hey south county…

i’m sitting at panera bread doing emails/bills and chewing trident watermelon gum.  sugerfree will never measure up.

sitting at a booth directly in front of me is a high school girl and her father.  she isn’t feeling well and goes back and forth from slurping a little bit of soup to laying in the booth.  not sure how real the sickness is.  the father is extremely quiet and when he speaks it’s not audible to me – though i’m trying.  it’s clear that there is someone in the father’s life that the girl doesn’t approve of, hence the statement “i will never like her.”  the girl continues to try and discover the origin of her illness by retracing a sushi lunch and confirming that it wasn’t because she was drinking – because she wasn’t.  she then tells her father some “good news” that she isn’t smoking anymore because “she’s over it”.

a few more exchanges that i didn’t pay attention to because of extreme concentration on my southern california gas company bill, and then the words from the girl to her father out of nowhere that brought on the reason for this blog ::

“i love you very much.”

beat, pause.

“do you love me?”

it was horrible to hear that.

this girl is screaming for attention and hiding and lashing out and begging all in 15 minutes over half-eaten tomato soup.  i don’t know what the father said because the volume on his vocals was still at about a two…but that’s not the point.  the point is that she had to ask.

so here’s our encouragement in all of this.  as representations of jesus to our children, let us make sure that they never have to ask us the same question.  no, we will not say the right thing every time, give the right advice in all circumstances or correctly discern between time-outs and spankings.

but we can love.  we can love.

i truly believe that if our children grow up knowing they are loved, it will help cover a multitude of “misses” by all their broken and imperfect parents. that’s what i pray for.

see you soon,

Chad