Do you ever stop and think how so many of life’s blessings, gifts, and breakthroughs begin of moments that seem anything but these.
I witnessed one this week.
Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, we went as a family to evening mass. Our youngest had baseball just before in the gym of our church’s school. While he’d been told, morning of, he did not hear, and at the end of a full practice, church was the last place he wished to be.
He was tired. He was hungry. He was peopled out. He didn’t want to go—but we did.
He showed his unhappiness in ways he could without pushing past the point to trouble. Ash Wednesday, start of Lent, we are meant to be tested and tried; and as parents, my wife and I were.
It would be easy to be angry, to put him in his place. But as God affords so much to us, we gave our patience and our grace.
“I hate church,” he told, trying to hurt with words.
I knew he didn’t mean it because I know the times we’ve shared on our Sundays—as family and often times, just us.
I didn’t acknowledge. I let him vent.
Blessing of the ashes, we went before the church and received consecration and anointing.
Forty-one years old, I didn’t remember the rest of Ash Wednesday’s Mass procession. I didn’t remember whether or not we received Communion too—we do.
Another ceremony of consecration, that of the body and blood, my son was in despair. He wanted to be home.
“I don’t want to be one of those,” he tells me, pointing to the altar server beside our Father.
I knew he didn’t mean it because I’ve seen the reverence he showed to all when taught by our Father and the ceremony and sanctity in the ministration of our Mass.
He was mean, but how many times have so too been I? I knew he didn’t mean it. He was just frustrated of an unexpected.
I let him vent and let his anger. I loved him still.
Then, as I’ve often felt in overcome and changing in myself—receiving of the body and blood of Christ—his spirit changed. Anger and animosity left him. Temperament was changed, and his bitter and mean were gone.
If a demon sent to trouble, it departed in receiving of Our Lord.
I loved him still, no different or more than before, because we deserve to be loved through and especially in our lower moments, not just in our best.
At home that night, dinner ate (hunger, perhaps, his greatest harasser), he reflected on his behavior towards and during Mass.
“I’m sorry I was angry,” he spoke to his mother and I.
“That’s okay,” I tell him. “We all get angry, but it is big and special that after you are better, you can come back and apologize and make right where you were wrong. Not everyone can do that. I am proud of you,” I speak.
Mercy, patience, forgiveness—God grants all these to us, and so too should we offer back to all, especially those most close and dear within our lives.
Next day, we go into our worlds—he to school and I to work—and when I come home, we are rejoined.
“I read my Bible today,” he tells me (he received it for Christmas and to my knowledge, had not touched or read it since—though he asked for it, and maybe we gifted different version he had in mind).
“You did!?” I ask, impressed and rewarding in tone and expression.
“Uh-hu!”
“What did you read?” I ask.
“Psalms and Matthew,” he responds. “Do you want to see my highlights?”
“I do!”
He opens his Bible to the page, words and passage yellow-bold:
“I like the first part best,” he tells.
I am moved. I am proud. I am happy for him—and I let him know.
This morning, prepared for school, he shares again, “I read more of my Bible today.”
“You did!? What did you read? Psalms and Matthew again?”
“I don’t know,” he answers. “I look in the back for what it says I should read for how I’m feeling.”
I am moved. I am proud. I am happy for him—and I let him know.
He is at school now, and I am alone in home as write in reflection of it all.
How many times do the blessings, gifts, and breakthroughs come when—past frustrations and our anger—God still loves and waits?