March 3 – “into the woods”

We took another flying trip to Waco this past weekend.  First since we got word that Zakary hit a 10 foot jumper on an out-of-bounds play in his last basketball game of the season.  Wish we could have seen that one.  But this time we were going up for the children’s music concert/musical at his church.  And it was well worth the trip.  Caleb and his age group sang a few songs to warm up the crowd before the musical segment began.  The Agape Squad was the name of it.  All about superheroes with powers granted by the Holy Spirit that sounded strangely similar to the fruit of the Spirit.  Zak was part of a guys’ dance group, so he had opportunity to show off his amazing moves.  The kids all did a great job.  Truly a most entertaining evening.  And after the performance we joined the group heading to an impromptu cast party of sorts at a local restaurant.  Great fun to watch the kids interact with each other.

The next morning we had some time to engage in a rousing game of Star Wars monopoly.  Well, the Zak version of the game.  The rules were oddly similar to those of children’s Monopoly, but had present enough input by the older of our grandsons to make it a uniquely Zak version.  He did forget a time or two that I can actually read, so he had to back-pedal on his interpretation of some of the game’s commands.

We took a detour on the way home to see some old, long-time friends.  Yeah, it’s one of those situations where both adjectives kind of apply.  Nancy was in junior high when I started at the first church I was ever youth pastor at.  Her husband Bo came later when they both were in high school.  Her parents, the Scoggins’ were some of those incredible, substitute parents to both Chris and me throughout our college careers.  It was really great to see Mary Scoggins again.  She is now bed-ridden and suffers from some dementia issues.  We were blessed to hear some of her signature comments, though.  “Why, don’t that beat all?’  “As I live and breathe.”  “Well, I never.”  At one point she asked me to tell her “something, just anything.”  So I said, “Jesus is still, well, Jesus.  Some things never change.”  She quickly agreed to that one.  Finally she went back to watching Howie Mandel and we retired to the other room to wait for Bo and Nancy to arrive.

While waiting for supper, I played Go Fish with their six-year old granddaughter.  Won one and lost one.  She let me know that I could always know how to spell her name because it was written on her shirt.  Indeed it was.  A-V-A, Ava.  She also wanted to know the ages of my granddaughter and grandson.  By the time I went through all eight of them, she was kind of in awe.  She reverently asked, “Am I your granddaughter, too, or just a friend?”

Her four year-old little sister Emma came up to me at one point and gently tugged at my shirt sleeve.  When I finally realized that there was a real human connected to the yank, I looked at her.  She very sweetly said, “Hello.  My name is Emma.  What is yours?”  Very disarming.  And quite cute. 

After a great grilled chicken supper, through which I was inundated with requests to play some more Go Fish (We did manage to sneak in a few rounds of rock, paper, scissors before Mom realized what was going on and reminded us to finish our supper), we thanked our hosts and got back on the road to Galveston.  Their final word of warning was, “Watch out for deer and wild hogs crossing the road.”  Oh.  Did I mention we were out in the middle of nowhere in the country?  Somewhere in Waller, I think, relatively near a Bucees.  No deer and no hogs, but I now have an all-new respect for the hot dogs at that particular Bucees.

Psalms 16:2 says, “I said to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.’”

Father, thank you again for friendships that remain alive over years of geographic separation.  Walk with Nancy and Bo and their girls as they continue to care for Mary in her waning time here on the earth.  Thank you for the moments we had with her yesterday and the hours we had with her over the years.  Amen.