Wednesday, December 10, 2014

December 10 – “The Cry of Defiance”

Just a few more quick anecdotes from our Thanksgiving extravaganza cousins’ sleepover.

So, on Friday night we had our annual cousins’ sleepover.  That’s a big deal around here.  Cailyn sees Jachin and Micah and Josiah and Noa on occasion, since they live in LaMarque.  In fact they went to the library and then the Castle Park Playground just yesterday.  But at Thanksgiving Zak and Caleb and Luke come down from Waco, and now that Luke has developed some degree of efficiency with his toddling, all eight of them are running around at the same time, with decibel levels changing constantly. 

After having some form of turkey on Thursday and through Friday lunch, we were all ready for a Friday evening fish fry.  That’s Zak’s request, by the way.  You just can’t get good speckled trout in Waco.  After the fish, the kids get really anxious.  For what, you may ask?  For their parents to disappear so the real fun can begin.  Of course now that they are old enough, the first item on the agenda is a pillow fight.  They could quite wait for Moms and Dads to head for the Black Friday sales though.  As a result the fight was drastically curtailed, and oft-punctuated with a well-timed parental, “Not too hard” or “Watch out for … too late.”  Our motto in those occasions has been the same for as long as we have had children (particularly boys) running around here: “If you’re gonna play rough, you gotta be tough.”  Sadly, all wild and wacky fun times eventually must end, and the time came for the sleeping bags to be unfurled and the popcorn to be popped and the movie to begin.  Kind of difficult to get everyone’s attention, you think?  Not with highly trained teachers in our midst.  This year it was Aunt Christi who stepped up.  Her announcement preface won my PaPoCo Award this year (Parental Positive Communication).  It was certainly a classic: “Attention Vaughan Boys and Princesses …”

Saturday morning, after the donut man and his two apprentices (Micah and Zak) returned with breakfast, outside play began again.  This time Zak and Micah removed their shirts and for some reason stuffed a large lily leaf into the front of their pants.  Very strange from a parental/grandparental perspective, but obviously quite the norm in their world.  Finally, Nani just couldn’t stand the suspense.  She had to ask.  And from behind their controlled looks of amusement (Ha.  We pulled one over on the parental units), and heads that slowly moved from side to side in – what was that look?  Pity? – they reluctantly agreed to let her into their realm for the “briefest” of moments.  See … the lily leaf was … well, it was their loincloth.  They were Indians, of course.  It quickly became apparent that there was a battle of historic proportions going on, and it would be better if we simply stayed out of the way.  More evidence of the intensity of the struggle came later when Caleb stuck his head inside the back door.  Seems they had lost track of the enemy – in this case Cousin Jachin.  So was this to be a silent, mysterious mission to locate said foe?  Nay.  Not with Caleb.  For that would show no courage.  One must call out the enemy, demand his presence on the honorable field of battle.  His challenge was epic … the stuff of legend … the tiny bit of spoken history memorized for centuries to come by schoolchildren and retooled by countless future coaches in pregame challenges to fire up their teams.  From that diminutive, five-almost-six-year-old Caleb-body came this thundering cry of defiance: “You better come outside right now.  This is a challenge to your people and even to your dignity.”

Psalms 25:21 says, “May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you.

Father, thank you that our dignity is wrapped up in our relationship with you.  You can handle any challenge that comes our way.  Even one as frightening as Caleb’s.  Amen.

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