“to love Jesus the best that i can.”
they’re standing upfront, her boys, dressed in khakis and plaid. the one with the beard is going to Honduras to clean up drinking water and sing in spanish and speak sermons, the other, in plastic rims, to climb Himalayan mountains to deliver the gospel to villages that can be reached no other way.
someone once asked these boys, when they were young, what they wanted to do when they grew up, and they said, “to love Jesus the best that i can.”
i rest hand on curve of my womb where a boy kicks unseen, and below in nursery, another eats crackers and wheels trucks and i need to learn from this mother. i see the back of her head. she sits beside them now in the pew, and i see her lean towards the one with the beard, the one who has her eyes, and they talk.
aiden is turning 18 months and his check-up is soon and they’ll ask if he can speak the required eight words and i want to cry for all of his effort, for all of the questions he asks in baby language, for the way he points to pictures when i ask him to and for the silence he returns when i beg him to speak actual words. it’s a hard silence, the kind that tells me he’s struggling, even as he wraps his arms around my neck or kisses me on the lips, but all that comes out is a jumble of sounds.
i didn’t speak until i was four. i tell myself this over and over but a mother’s worries are endless until i’m sitting there in church, staring up front at these two boys whose only desire is to know Jesus, and the vocabulary fades.
home now from church, and i whisper to him, “you’re perfect, just as you are” and he holds onto me like a life preserver and i am the one now, without voice.
and all i care about is the faith forming mustard-seed inside of him. that he might listen, that he might hear the call of God, and scale mountains to share the gospel … the Word… even if he does it all in silence.
thanking Him for these, with her…
331. the life of my son/s
332. a husband who believes
333. perspective-giving moments
334. long bike rides in spring sun
335. the smell of new grass and overturned soil
336. mother-in-law’s cinnamon buns
337. an anticipated visit from my parents this week
338. cook-out with friends
339. a sleep-in saturday morning
340. tomorrow’s mystery