Dear Richard

Dear Richard,

How can you not believe in God when the beauty and pain of it all mingles and swirls and settles in the heart? Even the beauty hurts, especially so, and the pain bleeds into the beauty.

To be a father is to watch you and your sister play in the sun, chasing each other with the hose, and to know the other shoe will drop someday. Suffering, and tightness in your chest, grieving and fumbling around for words, surely it’s all coming your way, boy, and I can’t steer the suffering away, but I’ll be your home while I’m here, and show you Christ because death already tried taking Him from you and failed.

I suspect you will love deeply, and yet be self contained in a way others won’t relate to.

Somehow it’ll be alright

If you

Just sit back in your car

Sit and stare a while

Try to think of something to say

Start and stop

Stare at your boots

And sigh

It won’t always be this way

But you’Il know you won’t… can’t change.

And now heaven’s an another empty place

Because we couldn’t stand each other

Isn’t that the diagnosis for every broken friendship?

This narrowing night

This harrowing light

Dark hearts unite.

One of the lingering pains of being human is the frustration of being perceptive enough to know how you are and the crashing and burning of failing to change.

I think you should know I love you, and I like everything about you.

Here’s what I’m banking on: Resurrection.

Resurrection is like when you’re in the carwash and they spray so much red white and blue soap on the windows everything goes dark, and you think to yourself, “How do I come out on the other end clean when I’m sitting in so much darkness.”

Just when the darkness stifles and frustrates to despair the garage door opens and you put it in drive and find yourself in light, and in the fresh air.

And I’ll be there.