imperfect prose on thursdays: on how to be known

we sit, table round, coffee and pastries and children pooling cars and duplos and toys and we’re mothers making talk around the noise. “it’s my biggest fear,” i mouth around bite which flakes, “that i will get to heaven and God will say, ‘i never knew you.'”

and in saying it i believe it, until another rejection blinks bold on my computer screen and in spite of all of the writer’s books which tell you to paper your walls with them and in spite of all the authors who’ve had them, countless, i know the truth: my biggest fear is not being known by God, but not being known here on earth.

and it crumbles me into a thousand kleenex and i’m so thankful for a baby boy who’s found busy in the placing of crayons

why, this need to be known by a world that so easily forgets?

i stand, wipe eyes and son is hungry, so i feed him and he laughs at the way i talk to him and touches my cheek, and begs me to stay a little longer but i go to the sink, wash out the cloth and glance out the window and there, the shadow of a man crossing the road that curves country before our house, and here, a voice, saying “don’t forget about them.”

the man’s shadow disappears against the line of trees which stand so rooted, and i turn to the boy who’s watching my back and remember what my husband said when i asked him how he could be so content. “because even if i lost my job and my house and all of those things, i’d still have you and aiden, and that would be enough, because we’re a family.”

my son will remember me. my husband will too, and God is in their faces, in their begging, “stay a little longer,” and so i do, while the rejections blink bright across the screen.

*in light of this learning, i’m closing comments today, hoping instead you’ll link a post or visit someone who has, and encourage them–so thankful, so very thankful, for you, who know me, for i see him in you*

1. link up a post (old or new) that you feel is ‘broken’ or ‘imperfect’ or somehow redemptive
2. put the ‘imperfect prose’ button at the bottom of your post, so others can find their way back here (see button code in right-hand column of my blog)
3. read other’s offerings, and encourage them!

imperfect prose Participants