Occasionally, I get to pick-up my three-year-old granddaughter at her daycare. Sometimes she’s excited to see me; other times, well, maybe she’s missed her nap. So, I was anticipating how she would react when I surprised her this time.
Lifting her hands in the air with palms up, Emersyn exclaimed in her typical dramatic manner, “Pop-Pop, you’re here to get me,” followed by: “How did you know where to find me?”
“What? You silly,” I said, “I’ve picked you up here several times before. I knew where to find you.”
Her response puzzled me, though I know enough not to overthink what a three-year-old says.
Then I realized I’d been there, too, taken aback that someone remembered to get me and happy that they did.
Like the time when my dad plucked me out of Oscar Teague’s 4th grade Sunday School class. Although Mr. Teague was a good man and brave to attempt teaching a group of rambunctious 4th graders about God, his dentures would click whenever he read from the Bible or the Convention’s Sunday School lessons. And the more he read, the more I fidgeted, and the more I squirmed, the more I gazed at those dentures, anticipating the moment when would fall completely out of his mouth. Then, just when I thought I couldn’t sit still another minute, there was Dad, peering through the classroom door window, ready to rescue me so we could all go to Grandmother Whitlock’s for Sunday lunch.
How did I ever forget that Dad would find me?
Or like the time when I was in college, five and a half hours (If I drove fast) from home. Late one afternoon, when I was longing for family, Dad showed up, just about supper time, with two of his fishing buddies, on the way to Lake Guerrero, Mexico, for their fishing trip. No dorm food for me that night; I got to go out and eat “real food” and talk with my dad and friends. Between bites and the small talk, I squinted my eyes: “How did it happen that Dad came for me?”
And then there was the time years earlier when Mom and Dad came to visit me at Eddie Fisher’s Baseball Camp, my first camp experience. Sure, it was less than twenty miles from home, and the camp only lasted a week, but there they were, Mom and Dad, surprise, surprise. I felt like the Calvary had arrived to strengthen my resolve, all so I could stay on two more days until camp was officially over.
Then there was that day, years ago when as a young pastor in Oklahoma, I was weighed down with all the problems of the world, or so it seemed, under pressure to produce, trying to measure up, make good, meet too many expectations, when seemingly from nowhere, these three friends, deacons in my church no less, showed up: “Preacher, we’ve come to take you out to eat for lunch,” they grinned. Soon we were telling stories, guffawing our way through that lunch, until the waitress came over to check on us one more time, laughing at our laughter, asking how we could have so much fun.
How they found me just at the right moment, I’ll never know.
Then, there was another time, another place, when another friend, a deacon, showed up when trouble was brewing like it sometimes does in churches. Sitting there with me, like the sheriff ready to ward off a lynching mob, he assured me he was not alone, that a host of others were with him in spirit, if not there in person.
He found me, and that strengthened me.
No, Emersyn, it’s not strange that you were surprised that your Pop-Pop showed up, for it only means you are among the many who have smiled a little broader and raised their eyebrows a tad higher at the specter of those who enter or reenter our story, sometimes in the storm, others times in the calm, but always appearing in a time of need, at the right moment.
And in their being there, that is enough.