When I was in third grade, I had this dream I still remember. I was in a red-carpeted mansion with a wide staircase going up from the foyer. A beautiful woman was walking down the stairs in a white evening gown. She was my wife, and I loved her. Then I woke up.
Several months ago, my wife and I began the process of looking for a new church. We hoped to find something much closer to our home, which automatically made the search more difficult. That wasn’t the only thing that made it harder though.
A massive evangelistic event was afoot in Washington, D.C. There was all-day activity, preaching, and Christian contemporary music. And there were Christians, lots of Christians. I stepped onto the Metro one night after work, and I soon realized some of the attendees of the event were on the train. In addition to looking like fanny-pack tourists, they were wearing Christian-themed t-shirts. Two middle-aged women in the group were quietly talking about their strategy for sharing their faith with strangers on the train….
When I was in third grade, I had problems behaving. My heart was in the right place, but my good intentions didn’t make it to the surface a lot of the time. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to follow the rules.
I stopped talking to my friend Erin Myers because I was embarrassed of her. We were going to the mall together, and she wore a sleeveless denim jacket and a hat decorated with a large sunflower. This was also the year she played trumpet in the band, a fact that significantly lowered her social status at Petal High. I was terrified of being seen with her. Somehow Erin detected it.
When Raquel and I got engaged, we got a gift from our registry, and we didn’t recognize the name. I think it was a $15 stainless steel salt shaker or something like that. All that was listed was a guy’s name and phone number. When I asked Raquel if she knew the person, she was certain she didn’t. That’s when I guessed what had happened: The guy sent the gift to the wrong couple. So I decided to call him, and that’s when things got really interesting.
For a lot of my single years, I was hopelessly awkward. No doubt, there were still attractive things about my personality (or at least my mom says there were), but overall, I was kind of weird.
A lot of folks like me hit their 20s or 30s and suddenly realize all the things their parents got wrong. The blame rolls in. Our insecurities, troubles with romance, inability to develop healthy friendships, whatever — all of it comes back to mom and pop. If only they hadn’t done this or that, we would be healthy and whole. When my parents divorced after years of trying to keep it together, I didn’t know what to do with their relationship. In the back of my mind, I knew there were bright moments, but I simplified things by seeing their relationship as one big mistake.
Yesterday, my wife and I had visitors over, and my newborn son started crying — probably because he was tired and needed to go to sleep. We tried to play it cool while attempting to calm him down. We even gave our visitors a shot at soothing him, but none of it worked. He kept on crying, so I finally left the room and went upstairs to console him. It took 30 minutes, and it required a lot of creativity.
When a horrific terrorist attack happens, the first question that comes to my mind is, How afraid should I be? I live in Washington, D.C., so it’s fair to assume that my family and I are, at any given time, at risk of being killed or injured in a terrorist attack.
I don’t have a lot of regrets from my childhood, but there’s one from fifth grade that still bothers me. I made friends with a second grader named Jennifer who rode my bus. She had a round face, a raspy voice, and a wild mop of wavy blond hair. And those eyes — they nearly disappeared when she smiled, which she did a lot — especially when she was talking to me.
In 2007, my friend Kevin Harrison was awakened by his only daughter, Beth, who had a piercing headache. After telling Kevin she loved him, she collapsed and died of a brain aneurysm shortly thereafter. No one imagined it could get any worse, but then two years ago, it did.
Last night, my daughters were in the living room where my newborn son was sleeping in a bouncy seat on the floor. I went to the bathroom after explicitly saying, “Please be quiet around your brother.” I should have just taken the baby to the bathroom with me.
Last week, I was sitting at the park watching my girls play when I noticed something that piqued my interest: an older woman was affectionately leaning on a man, who I presumed was her husband.
Right now, I’m looking across the room at my son, a newborn baby boy curled against my wife’s chest. She’s nursing him, which takes a lot more effort than you would imagine. And speaking of effort, there are a host of other little tasks that somehow manage to take up nearly the whole day. We don’t mind it, but we’ve come a long way since our first two children were infants.
Joshua Rogers 