“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” Psalm 23
Last night I visited with my Dad.
We chatted all evening about the family… how my brother and I were
doing, how his grandsons have made lives for themselves as wonderful fathers
and husbands, and of course all about the wonder of his 5 great-grandchildren.
Last night I also had a “special sleep-over” with Annie, his “middle” great-grandchild.
At age 5, she exudes his goodness, and embodies his mercy. She even has a good
deal of his sense of humor, her ready smile open to even the silliest joke. In fact, until last night, I had never really
thought about how much Annie reminded me of my father.
We went for pizza with our friends, and Annie was so good while we interspersed
adult conversation with attention to her.
Afterwards, we bought a couple of puzzles for some “special Auntie and
Annie time.” She starts in the middle
and works her way to the edges, while I am definitely an edges-in puzzle
solver. As the evening wore on and the
pieces were coming together, she fought sleep… wanting to make sure all the
pieces were in place before she retired.
If I became impatient, she chided me with a wry grin. Since puzzle time is just an excuse for
conversation, she talked about all her friends at school, but never forgot
about her two friends from pre-school whom she missed because they went to a
different Kindergarten. And of course
when the puzzle was done and she slumped into bed exhausted, I’m sure God would
have forgiven a perfunctory bedtime prayer, but instead he got classic “Annie:” “Dear Lord, thank you for my Mom, because
without her I would not be here, and I would not have this wonderful life. So thank you Lord for my wonderful life. And God, please take care of everyone who is
sick, and especially take care of my family.”
Because I saw him after I put Annie to bed, I shared that verbatim intercession
of supplication, filled with gratitude and mercy, with my father. Coming from his 5-year old
great-granddaughter, it filled him with pride.
I called to mind others of her bedtime prayers, with which I regale my
friends regularly because Annie is, as her Mom Susan calls her, her “Old Soul.”
Dad especially loved how she often opens
her prayers with “Lord, open our hearts…” or “God, you are my friend and I am
yours…” but how she always ends with “…and please take care of my family.”
I slept really well last night.
During my sleep I remembered why Annie’s life cadence of goodness and
mercy seems so rhythmic and familiar to me.
It is my father’s. His
puzzle-solving also ended only when all the pieces were in place… when he knew
he could trust God to take care of his family.
You see, my father died before Annie was born, and last night he came
to me in a dream. I know he was
interested in a family update, but I would have supposed that my special
interest in telling him all about Annie was because he never experienced her in
person. But really, Dad and Annie taught
me a lesson last night about the real meaning of “surely goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
I had often found comfort in that familiar verse of the 23rd Psalm,
yet always assumed that it meant goodness and mercy could be ours as we walked this
earthly journey. What Dad and Annie
taught me last night was that giving goodness and mercy in this life can mean
that you will see those attributes follow you into eternity in lives yet to be
lived here on earth.
I am sure I will see Dad more often in puzzles and bedtime prayers. I hope, though, that I will honor his lessons
of love more fervently as I realize that they can impact the future of those I
love, even after I am only a dream.
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