Hearts of Her Palm
Message from God: All your heart are belong to us.
Love is God's mafia. Children are her hit men. And just the other day I got whacked.
I’ll tell you about getting whacked in a minute, but first let me say this:
There will always, always be children. Lots of children. They’re very patient. Not as individuals, mind you, but as a group they are quite persistent – like Mother Nature. Sooner or later you’ll have an unguarded moment in the presence of just the right child. You’ll walk around a corner and find a red laser dot on your heart. Game over.
I’ve become pretty good at guarding my heart. A pastor must learn the fine art of loving children, but keeping your heart safe from them. It’s easy to shut down your love, and it’s easy to give your heart away, willy-nilly, until there is none left. The art is in knowing what to give and knowing what to keep and being present for the long haul.
They don’t teach this in seminary.
So, back to my story. It was last Friday night, okay? And I was at home hanging out with J. and the three sisters. We had a little origami going early, and my oldest daughter was going to watch “Alien” with us for the first time after the younger ones were asleep.
Just a typical Friday night at our house. I was folding a little box or something when Tom called. His new apartment is nearby, and he wondered if I wouldn’t mind running over there real quick to help him carry a TV upstairs.
I told the girls, “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” The two smaller sisters hardly looked up from their swans.
See, this is how they get you. This is how children do it. They wait patiently, then pop out of the bushes and take you out. There you are at home with your origami and the popcorn going in the microwave. You let your guard down for JUST a moment, drive to your friend’s apartment to do a routine favor, and bam, some kid nails you.
When I got out of my car, Joseph saw me from upstairs.
I haven’t told you about Joseph, have I? Joseph is Tom’s little boy. I did mention that time Joseph lost my Superball, but I don’t think I’ve ever really told you about him.
Joseph is two-and-a-half. He’s always just exactly as messy as a little boy should be. Shirttail out, hair sticking up a bit, a little daub of dirt on the cheek. I swear it’s like they hired a fashion consultant to mess him up for a photo shoot. I’m serious.
He talks a hundred miles an hour, but he mispronounces almost all of his words, which is cute, but what really kills me is his voice. It’s kind of hoarse, you know? It’s kind of a hoarse, little boy voice. It’s insane, really. I mean, they ought to have some kind of law against letting this kid run around loose.
So Joseph is peeking between the slats in the railing, and he sees me, right? From upstairs. And he starts running down the stairs, calling my name over and over in this wildly excited way like I’m Santa Claus or something. And he’s mispronouncing it every time in the cutest way you can imagine.
I’ve never done anything to deserve this kind of affection from him, by the way. It was way overdone, but he’s so little that he can get away with that, which gives him great power. There really wasn’t anything I could do. It was such a huge production that I had to play my part, right?
Now I’m standing there, waiting for him to get the bottom of the stairs, hearing my mispronounced name echo around the stairwell. I hear him coming, and he gets to the bottom, calls my name again in that killer voice, and runs straight for me with his arms out.
And suddenly there's this red dot on my heart.
Because on the day we got the news that we were having our third daughter, I had a little grief vision. I had always dreamed of having a son and naming him Elliott, and when I got the news, I had a vision of Elliott holding a baseball glove. He hung his head, turned, and walked away from me.
And Joseph is just exactly the kind of little boy I dreamed Elliott would be. Only this time he wasn't turning away, he was running for me, calling my name, mispronouncing it sweetly, not that he needed that extra little touch.
Joseph, you had me at the bottom of the stairs. You didn't need to go any further.
But he did go further.
He never slows down, hitting me at a dead run and jumping into my arms, so I go ahead and pull him in for a hug, only he means this to be a serious hug, so he clutches me with his little arms and pulls his face deep into my chest. He mispronounces my name one last time as his mouth presses into me. The sound muffles into a vibration heading straight for my heart. I can feel the movement of his lips even through my shirt. I feel something prickly on the back of my neck, and my cheeks flush.
No fair.
There was a day long ago, before I had words to describe anything I knew. My daddy was gone and I hurt. I had no name for grief. I hurt and I knew that if daddy came back this hurt would go away. And when he finally came in the door he was so big, like all the way up to the ceiling almost, and I ran to him and jumped and was lifted up into his chest for a huge hug.
I tell you that moment was so full of raw joy that I still remember the color of the shirt he was wearing. It was a bluish, plaid flannel shirt, and it felt like him, and it smelled like him. I buried my face into his chest, and I knew nothing but goodness.
This was not a linear recall. It was a puncticular data dump, a memory singularity. When Joseph came into my arms, I received this memory whole, and a door in my chest popped open, as if someone had said the magic word. And little Joseph pulled out my heart and put it in his pocket.
And he was smiling. He had no idea what he had just done.
I’ve been around for forty-one years. I have loved and lost. I have committed acts of evil and glimpsed the possibility of goodness. I know what it means to be one flesh with a woman, and I know what it means to grieve alone. We have brought children into this world, loving them and struggling against them. I am a complex man, and the keys to my heart are kept safe.
And this little boy walks up to me, at the time and place of his choosing, on his terms, and takes my heart from my vault like it was no big thing? Are you kidding me?
Yes he did. And now I love him. I would protect him, throwing myself in harm’s way if need be. I would take him into my home if all his family were lost. I’m not even on the third team, but I’m happy to play backup, way down the line after all the uncles and second cousins. Way down there somewhere, I stand between Joseph and the abyss.
Love will make you unselfish that way.
I think love is The Creator’s watermark, left imprinted on our hearts when we were still wet from the earth out of which we were made.
The Creator had in mind the biggest scavenger hunt ever, a real happy/sad affair that She calls “The Journey.” Our hearts are the biggest clue.
The Creator says, “You might never call my name, or you might call me every name in the book. You may search for me all of your life, or you may never give me a second thought, but you WILL know how I felt on the day I made you.”
“You might deny my existence, but you will never be able to deny the mark of my palm on your soft hearts. Your hearts will rise up and call you blessed.”
“Your hearts will tell you who you are, and whose you are.”
