Evening
He can recite Psalm 91 at breakneck speed. Which is his preferred pace.
Days away from the sun setting on our season as mancub in my home and the same breaking forth on his new role as husband in his own, I recognize the long familiar shadows in the evening trees as the day draws to a close. The heat of the day is behind us, the long afternoons are a distant memory and the sweet morning hours are forever etched in my heart.
This handsome brown man who was just my little boy, raising all the rabble, is getting married. His soon-to-be wife is a girl who shares our deep family and church roots. They grew from the same tree in the same family of faith. He being spicy, and she sweet.
I learned 3 weddings ago that the whole point of fashioning arrows, the lifetime labor of laying foundations of faith, of truth, of purpose and belonging was to draw those arrows back and let them soar. Fashioning arrows. This thing I loved with every fiber of my being. This wrangling of kids and chaos and baseball games. The lifetime of clearing piano books and soccer balls and girl scout cookie sleeves littered in my big white conversion van. The figuring out of what to make for dinner for the 10,950th time.
When my first child married and I was a newbie at this whole glorious day drawing to a close threshold, I stood at the airport in a complete Mexican-mom stupor after placing my precious daughter’s hand firmly in her new young husband’s a few days after their wedding, and my husband attempted comfort, in all his German-style sensitivity, with “How did you think this was going to end? Arrows aren’t supposed to stay in our quiver. This is what we’ve been working toward all these years.”
Thank you, Craig. That lemon juice was meant for my salad dressing tonight.
Now my fourth is getting married. I can still taste the sweetness of the morning season with this one. The one who ran before he walked and whose scratchy-voiced, slightly Brooklyn-accented toddler language kept me in stitches.
The curious one, whose brain was wired for inquiry, asked me when he was 2 1/2, exactly how the baby got inside my belly and was unsatisfied with my over-simplified explanation of “Jesus put her there.” The one who went on to ask the very Zach-like follow up question of, “If he put her there, how is she getting out?,” which led to his walking slowly around my body, looking for a way out as I explained I would “push her out.” The one whose astonished animated face turned to horror as his 2-year old brain connected all the pushing-things-out-of-your-body dots. And the inevitable talk of poop.
The afternoon season of digging in his heels and refusing to go to the 4th grade because his teacher had a lazy eye and he was seasick at the end of the day. Of trying to force him into the van as his limbs extended like a spider attached to the van doors, with freakish spidey-strength, and of folding him into the van seat, struggling for the seat belt. Of his crawling out his bedroom window and jumping off the roof to the trampoline when he was grounded. Even though his knees always hit his chin on the landing. The pain was worth it.
Of his throwing a hot, fresh-out-of-the oven Totino’s pizza at his brother, who ducked with Matrix-like speed and barely missed the scalding projectile as it slammed into the sliding glass door and slowly slid down, like a scene from a movie. Of his not being able to handle more than 10-minutes apart from this same brother with aching amounts of love.
The early evening season of watching him obtain his undergraduate and graduate degrees with honors. And seeming ease. And breakneck speed.
Of becoming a financial analyst working in an office on the top floor of some fancy, highfalutin Downtown Denver building. Of his coming home and still asking me to scratch his brown man cub back at the end of the day as he plays adoringly with his toddler nieces and nephews. All the while keeping an eye on the evening hour.
The day is almost over and he still recites Psalm 91 before he falls asleep. He memorized it way back in the heat of the afternoon. He recites it and then he lays down in his bed. The one that smells like him. The one he’s going to pack up in a few days.
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” (Psalm 91)
My fourth is getting married. May he continue to dwell in Almighty’s shadow. May he always stay and stand his ground, drawn near, and cling to His presence. May he never look for refuge in another place.
It’s evening.