May 31 – “Remember that time …?”

A few “remember that time …?” grandchildren moments …

Zak told us he was happy with the new configuration in his bedroom.  He was moved to the opposite side of the room, and Caleb and Luke now share bunkbeds where his bed used to be.  What makes the new positioning so special?  “In the old way I had to lay there and watch Mom and Dad sit on the big brown chair and kiss and watch TV.” 

Three-year-old Luke upon getting caught up on the roof (not the deck, mind you, the actual, no protective barricade, accessible only by climbing the deck bannister roof) with his four-year-old cousin Noa … “She made me do it.”  Noa’s explanation?  “I wasn’t on the roof.”  Shades of Adam and Eve.

Luke got hold of a rather large ball of yarn that Josh had been using to practice tying lures on his new fly fishing rig.  What did he do with it, you might ask?  Well, with a little bit of assistance from his older role model brothers, he became Spiderman, Junior.  We had a yarn-based, extensive, spider web creeping about the house, about two feet off the floor.  It wound around chairs and bookcases and the very walls, back and forth and around and through and over and under and just about every other geographically based adverb you can think of.  It was amazing.  I, for one, was in awe.  Not so much Mom and Dad, though.  The boys were soon tasked with the job of retrieving the yarn and recreating the beginning ball of beginnings.  Sure.  That didn’t really happen, exactly.  For some reason Luke and Caleb kept getting their entire bodies entangled in a mess of string. 

A deafening silence fell over our house around ten o’clock yesterday morning.  Everyone was gone.  Chris began her usual post-grandchildren sweep of the house to gather up articles of clothing and toys that may have been left behind.  But it was … quiet.  Fortunately, a yard crew arrived about then to mow the grass across the street.  Dogs from afar started barking.  Dogs from a-near decided to join them.  And finally word reached our own litter.  Exit the silence.  Things were back to what we jokingly refer to as “normal” around here.  Normal?  What is that, anyway?

Hebrews 12:3 says, “For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

Father, thank you for the noise and for the silence.  They both are quite meaningful to us.  And be with Todd and his family as he struggles to recover from sepsis.  Amen.