One of the benefits of journaling is being able to see, through the words we have written, sometimes long, long ago, where we have been, how we’ve progressed—perhaps where we’ve strayed or even gotten lost along the way, and most of all: the realization that what we once saw as a detour was, in fact, the main road.
This recognition that what we perceived as the way around was actually the way through is sometimes revealed to us in a simple statement, catching us by surprise, hidden in one of those throw-away sentences we don’t recall scribbling, a thought that, in retrospect, stands alone, above the rest, because it captures more than a moment. It is both the past and future; even if the future is now history and time spreads itself before us, the yawning mystery that it is, was, and is to come.
Lori and I have passed another milestone now that our daughter, Mary, is married (September 7). All our kids have been up and gone and on their way for years, yet the wedding gave us pause for reflecting on our journey as parents.
Lori, more faithful than I am at journaling, retrieved her notebook from when we first “blended” as a new family with her two and my two. It was challenging: four kids, ages 12, 13, 14, and 16. At times, I felt like the Old West stagecoach driver, bouncing along an uneven trail, pulling one reign and then another, steering around a pothole here, struggling to keep the coach from crashing in a ravine over there.
We had been together less than a month when Lori wrote a long prayer for the kids in her journal, concluding, “Lord, I leave our kids to You and ask that you continue to gently guide them as we blend together.”
One of the most difficult challenges as a parent is not always knowing that you’ve done the right thing. “Should we have waited, let the kids get through the teenage years before blending?” But every decision has a flipside. Had we waited, the question would be, “Should we have blended when they were younger?” They would have missed out on family, or at least this family they could have had.
As Lori and I sat on the back porch, with her old journal in hand, she continued reading. I listened. Her next entry was another prayer, concluding with a request for wisdom as a parent and trusting the Lord for the kids. Then followed something one of the kids said that Lori didn’t remember, a parenthetical sidebar sentence.
“I just heard Dave say, ‘Good night, Harrison—I love you.”
In our first house, the boys were in one room and the girls in another. Lori was walking by when she heard Dave say those simple words.
Lori and I sat staring at each other, soaking in Dave’s words.
Even after all the years, we need reminders of the good, the wholesome, the positive, pointing us to a hopeful future that is now history. Time has a way of erasing the mind’s etchings.
Love was there from the very beginning.
“And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (I Corinthians 13:14).
Yes, I would have to steer the coach over the rough spots, sometimes wiping the dust from my eyes, other times swishing the rain from my face, always it seemed, straining for the middle ground, sometimes flailing about, and when the fog blurred all I thought was certain, when I thought I’d lost the trail, or fearful that I’d become a ghost driver with no one aboard any longer, I kept driving.
Love was there, binding us together, even in a sometimes discordant harmony. Even when I didn’t feel its presence, it was always there, for God’s faithfulness never leaves or forsakes.
Sitting on the back porch, watching the sunset, listening to Lori read her old journal, letting the breeze gently brush my face, God reminded me once again that He was there all along.
And where God is, there is love.
Love was there.
And still is.