Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

 Today is a very blessed day. 

Today is my younger son Mark's birthday.  He is truly a gift from God and has become everything I ever prayed for him to become and more.  For validation of that statement, read the short eloquent post his wife, Lynn, wrote about him this morning at "My Charmed Life."  By her words, she not only honors Mark as her husband, but honors me, his mom, and I commented there to tell her so.

In honor of his birthday, I want to share with you a short piece about him below that I wrote (and later edited) when he was 10 years old to give you a glimpse into the kind of son he was then that I had prayed to God for when he was born.  I prayed, like Samuel's mother, Hannah, and promised God I would dedicate my life to him as his mother and his life to God.

God has rewarded me many times over in those prayers.

Hope you enjoy reading about Mark the 10-year-old who has his own theology all worked out, already!

    Fall came and the time changed the last Sunday in October from daylight savings time back to central standard time.  But, the body and internal clock of younger son, Mark, didn't switch.

    He had always been an early morning person, anyway, arriving at 5:55 a.m. on his birth day ten years earlier.  Actually, he arrived seven and one-half weeks early and was ahead of everyone else around ever after.

    That Sunday morning he came trouncing into the bedroom with his blanket sweeping around him like a blue and white striped Halloween ghost a week early - and an hour earlier than I wanted to get up.  But, I did get a cup of coffee delivered to me which helped me get myself together enough to get up and face the cheery kid.

    It went on all week.  He would fall into bed at 8 p.m. and was up at 5:30 or 6 a.m. singing and laughing with his cats as he fixed them breakfast and brought me my coffee, wanting to know - again - why I was sleeping so late.

    He now had two cats.  Tiger, his yellow tabby, was about six months old now and big and chubby (after his beginning as the runt of the litter with a tiny round body and short spiked tail).  In addition we had acquired a tiny black, long-haired kitten named Nerman.

    Nerman and Tiger followed Mark around everywhere and he looked after them like a mother hen.  He even wrapped Nerman up in his blanket, so he'd feel secure.  Mark certainly had always felt secure.  He was probably the most well-adjusted kid there ever was.

    He had no hang-ups about material things in life.  He was perfectly happy with faded, worn- out blue jeans with huge ragged holes in the knees and old knit shirts.  It didn't matter to him whether his hair was short or long, whether his shoes were new or old.  He was totally unaffected by physical surroundings.  His internal clock was really on a different schedule and in a different place all the time from most people.

    He decided one day in early fall that year that he was bored with life at the moment, so he said, "I think I'll just go on to heaven and wait for you there - I'm bored."

    To which I responded, "Look, kid, you aren't going to get out of fifth grade that easy.  You'll just have to stick it out with the rest of us."  I needed the company of such a one.  

    He read his Bible a lot and had his own personal theology all worked out.  It was fascinating and amazing to listen to how his mind worked.  He was studying and thinking about Christianity and said, "Well, I think I'm nearly ready to be baptized - I just don't understand guilt well enough."

    So I said, "Well, what is it that you don't understand?"

    And, he said, with much consternation, "Well, - I just don't feel guilty."  

    So, I consoled him.  "You really don't have anything to feel guilty about, you know.  You are a good boy and obedient son."

    He quickly replied, "I didn't set the table just when you asked me."  I reassured him that it didn't qualify for the unpardonable sin and anyone with his attitude was O.K.  

    Some of his other theological findings were rather interesting, too.  He told me one day, when I was telling him he was as sweet as an angel, "Well, I'm not an angel."

    "How do you know?"  I asked.

    "Because, I bleed and angels don't bleed,"  he answered.

    He wanted to live in a two-story house so he would be closer to God.  And, he worried that on the judgment day there would be so many people crowded around that he wouldn't be able to see God.  "I just know I'll be standing in the back and I won't be able to see."

    He appreciated all of the things God has made just for him - like rocks and fish.  He had a telescope and could take a closer look at the stars.  He felt and could see the miracles of heaven.  He was thinking about who he would marry and had decided already that looks weren't everything.

    "What somebody looks like isn't the most important thing, you know," he told me one day with all seriousness.  I want someone who is close to God."
    He already cooked and took care of himself.  He wanted to be ready, he said, in case his old mother should go.  (I was an old thirty-five at the time.)  "I know you don't have any jewelry or anything, but, you better tell me where your stuff is - so I can tell Grandma."

    "And, I'll take care of the house.  You don't have to worry."

    I didn't.  With a kid like Mark, who had to worry.  He was way ahead of me in many ways.  He was a gift to begin with, from God to me, who shouldn't have made it in this world.  The doctors didn't think he would.  They said he didn't have a chance.

    But, he did and he was here.  He was in this world, but not really of this world.  And, while he may not have been an angel - because he did bleed - he came close.

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