“Then there was the blur of my mom trying to wake my dad up, then frantically dialing 911, and then the paramedics and then the hospital…”
Phil circa 4yrs old
This afternoon I came home from work and my kids came running into greet me as usual. (I hope that never ends, though I know it will.)
Brennan has been on this kick where he wants me to play up in his room. Of course Emily, his little sister, wants to do whatever he does – so she tags along. So after exchanging hugs and kisses – and me making sure I put my coat in the closet so Leona doesn’t get mad – Brennan asks what he always asks when I get home,
“Daddy…come in my room and play?”
Of course I say yes! So Brennan and I run up the stairs (with Emily following behind shouting, “Me Too!”) and start playing in his room.
Eventually we go into this game I have been playing with Emily where we pretend to sleep. (I think I invented it as a way to catch some z’s while making Leona think I’m still keeping the kid’s entertained, but don’t tell!)
Basically how this game works is we both yell, “Nigh Night Time!” and we smal our heads into the pillows and pretend to snore. If you haven’t heard a 2 year old pretend to snore you are definately missing out. But that’s not the end of the game.
Then one of us yells, “Wake up time” and we all sit up as quickly as we can laughing hysterical as we do it. You have to be there to see it – it’s adorable.
Well, today I was just a little too comfortable after the 12th “Lie down, then get back up” set, so I stayed down. I’m not sure what happened to Emily, but I Brennan was the only one still playing, and so when He yelled, “Wake up!” I didn’t move.
It was then that Brennan started pushing me and emphatically saying, ‘Daddy!! Wake up!. Daaaaaddy! Waaaake uuuup!”
Now under normal circumstances this shouldn’t be anything weird, but all of a sudden a memory that I haven’t revisited came eerily back to me. As I watched my almost 4 year old pushing me and almost crying for me to wake up, I was taken back to when I was about his age.
I’m not sure the day or the time. I think it was around the time I was 4rs old. All I know was that for as long as I remember I had a memory nightmare that begun with me coming down the stairs of our duplex home in Hagerstown Maryland after just waking up. I think it was morning. I walked into the living room and half awake, I saw my father asleep on the couch. So like any son…I wanted my dad to be awake to get me breakfast.
So I said, “Daddy?!”
No response.
“Daddy?” I pushed him
No response.
Now in this nightmare I began to panic. I’m not sure why, but all I remember was that I began to shout and push louder and louder until my mom broke in through the front door and I turned to her and yelled,
“Mommy! Daddy won’t wake up!”
Then there was the blur of my mom trying to wake my dad up, then frantically dialing 911, and then the paramedics and then the hospital…
It wasn’t until I was in my teens did I find from my parents that this nightmare was a reality. I hesitate to tell this story, mostly because I was taught that the private pains of family life should stay private. I don’t know if I really believe that.
So what happened?
As I was told, my parents were having marital problems and my mom basically said she was done. This broke my dad’s heart so bad that when he found out he tried to kill himself by overdosing on pills.
When I woke up that morning, my dad was ready to die. As much as I remember from what I was told, my mother had taken my sister and I was with my father, and the only reason why my mother came in through the door that day was to get some more stuff she had left.
So why am I telling this story? Because it is a story that has made me who I am. What I’ll save for later is how – even through the darkest moments of my early childhood – God worked in my parents lives to eventually save and redeem them.
The reason I tell this story is hopefully to show that God is a God who, in the face of Chaos, is in control and has a perfect plan for each of us. It doesn’t mean that he’ll take us out of Chaos – there were still a lot more stories to be made of hardships and trials. But the constant thing was that through it all, Jesus Christ was the silver lining of hope.
Where’s your hope?
Ephesians 2:12-13
Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
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