watch an unexpected event: hordes of boys and girls, all with numbers pinned to their shirts, trying out to be ball kids. They looked well-prepared as they executed a carefully choreographed dance of standing, running, and kneeling around a pretend tennis court.

I never could find Henman Hill, but I saw lots more beautiful grass courts, and even a handful of clay and hard courts. The sun was setting as I left the complex, and apparently there was no croquet happening, so I began the journey back.

As much as I am a fan of wandering I do not like backtracking, so I found new streets and new Porsches and a new entry into the park. And so it was that I was now in a heavily wooded area, with hardly any light, and an almost useless map, delightfully lost. I pointed myself in the general direction I thought I needed to go and chose paths accordingly, until I saw lights in the distance. Wouldn’t you know it, I was back at the windmill! Wrong dotted line, apparently. No worries, I thought, I’ll head west for a while, then north, and encounter all sorts of new things. And so, westward ho!

A sliver of moon was now visible, as was a bright star above the last hint of setting sun. I decided to make like a Magi (Magus?) and follow the star as best I could, since it marked the west. I soon found myself beside a small pond, and I stopped to watch the ducks and listen to all sorts of strange bird calls. It all started to take on a certain eeriness as the last light faded. Twisty trees loomed large, and little squirrels made a racket in the leaves much larger than their size would merit. And I was all alone.

I continued hiking, feeling a lot like the hobbits in the Lord of the Rings book I’m reading right now, and wondering if Tolkien ever hiked a similar wood here in England. I reached a fork in my chosen path, and my star was right in the middle. The rightward path “felt” better, as did a left fork when the path split again. And then I noticed a curious row of small trees that seemed to form a gate where my path crossed. I wasn’t sure, but it almost looked like the trees formed a large circle, and I paused for the briefest moment at the threshold.

In the distance, at what might be the center of this circle of trees, I thought I could make out some sort of bench or monument. As I got closer, I could tell that it was indeed a monument, and my gaze followed it up, up, and I gasped. I was standing beneath a massive stone cross.

I hadn’t seen it as I approached, either because I was watching the ground or because it was too dark. There was a sword on the cross, and inscriptions around the base. The side I had approached read:

“Nature provides the best monument. The perfecting of the work must be left to the gentle hand of time, but each returning Spring will bring a fresh tribute to those whom it desired to keep in everlasting remembrance.”

Circling the stone, I better understood, reading this:

“The land around, 42 acres, is dedicated to public use in memory of all those who, having been resident or belonging to the families resident in the adjoining districts, gave their lives in the Great War, 1914-1918.”

Once I finally made it home and studied the map a bit I learned that I had inadvertently crossed into Putney Vale and chanced upon the War Memorial, erected in 1920, and the Memorial Gardens. In so doing I fortunately missed a very large Cemetery and Crematorium, which might have been too creepy for even me to bear on such a dark and lonely night.

I’ve whispered a prayer of thanks to God for sending me along the way of the cross. I set out to find tennis courts, and instead I encountered a stirring reminder of the living God in cold stone. I am far from home, and alone, but the Ancient of Days is living and moving.

Last week at Awana, Rebekah frantically scribbled on a sheet of notebook paper, vigilant to keep it from her parents’ prying eyes. “Don’t look!” she kept reminding us, and I tried to recall which Awana assignment would require such secretive effort. Finally, she produced the finished product: “50 Reasons Why I Love You”, with the word love replaced by a heart. It looks like it was originally going to be 25 reasons why she hearts us, but at some point she got ambitious and changed it to 50. The list is a beautiful Christmas gift for Amy and me, containing some very perceptive and thoughtful insight about this sweet 10-year-old and our family. Here are a few of the 50 Reasons:

1. You’re Awesome

‘Nuff said. A nice, overarching complement. I would have been fine if that was the only one.

5. You take me to church
5. You take me to AWANA(s)  :-)

This is excellent for two reasons. First, Bek accidentally put two #5’s in, so it’s really 51 reasons she hearts us! Second, she made me laugh by sticking an “s” on the end of Awana, knowing it secretly bugs me when people say “Awanas”, since it’s an acronym with no “s”.

9. You let me choose for myself
27. You let me have my own world
28. You don’t force things on me.

Here’s where Bek started getting a little philosophical. She’s the third child, and I know from personal experience that third children get assimilated into a lot of their older siblings’ activities and expectations. With these reasons, Bek notes that we’ve somehow managed to let her forge some of her own identity. I didn’t really know we did it, but I’m glad she feels a bit empowered.  She deserves it.

24. You cuddle with me

Oh, this might be my favorite! I do love to snuggle with Bek. She calls these times our “cuddle sessions”, and I know their days are numbered, so I cherish each one.

35. You taught me my sight words

Here’s where Bek probably realized that any list of 50 items is long! So, she might have been stretching, but she does make me laugh. I think “laugh” might be a sight word!

38. You fight with mean teachers
39. You praise nice teachers

I love this recognition. Bek knows that we’ve got her back, and that her Mommy in particular will gladly take up her cause in the face of some school injustice. But she’s also learning a balance. Yes, there are times when we must fight for ourselves, but that can’t be our only mission. There’s also a place for praise.

41. You take pictures of me

This one really resonates with me as a youngest child myself. I like to joke that while my older brothers had all sorts of professional portraits with matching monogrammed suits and cute little hats, there is no photographic record of my childhood. Not true, of course, but I’m nonetheless determined to photograph my youngest child often. And apparently she notices.

46. You buy me sock-monkey notebooks

Okay, now she’s really stretching!

49. You thank me for helping in the smallest ways

She’s the smallest, so perhaps she doesn’t always feel like she makes the largest contributions, but I’m glad she knows that everything she offers, big or small, is appreciated and valued.

And finally,

50. You’re willing to do just about anything for me

My goodness, after reading a list like this, who wouldn’t be?

And in case you’re not familiar entirely with the story, it goes that Jesus was blessing little kids. You know, I’m trying to think through this thing and I’m going, well how do you bless children? Cause I find them barely tolerable, let alone something you’d want to bless. So I’m thinking I’ve got all these nieces and nephews and stuff, how have I blessed them, and the only thing I could think of is, you know you pick them up and you throw them as high in the air as you can and you catch them right before they splat. Or, you get down on all fours and you know, they ride you and you try to buck them off, and that kind of thing.

So I’m trying to picture Jesus doing this and then the disciples they come up and they see Jesus who-you know they’re good monotheists so they’re really I’m sure struggling with His claims to be equal to God. And they see Him you know, and they’re kinda going, well you know when you put on that really straight academic face of yours and charge us with a lot of information, we can kinda buy it then, but here you’re acting like an idiot. And it’s hard enough to believe that smart people could be the Son of God, let alone this-this-bumbling idiot, that’s rolling around in the dirt with the children. And Jesus says, ‘hey guys, knock it off. If you want to come into My kingdom, you have to come in like one of these. You have to come in like a child. You have to let me throw you up in the air and catch you right before you splat. You have to ride on my back and let me buck you off. We have to wrestle a little, we have to play a little.’

They were teenagers, 18 and 19 years old, with the sparkle of young love in their eyes and unsuspecting of the future ahead of them. They were two hours away from buying a farm, in keeping with their lineage and the typical expectations of the area, before someone else got a loan before them because he had a cosigner. They would have been a good farming couple, but God had different plans. Dad has always been good with his hands, with an aptitude for engineering and building stuff, so he landed an apprenticeship at General Electric. Then they really ventured out into the unknown when he got a job at IBM and they moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. That’s where I was born, and my parents still live in the same house I grew up in.

My brothers and I were called upon to give speeches at the party. Here’s mine:

Hi, my name is Mark.

Most of you don’t know me because, well, I’m the third child.

There is no photographic record of my childhood.

My birth was an inconvenience because I apparently interrupted one of my brothers’ little league games.

Steve used to call me “the tax deduction”.

Mine was a life of hand-me-downs and also-rans. Of patches sewn on top of patches on the knees of old blue jeans. Of used Nerf footballs that already had little chunks of foam torn out.

Yes, my brothers got all kinds of attention, what with Steve running into his brick walls and Eric choking on his chicken bones. Was I jealous? No, of course not. Well, I’ll admit I was insanely jealous of Steve’s authentic Batmobile, complete with Batman costume and cape.

 And I was a little jealous of the pictures. Steve and Eric, in their cute little monogrammed sweaters and caps, in a professional portrait studio. Me, naked in the back yard by the swing set.

 [I'm the one on the horse, with the curiously elliptical head.]

How is it possible, then, that I have grown up to become at least marginally well-adjusted? It’s safe to say that Mom and Dad had a lot to do with that. I suppose I’ve exaggerated a bit, and they did give me some attention during my childhood. In fact, as Sarah was putting together the slide show, I even noticed actual pictures of myself! One in particular made me smile.

It’s a picture of Steve about to shoot his beloved younger brothers.

 It was taken at an old Pony Express Station in Nebraska when I was 5 years old. We were passing through on a trip to California, in a mini-Midas RV with a big orange stripe on the outside, following our Triple-A TripTik. The Pony Express station wasn’t on our route, but I really wanted to go. And Mom and Dad said, “Sure”, and we left the TripTik route behind.

I had a great time at that Pony Express station, dreaming of cowboys and galloping horses on wide open plains. I bought a little wooden model of a fort, I think, and spent several quality days putting it together.

Here’s what this picture symbolizes for me. First, let’s not miss the point that our dear mother consented to a five-week trip across the country crammed into a mini-motor home with our whole rambunctious family of five! And then, seven years later, she did it again, and this time the majority of the occupants of the RV were teenage boys!

And let’s not forget that Dad saved up vacation for years on end so we could take those trips. And that he, from such humble beginnings, was able to establish such a wonderful career that afforded us so much.

They’ve both taught me so much about sacrifice and selflessness. About priorities. And about the kind of love that will say, even to an oft-forgotten third child, “Sure, let’s go to the Pony Express Station.” I make decisions now with my own children, and sometimes, when they’re good decisions, I stop and realize, “That’s exactly what Mom and Dad would have done with me.”

In reality, my childhood was grand. We had the run of the neighborhood, a fertile landscape for games of Cowboys and Indians or football on that knee-scraping cul de sac we simply called
“the circle”. We had adventures, like lowering each other into the storm drain to chase a wayward ball. We chopped wood and made forts, and rode our bikes down hills that looked impossibly steep to 8-year-old eyes.

And all through it, we had a Mom and Dad: to keep us in line when we needed it, to bandage the scrapes and pull out the ticks. To encourage the creativity and freedom, and to make sure there was always a safe refuge in that dear little house on Woodlea Drive.

Mom and Dad, you loved us like Christ first loved both of you. You taught us what a good marriage is all about, and what it means to be a good parent, and the beautiful flock of grandchildren here tonight is your legacy. Thank you for everything. God bless you, and happy anniversary!

I could have gone on and on about what great parents Mom and Dad were, and are, and about how many lives they’ve touched in their own simple way, but I didn’t need to. The room full of family and friends were a living testimony. Following our speeches Dad said a few words, though tears, and went back to his seat to join his beloved bride when applause turned into one of those spontaneous and completely sincere standing ovations that are so rare. Mom and Dad sat and held hands, and though she heard the applause she had not noticed the standing. Dad prompted her to turn around, and her look of appreciation and surprise is one I’ll long treasure.

Here’s that flock of grandchildren I mentioned, nine great kids who love their “Ge-Ge” and “G-Dad”. May we be so highly favored that, like my mom and dad, our lives and our marriages impact generations.

It was a halcyon image. A mother and her preschooler with armfuls of sidewalk chalk stood back, admiring their work. “Happy Birthday Mrs. Ruth!” declared their multicolored message, stretched from one driveway to the next in front of a presumably unsuspecting neighbor’s house.

I imagined Mrs. Ruth, probably an older lady, smiling when she arrives home. Then I imagined the smiles the little girl brings when she plays in Ruth’s yard. Other images played like a photo album on my short drive home through our neighborhood:

Two boys, on the way home from the pool, hurried to a shady spot because the sidewalk burned hot in the Atlanta sun.

A child, on a walk with her parents, switched to holding mommy’s other hand to avoid the spirited dog coming her way.

A frustrated father stooped over to push a little bicycle while the helmeted child walked alongside.

And then, for a moment, there was me, all philosophical, pondering my place among these scenes of the stages of life. I even let a Jimmy Buffet chorus escape my lips, out loud, there in the car by myself: “Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late. The cannons don’t thunder, there’s nothin’ to plunder, I’m an over-forty victim of fate, arriving too late, arriving too late.”

The words don’t exactly fit me. I like to sail but I really don’t think I’d have been a very good pirate. I’m neither discontent nor disconcerted. But I AM forty years old, as of June 28^th. Seems like one is supposed to get all philosophical when one turns 40 so, mainly out of sense of obligation, I sang out strong and pondered my place.

My children are growing up. We’re scouting out colleges instead of preschools. The girls’ ages are all in double digits. Rebekah was born the day before my 30^th birthday, so she just turned 10. She got her ears pierced, and she’s getting all leggy and tall. Mind you, there’s still loads of childlike silliness and life in our house, but I can’t avoid certain monumental thoughts:

A year from now, we’ll be thinking about what to do with a spare bedroom when Sarah moves off to college.

I’m probably closer, chronologically, to holding a grandchild than I am to holding my own baby children.

Forty is halfway, right? It’s probably over halfway.

Here’s the thing, though. I’m not really sad about any of this. A favorite thing for seasoned parents to say to their younger counterparts concerns the pace. “Don’t blink,” they say. “They’ll only be that little for a second. It goes by so fast.”

I suppose that’s true, and maybe we’ve heeded that advice, but I feel like time’s passages are pretty appropriate. I feel like we’ve squeezed a lot of life into these years, and we’ve been so very blessed. My memory of Sarah’s first steps seems as distant now as my memory of my own childhood, but that’s okay. We’re making new memories, and even though they’re growing up, the children are taking new “first steps” all the time, and I’m still there, hands outstretched, guarding and protecting and celebrating.

So when I do step back and philosophically view my life from a wide-angle lens – which is good to do every now and then – the images are halcyon. And as I look at forty, I do so with nostalgia and not regret, with anticipation and not melancholy, and above all, with gratitude.