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The other day William waltzed into our bedroom wearing a shirt we’d never seen him in before. It was maroon, a color not normally seen around in this household. On the back there were large numbers on it and a name above them – Clark. Then it hit me: he had dug out (from God knows where – the garage?) my old little league uniform. The front read: Tower Little League, All Stars, 91. Dad was the coach that year, and I was the shortstop. That was the year a screeching line drive smacked me in the back of the ear during practice, and the year a drunk umpire called strike three on a pitch that was above my head. I remember dad consoling me after many losses that year. That tear-stained jersey is almost thirty years old. And it fits William perfectly.

That’s hard to take.

Will has also decided, because he has nothing better to do, than to rearrange our house. He started with my closet. He placed all my socks in a basket, and guards it with his life. If I want a pair, I must ask his permission – they’re his socks now, after all – and he gives me what he thinks I need. It’s like waiting in line at a gulag for a rotten commie potato.

Wearing shorts today, Daddy? You get a pair of black dress socks, and you will be thankful for it!

As for my t-shirts, he’s decided to annex them as well. My shirts used to drape down over him like a curtain, but increasingly, not so much. This kid is built like a Panzer. His shoulders are broad, solid, like the grill on the front of a 78 Chevy. The other day, he moved our entertainment center – it weighs at least 75 pounds – across the room like it was nothing. Yesterday morning he moved our trampoline across the yard, after he had lifted a large boulder I had placed on it to keep the trampoline from blowing away in a dust storm. This is what happens when your diet is 75% Greek yogurt. I think back to the doctor who told us, almost fourteen years ago, that because of William’s condition he would have “low muscle tone.”

Ha.

But what’s most amazing of all is William’s single mindedness: his rearrangements, his ordering and reordering of the furniture in his room, his obsession with folding and hanging clothes, and his commitment to a morning exercise routine of jumping on the trampoline at 7 AM, like a rooster alerting the neighbors that morning is here. When William sets his mind to do something, he goes about his business like the Queen’s Guard. If you try to interrupt him, he brusquely says “No, hush,” and marches on. He’s not trying to be rude. He just has things to do. And as I watch him carry out his plans with absolute confidence and purpose, while the emails pile up, the papers to grade pile up, the bills pile up, the decisions pile up…

Well, it’s hard to take.

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“We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.” – Queen Elizabeth

By a strange historical quirk, both of my grandfathers passed away on the same day: April 13^th. We called both of them Pappas, so it can be a little confusing.

Clark Moreland (my Dad’s dad) passed away suddenly in 2002. I was in college, working at Chick-Fil-A on a Saturday afternoon when Carrie called with the news. I broke down in tears and ran out of the restaurant. His mother, Mamaw Moreland, died on the same day, April 13^th, many years before. His father-in-law, Waldo Parker, had died two years before him, also in April. Needless to say, our family can’t wait for May to arrive.

My other grandfather, Dan Foreman, passed away twelve years later, on April 13^th, 2018, after a long illness. I had just finished teaching a class at UTPB when Carrie called with the news. I drove to their house on “L” Street, where Carrie and Granny were with talking with the folks from Hospice. Pappas lay in his bed, wearing the same kind of white undershirt I had seen on him for more than thirty-five years. He was curled up, his body worn down by illness, and his eyes were closed, but I’ll never forget the expression on his face. He was smiling.

Not that it surprised me. For both of my grandfathers, joy had been sown deep into their hearts. In fact, I don’t remember either one of them not smiling. But this was different: it looked like the smile of little Danny Foreman, like a boy who has found a lost puppy, or has just heard that school is out for summer vacation, or who sees his daddy coming home after a long day. He had told me only a few days before that he was ready to go home, and as the Hospice worker carried his body away, I caught one last glimpse of his face, and I knew. I just knew. Friday the 13^th, April, 2018, sixteen years to the day after Pappas Moreland left earth, Pappas Foreman had gone home to join him.

These were men of purpose and vigor. They had lived in West Texas their entire lives. Pappas Moreland grew up in the Depression. Dad likes to talk about how Pappas never really ate a big supper; his main meal of the day was lunch, but supper, most nights, was simply a glass of buttermilk and a piece of bread, the same meal he had gratefully enjoyed as a young boy surviving the Dust Bowl. Pappas Foreman also lived on a farm, and his home was destroyed by a tornado when he was a boy. My grandfathers made it through World Wars and Cold Wars and Wars on Terror, through booms and busts, and somehow kept their wits about them. They raised families that loved the Lord and gave generously to people in need. They had their share of sickness and tragedy, like all of us have, yet they never lost what Queen Elizabeth identified in her remarkable speech a few weeks ago: their “quiet, good-humoured resolve.”

But they never saw a pandemic like this. They never saw oil prices crash like this.

I sit at my computer and watch William walk by, carrying a load of folded clothes that he’s going to transfer from my closet to his. I envy him. Oil is trading below zero, my bosses are talking about budget cuts, my guys from Sunday school are texting me horror stories from the front lines, and the news tells me more people are going to die of COVID-19 this year than heart disease.

I don’t know what to do.

I’m supposed to be a leader at work, a leader at my church, a leader of my home. People are waiting for me to speak, to solve problems, to move the needle. But I can’t. I want to crawl back into the little league shirt and be ten years old again, because that would mean that actual men would be sitting where I am now, men like my grandfathers. They would know what needs to be done, and they would do it.

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“His hands are empty so that God can fill them.” – Augustine, Homilies on the Psalms

C.S. Lewis relates a story that his wife Joy had once told him, about how one morning she was haunted by “a feeling that God wanted something of her, a persistent pressure like the nag of a neglected duty.” However, when she finally decided to stop worrying about it, a soft voice whispered to her, “I don’t want you to do anything, I want to give you something.” Immediately, Lewis says, her heart was “filled with peace and delight” (Collected Letters, vol. 3, 930).

We are told in the Psalms to “be still and know that I am God” (46:10). “The LORD will fight for you,” we are assured; “you have only to be silent” (Ex. 14:14).

I’ve never been good at being still and silent. Ask my mom. Whenever I would reach the zenith of my boyish obnoxiousness, Mom and Dad would send me off to spend the night at Pappas’s house, partly as a gift to me, and partly to keep from having to kill me. Sometimes my sisters would accompany me, and we would set up a grocery store in Granny’s kitchen, or sneak off to the park across the street, or even wander over to the Children’s Museum or the Planetarium.

Some nights, though, it was just Pappas and me. We would pick up fried chicken or hamburgers, go to a ballgame, or just hang out at the “L” Street house and play Battleship. After supper, we’d head over to Walgreens and buy some Bluebell or a Big Red Bucket, which was a five-gallon container of Gandy’s ice cream – vanilla, nothing fancy. We’d come home, and I’d scoop out as much as I could fit into a bowl, and then drench it in Hershey’s chocolate syrup that came out of a can.

Then he would give me one of his undershirts to sleep in. When I was younger those shirts would cover me from shoulders to toes; the older I got, the smaller the shirts got. Then we’d crawl into bed with Granny, and he’d turn on Johnny Carson. I’d pull the shirt over my knees and sit like Buddha in the middle of the bed. Granny would remind Pappas to change the channel if something risqué ever came on, but I don’t remember Pappas ever having to, and besides, Granny was already asleep by the time Carnac made his appearance. I would aspire to stay awake for Letterman, but as soon as Johnny began interviewing his guests, I too would drift off into the warm, peaceful sleep that little boys are granted.

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“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” – John 14:27

Maundy Thursday night, William decided he would sleep in our upstairs study. The problem is that there isn’t a bed in that room.

Heh, like that’s gonna stop William Clark Moreland.

He gathered all the essentials. He packed a suitcase full of clothes, each piece neatly folded and stuffed. He filed two Piggie and Elephant books and a Curious George book (Curious George Goes to the Chocolate Factory, which I am willing to give to anyone who asks) into one of my backpacks, along with a box of cookies and a chocolate milk container. Then he laid out his pallet: his new REI 30* rated sleeping bag that he fell in love with during our (failed) camping trip; sheets and pillows; an umbrella (?); and a mirror that had previously been hanging on the bathroom wall (??).

“Daddy, time for bed.”

I creaked downward and rested on the hardwood floor. We read the Curious George book. Again. As soon as we finished, Will said, “Daddy, Will’s school’s sick.”

“Yes, I know son. We can’t go back to school yet.”

“Daddy, go to church at home.”

“Yes. We watched church at home this week.”

“Daddy, prayers.”

We thanked God for our home. We prayed for the sick and for our friends who are hurting financially. We prayed for Will’s teachers and for his friends who are considered at risk for contracting the virus. We prayed for his grandparents. Then we prayed for Granny.

“Daddy, Pappas in heaven.”

“Yes, that’s right Will. Pappas is in heaven. Do you know, that’s what Easter means? Jesus died, and then he came back to life.”

His eyes lit up: “Yeah, Jesus. God’s Son!”

“That’s right. And now, Pappas is in heaven because of what Jesus did for him. Do you want to go to heaven?”

“Yeah!”

“Ok, well all you have to do is trust in Jesus. Do you know what that means?”

“Yeah.”

Did he really understand? Maybe not. But no more than me. I’m learning, though. Yes Jesus, I’m learning, every day, how to trust You. How to be still and know that You are God. How to be silent and let You win the victory. My hands are open, Lord, ready to receive what You send our way. Thy will be done.

“Ok, well we’ll talk about that later, son. Now it’s time for bed.”

“Good night, Daddy.” His eyes were already starting to flutter. I lay next to Will for a few minutes as he drifted off into the warm, peaceful sleep that little boys are granted. I’d like to say I stayed there because I was meditating on some profound idea, but the truth is, I didn’t have the strength to get up from the ground just yet.

Then Will suddenly jerked back awake, and looked at me with frightened eyes.

“Daddy?”

I laid my hand on his chest. “Yes, son, I’m here. Just be still. Daddy’s here.”

Boys,

The Bible says that “you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.”[1] None of us are guaranteed another day on earth. Therefore, your mother and I thought it wise to write down what we hold dear, in hopes of passing it on to you before the Lord takes us home. Our possessions will one day be distributed with a legal instrument, but this matters much more. This is the treasure that was passed down to us, which we now pass to down to you.

***

We give you grace and kindness.

Your great-grandfather Clark never turned down a chance to be hospitable to strangers.[2] When he had a dinner at his home, he invited the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.[3] Your great-grandfather Dan was a kind, gentle and tender-hearted man.[4] He gave to everyone who asked of him, and if anyone took something from him, he did not demand it back.[5] I never once heard him complain about personal hardships. Ever. You have seen how your Papa would put everything else aside to help us with household repairs, because he counts others more significant than himself.[6] And your Nannie has often had occasion to discipline you with harsh words, which you deserved, but has instead offered you the teaching of kindness,[7] grace upon grace.[8]

Your great-grandfather Clark would always ask, whenever someone told him about a new church, “Do they preach grace there?” Every other religion or philosophy teaches what we can do, but grace is not about that. It is a gift from God,[9] purchased by the precious blood of Christ.[10] And if we draw near to the throne of grace, God gives it in our time of need.[11] He has an inexhaustible supply.

Grow in grace, boys. Be kind to retail workers. At a restaurant, ask the server how you can pray for them before you eat. Listen patiently to lonely people on airplanes who tell you their sorrows. Give a word of encouragement to our friends on the street, and then give liberally from your wallet as the Lord allows. Be gracious to sojourners, to ugly people, to those living with disabilities, to orphans, and to the lost. For so we were, until the Lord offered us the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness.[12]

***

We give you the Book.

Like our ancestors, we are People of the Book. Oh, certainly there are plenty of books laying around our homes. How often have you seen your Pops reading Lonesome Dove or a Jack Higgins novel? Or Marmie reading The Giver or To Kill a Mockingbird, again. Or Nannie and your mother with their detective novels. Or me with a C.S. Lewis book! It’s been our greatest privilege to share our love of books with you. We have treasured reading Narnia and Harry Potter and Llama Llama and Elephant and Piggie with you. We were reading books to you when you were still in momma’s belly and in your tiny cribs. Someday we hope you’ll return the favor and read to us while we lay in our deathbeds, ending our days as we began yours.

Some books mean one thing to us when we are a certain age, and something different as we grow older. The Horse and His Boy, for instance, meant one thing to me as a child running up the hills behind the cabin, leaving New Mexico behind for Narnia, and another thing to me as a father reading about Shasta’s encounter on the road with Aslan, realizing that the One Lion had always been at my side, praying He would always be at yours.

But there is one Book that is different from all others. It is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, equipping us for every good work.[13] It is alive! Nothing else cuts like this book.[14] It revives our souls and makes wise the simple.[15] Only this book can illuminate your path[16] and encourage you with the hope that never fades.[17] I don’t know if we’ll be reading The Horse and His Boy or Lonesome Dove for the rest of eternity, but we will be meditating on this book forever and ever, for it is from the very mouth of our Lord.[18]

Begin and end your days by meditating on it.[19] Begin and end your decisions by consulting it. Sow it deep into your heart and take every thought captive to it. Speak it to your spouses, children, colleagues, and strangers. Discover the delights God has stored up for you in studying it. And then obey it. We have never regretted obeying God’s Word.

***

We give you joy.

Every Thanksgiving we watch a movie called Plains, Trains, and Automobiles. In one scene, Del tells Neal, who’s been having a rough trip home, “Go with the flow, like a twig on the shoulders of a mighty stream.” Del laughs as he says it. We find out later that Del is homeless and a widower. But with a twinkle in his eye, he says, “Go with the flow.”

Your Marmie and Pops have taught us to do just that. When life hands the Morelands hardships, we shake our heads, laugh, and say, as Pappas Foreman did, “Mercy.” We earnestly seek joy in sorrow. Sometimes it takes a while to locate, but we know it’s buried in there somewhere. We are confident that He who began a good work in us will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.[20] We believe that God knows what we want better than we do. We believe, as our friend Cory says, that God paints on a bigger canvas than we can imagine. That doesn’t mean we sit by when others are suffering or that our actions don’t matter. You both have a marrow-deep hatred of injustice, as you should.

No, we’re talking about the kind of steadfast courage that allowed Dr. King to hew out of mountains of despair stones of hope. The kind of unshakeable peace that allowed Paul, chained to the wall in a freezing Roman prison awaiting execution, to say to Timothy, with a twinkle in his eye, “Suffer hardship with me.”[21] The abiding presence that says, “Trust Me one more time, child.” The kind of ceaseless devotion to our family, to our calling, and above all to our Lord, that allows us to rejoice, for the Lord is near![22]

Go with the flow, boys, like a twig on the shoulders of a mighty stream. I know you still have questions about why Will has Down syndrome, or what careers and places you two will settle into. We don’t know the answers to those questions either. We are acquainted with sorrow. But when those times come – when it comes down to the mortgage or the tithe, when you’re at the ER in the middle of the night, when William spits in your face or when Samuel ignores your request to jump on the trampoline, when you’re losing at cards or at life – shake your head, laugh, and say with a twinkle in your eye, “Mercy.” For “a cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are invited to follow our Great Captain inside.”[23] And so, we rejoice, evermore!

***

Boys, before you were born, He formed your inward parts. He wove you in your mother’s womb. We give thanks to Him, for you are fearfully and wonderfully made. His works are wonderful, and we know this very well.[24] We pray that where we go, you will go also, just as our Lord prayed for us.[25] May the Lord stand with you and strengthen you. May he fully accomplish His will in you. May he rescue you from every evil deed, so that all might hear of His works and glorify Him. And may he bring you safely home to His heavenly kingdom.[26]

Grace, kindness, illumination, and joy be with you always.

 

In the love of our Lord,

Mom and Dad

 

[1] James 4:14

[2] Hebrews 13:2

[3] Luke 14:13

[4] Ephesians 4:32

[5] Luke 6:30

[6] Philippians 2:3

[7] Proverbs 31:27

[8] John 1:16

[9] Ephesians 2:8

[10] Acts 20:28

[11] Hebrews 4:16

[12] Ephesians 2:7

[13] 2 Timothy 3:16

[14] Hebrews 4:12

[15] Psalm 19:7

[16] Psalm 119:105

[17] Romans 15:4

[18] Isaiah 55:11

[19] Joshua 1:8

[20] Philippians 1:6

[21] 2 Timothy 2:3

[22] Philippians 4:5

[23] C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” p. 9.

[24] Psalm 139:13-14

[25] John 17:24

[26] 2 Timothy 4:17-18

SAM SEABORNE: “You know anything about chaos theory?”

MALLORY O’BRIEN: “I know it has to do with fractal geometry.”

SAM: “That’s about all I know too. But it has to do with there being order and even great beauty, in what looks like total chaos. And if we look closely enough at the randomness around us, patterns will start to emerge.” – The West Wing, “20 Hours in America”

We have a playlist we listen to every morning on the way to William’s school. Actually, it’s my iPhone’s “25 Most Played” playlist, and at that we only listen to the first four or five songs. I have to promise to play these songs, or William will sit in the hallway and pout about how his throats so bad that he can’t go to school, until I say, “Will, you want to listen to the ‘Little Song’ in the car?”

“Okay Daddy,” he says with a smile. He stands up, grabs his backpack, and off we go.

The songs we listen to in the morning are, in order:

• “Make a Little,” by Midland. This is a country music band named after our town, though they’re not actually from Midland. I’m hoping that William doesn’t know what the lyrics to “Make a Little” mean.
• “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” by Johnny Rivers, or as Will affectionately refers to it, the “Boogie Song.” This is actually the first song on the playlist, which we currently listen to after “Make a Little.” We’ve played this song a whopping 678 times since I purchased it. Great song, right? Wait until you’ve listened to it 678 times. You may not want to boogie to it ever again.
• “I Am A River,” by Foo Fighters. When William requests this song (and yes, no matter how often we play the same songs, he still asks for each one), we always repeat the same liturgy:

WILL: “Daddy, Ricker song. Ricker song!”

DADDY: “Say it right, Bubba.”

WILL: “Riiiivvvvvvvveeeeerrrrrrr song.”

• “Rolling in the Deep” and “Don’t You Remember,” both by Adele. We alternate between these songs depending on how bad the traffic is and what kind of mood Will is in. William has always had a thing for divas. Please don’t ever introduce Mariah Carey to him.

Other songs have come and gone in Will’s greatest hits – “Thank God I’m a Country Boy,” “Atlantis,” and “Stuck like Glue” come to mind – but the five I have listed are the Top of the Pops, the undefeated champions of our commute.

But this year, something extraordinary has happened. The planets have aligned. The eclipse has arrived. Yes, there’s a new song that William has begun asking to listen to…

 

“New York, New York,” by Frank Sinatra.

You may have noticed that Will’s musical tastes are as eclectic as his Daddy’s, but I didn’t expect him to latch on to a showtune from Sinatra’s later period. Does he even know what New York is? Does he understand the meaning of the song? Does he know that Frank Sinatra sings the song? I’m not sure about answers to any of these questions. But he knows every word to it, and if I don’t have the “The New Yoke Song” playing when I pick William up in the car line after school, I get an earful. The Chairman of the Board has issued his decree, and I’d better follow orders.

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Considering how fastidious he is about music in the car, you might assume the rest of Will’s life is arranged in orderly, neat rows; that is, until you walk into the dumpster fire that is his room.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Clark, you have a thirteen-year-old. This is normal.” But this is not mere laziness or messiness. He’s not Pigpen from Peanuts. No, William loves to arrange things in his room. This week alone, he has moved his bed to four different spots. Yesterday, he asked to clean his room. An hour later, when I went to check on his progress, I found the door was blocked by every single thing he owned.

Under piles of blankets, clothes, books, empty yogurt cups, and steamer trunks (it’s all very exciting as a luggage problem), I spotted one of his most prized possessions: his “Tidy Desk Award” from school last year.

I attempted to put it back on his bookshelf, a more suitable place of honor so I thought. I was quickly reprimanded: “No Daddy, don’t touch! That’s mine!” And he carefully tucked it back under a pair of shorts, right where he had left it.

These arrangement battles spill over into other rooms too. We’ve been having a month-long conversation about where the upstairs bookshelf belongs…

We’ve engaged in a scholarly colloquy about whether extra copies of my book would be best arranged in a floral pattern on the floor…

Or whether they should be stacked alongside his other favorite author, Mo Willems, in a suitcase…

Or whether the Mo Willems books are better suited for display on his bed.

There’s his demand that the refrigerator be stocked with chocolate milks and juice boxes arranged in rows of two.

Then there’s the 100 Years War over my sock basket. Unsatisfied with scattering his own clothes across the house, he decided to seize upon my socks, hiding them under his bed, pairing them with his own (I often find rolled up sock pairs where one is mine and the other is his), or just flat out tossing them into the floor.

It’s cute until you pull a sock up and your toes discover there’s day-old yogurt inside.

If you’ve had any regular contact with William over the last year, you know about his clothes obsession. It has been especially problematic at school. At one point last year, he was packing several shirts and pairs of underwear in his school backpack, then spending all his free time folding them into neat piles. Perhaps a future career at Gap awaits? At home, he will take a suitcase of clothes to the backyard, sit on the trampoline or under the cool shade of a tree, and fold them while listening to birds and passing cars. It’s his moment of Zen.

It may sound like I’m making fun of him, and I suppose I am trying to find the humor in a situation that can be incredibly frustrating for his mother and me, who would prefer to find things where we left them, and would prefer not to find yogurt in our socks. We’ve refrained from using words like “OCD” or “hoarding” to describe these behaviors, but there’s no doubt that Will’s brain is on the hunt for stimulation and pattern arrangement.

Not that I’m any different. When he holds a shirt up and smooths out all the wrinkles, I’m reminded of how I used to iron my cargo khaki shorts when I was in college (Carrie, thanks again for marrying me). Or when he arranges his books on his bed, I think about how I used to arrange every Hardy Boys novel on my bookshelf alphabetically by title, and even today how I arrange books by author and genre. I admit it – if I come to your house and observe your books haphazardly tossed on a shelf, I secretly judge you. How can you not have a system of organizing your books?

But that’s the thing about William’s room: he knows where everything is. He has a system. I just haven’t been able to decode it yet.

Last month for William’s birthday, we took him to Rosa’s (imagine that). As with many people with sensory disorders, Will only enjoys eating at a select number of restaurants. He wore the birthday cake hat (as is tradition in the Moreland family) and licked his nacho plate clean. Then he scarfed down the family’s bowl of chips and queso, giggling about getting cheese on my pants.

Then we went back to our house to open presents. As he unwrapped them and discovered he had received everything he had asked for – chocolate milk boxes, bags of White Cheddar Cheetos Puffs, M&Ms, and a Buzz Lightyear toy that he promptly broke – Carrie remarked that few other kids would find so much joy in simple pleasures. But what brought him the most joy, I think, was after the presents were opened. He carefully stacked all his gifts in an empty cardboard box, like it was a Tetris game, and scurried off to his room. He had work to do.

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In Ephesians 2, Paul describes the work of Christ in uniting Jews and Gentiles, making “the two into one new man, thus establishing peace” in the church (Ephesians 2:15). He accomplished this through Christ’s death on the cross, which abolished the enmity that resulted from sinful disobedience to God’s Law. The cross, which vertically represents the peace God made with humanity, also horizontally works to “reconcile [Jews and Gentiles] both in one body to God” (2:16). As we find our place in “God’s household” (2:19), we discover we have not only a loving Father but also brothers and sisters in Christ. No longer are Gentiles strangers and aliens, but are “fellow citizens with the saints” (2:19).

Paul then uses a metaphor to describe the church: it is the Temple, the “dwelling of God in the Spirit.” Not an actual building, mind you, but the people: the church is the “whole building” which is founded on the prophets and apostles, resting ultimately on the cornerstone of Christ Himself. But Paul, not content to let us think that we ourselves are responsible for building the church, observes that the building is “being fitted together” (2:21). The phrase is in passive voice, as it is used later in Ephesians 4, this time to describe how the church is the body of Christ and individuals within it are “being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part” (4:16).

The Greek word for “fitted” is συναρμολογέω (sunarmologeó), which from what I read is formed by combining the word for joint (ἁρμῶν – harmos) and the word for saying something (λέγω), which is transliterated legó. Ah yes, Legos, another of my childhood obsessions. I knew where every Lego block belonged in the sprawling city laid out across my bedroom floor. No doubt my parents looked at my room and saw what I see now in Will’s room: a mess. But the endless hours of connecting Lego blocks as a kid prepared me for the Legós work I do today, arranging words and ideas. What did Anne Lamott say? Writing, at the end of the day, is just putting “one damn word after another.”

Some days, though, the words don’t come. Some days, the pieces don’t want to connect. And some days, my world is just plain old scrambled eggs. As I write this, Samuel is burning off energy by doing donkey kicks and handstands in front of me, while William stands at the top of the stairs, wearing a bicycle helmet, tossing down Cheetos to the dog while laughing maniacally. If you think I’ve got life figured out, well I don’t. I still cringe when I read 1 Timothy 3:5: “If a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?”

And yet, in times like these, I find great comfort in knowing that not only have I been saved by the grace of Christ, but even my good deeds have already been “prepared beforehand” for me (Ephesians 2:10). I am not the creator of my life: I am the workmanship, the art, the materials. And the Master, the Artist, the Carpenter is fitting me together with William, and with Carrie and Sam, and with you, into a holy temple in the Lord.

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“Expectancy […] is one of the characteristics that most clearly marks the true disciple. Disciples are expectant in the sense that they take it for granted that there is always something about to break through from the Master, the Teacher, something about to burst through the ordinary and uncover a new light on the landscape. The Master is going to speak or show something; reality is going to open up when you are in the Master’s company.” – Rowan Williams, Being Disciples

Last week, after the shootings in Odessa that left several West Texans dead and many more injured, I anxiously stood in front of my students. Some of them had family and friends who had been shot, and they looked to me for wisdom and comfort.

But to my great frustration, I found myself mumbling a few trite phrases about how “we’ll get through this together,” and that was it. As a writer, nothing is worse than running on an empty tank. People expect you to have the right words, or at least some words, but I had nothing to give. The best I could do was ask people if they were okay, and then listen to their stories, which were heartbreaking.

Donald Murray once wrote, “I am never bored, because I am constantly observing my world, catching, out of the corner of my eye, the revealing detail” (Reading about Writing 76). That’s me: I’m always on the clock as a writer, looking for patterns and “the revealing detail” that cracks open the puzzle box and reveal the Master’s craftsmanship, the “fitting,” if you will.

Walking to my car after a meeting this week, I passed by some chalk art that folks had drawn in the university courtyard during a “community healing ceremony” after the shooting. Among a hundred or so messages, I focused on one that said, “What was meant for evil, God will turn it for the good.” It was a paraphrase of Genesis 50:20, a verse we treasure in our family.

But it occurred to me as I read it that those who were victimized by the shooting may have a hard time believing that. It might even come across as offensive. Yet I believe every word of that message. What was meant for evil, God will turn it for the good…in His time. The fitting will be done. We just have to wait patiently and expectantly for the Master to finish His work, which is often done in secret.

Later that afternoon I went to pick up Will from school. As I waited in the car line, I whispered the prayer I always say at 3:30: “I hope he had a good day, Lord. I hope he didn’t hit any of his teachers or friends. I hope he worked hard and learned something.” As I pulled to the curb, Will’s teacher accompanied him out. “Oh no,” I muttered. I flash-backed to the time one of Will’s teachers came out holding an icepack to her mouth because he had headbutted her.

Instead, she opened the door and informed me that she had been feeling dizzy earlier, and William had come behind her desk and hugged her, asking if she was okay. She looked at Will and said, “You knew I wasn’t feeling well, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Will said, beaming with pride.

“Anyway, he had an awesome day, Dad,” she said as she shut the door.

“Yes Daddy! Awesome day!” he exclaimed with a dimpled grin.

Then Will did what he always does. He rolled down his window, and began telling everyone goodbye. Several teachers – the pre-K teacher, the vocational leaders, even the Head of School – came out and waved back, as if they had been waiting for this moment all day. “Bye, Will!” they shouted with smiling faces.

“Bye, everyone! Have awesome day!”

In a week filled with tragedy and chaos, leave it to a school full of people with developmental disorders to show us how to put our lives back together. What had previously been a trite statement now was transformed into something profoundly true: we will get through this together by doing the simple things, the rote things, the everyday things, with all the love you can muster in your heart. Smile and wave at people. Look them in the eye. Pray for them. Hug them when they’re feeling down. Tell them to have an awesome day. Those are the good works prepared for us in times like this.

“For a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances” when it comes to relationships, C.S. Lewis once wrote: “A secret master of ceremonies has been at work.” Just as Christ chooses us for Himself, He also chooses us for each other. Our relationships are “not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. [They are] the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”

 Yes, that’s what William does for me. He reminds me that the light will one day burst through. He teaches me that underneath chaos lies a deeper order. He reveals that a secret Master of Ceremonies, the Carpenter, is at work, fitting and holding everything together, and He’s making something beautiful and holy: us.

I thought about stopping the car to thank God for my son, but Will interrupted, “Dad, turn it on!” Oops, I didn’t have the song queued up. I hastily plugged in my phone to the stereo, and it wasn’t long before I heard him singing:

If I can make it there,

I can make it anywhere,

It’s up to you,

New York, New York.

The tears welled up in my eyes. I sang along at the top of my lungs, and we made our way home down old, familiar roads.

Click here to read Part One.

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,”
Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.

When we think of men who ask why the wicked prosper, Jonah comes to mind, as he does in this portion of Psalm 139 that talks about trying to flee from God’s presence. We would do well to remember both texts, when we talk about God’s presence, as if he is limited to where he can dwell. In Jeremiah 23:23-24, the Lord declares, “Am I a God who is near / And not a God far off? Can a man hide himself in hiding places / So I do not see him? Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” We expect the Lord to be in heaven, but Psalm 139:8 tells us that even in Sheol (variously translated as “the depths,” “the grave,” “the underworld,” or even “hell”), even there, the Lord sees all. Job 26:6 and Proverbs 15:11 tell us that “Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord, How much more the hearts of men!” Indeed, some men’s hearts do resemble the grave.

But the Psalmist says the Lord’s hands, even in the depths, will “lead” and “lay hold” of his servant. This adds to the previous image of a Father’s grip; now the hand is leading us through danger. One cannot help at this point but think of the Good Shepherd, with the rod and staff, guiding his sheep through the darkest valley. Why is darkness not dark to the Lord? Simply, as 1 John 1:5 confirms, because “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” Wherever God goes, there is light, because He is Light. And His light is marvelous and wonderful, just like his knowledge. But if you’re going to truly believe that there is no darkness in God, then that must be true even when it seems like the darkness overwhelms. Even on Good Friday, when “darkness fell over the whole land” (Luke 23:44), The Light of the World still shone in the darkness, even while hanging from the cross, and “the darkness did not comprehend it” (John 1:5).

As I laid upon a couch not too different from the one which I slept on for the first few days after William was born, the machines and monitors making similarly disturbing noises to the ones in the NICU that kept him alive for the first three weeks of his life, I wondered if another storm was headed our way, ready to overwhelm me, and if so, whether the Light would still lead the way. The waves crashed on the screen, Will’s heart monitor beeped sharply, and in between I heard the soft murmur of our Lord, saying, “Even here My hand will lead you, / And My right hand will lay hold of you.”