Jeremy’s been on a Pinocchio jag for a few years. After the Nth time played on 1 Infinite Loop on his iPad, you start to pick up on a few things.
Gepetto and Me:
- We both want a Real Boy. Because a wooden, scripted and heavily prompted, “iloveyoumommy,” is never as satisfying as an organic, unsolicited and spontaneous one.
- We pray every night. No, I don’t make a wish upon a star. I don’t entreat a Blue Fairy Imagineered by Disney. I pray to a real God Who sees and hears me. Yet in His sovereignty, He sometimes chooses to answer in ways we don’t prefer. Just like with calories or gravity, I can dislike, doubt, discredit, denounce or defy all I want: But my opinions and desires –however impassioned– have no bearing on reality. Whether or not I think He exists, whatever kind of God I think He is, He is still God. And I am not. How I feel about something (be it calories or the Creator of the universe) matters less than, “Is it True? Does It really work like that?” Only One of us gets to have supernatural powers. I can’t speak for Gepetto, but I’m learning to be ok with all that.
- We desperately want our kids to go to school, to learn, to maximize their potential, and to have fun with other kids. Just like every other parent. But we have to work much, much, much harder for it. Even then, things don’t always go according to plan.
- We move them where we want them to go, and tell them how they should feel. For now, pretty much every transaction is initiated, controlled, and manually executed by us. But oh, how we wish they’d do things out of their own volition…
- Having said that — OOPS! Be careful what you wish for, because sometimes they’ll go rogue, and totally bolt on you.
- Our boys have neither stranger danger nor safety awareness. They are utterly trusting and vulnerable, the very least of the least of these. They require an ever-present, watchful 1:1 aide looking out for them, because they lack the conscience or wherewithal to sense when they’re in danger or being manipulated.
- They would do anything for candy.
- We want our kids to belong and have friends. We can only pray the right friends come along, and not fall prey to bad ones.
- Our boys have “got no strings to hold me down!” They’re blissfully free from social conventions, self-consciousness, or compulsion towards people-pleasing. For example, Jeremy is free to sing when he wants to sing, or fart when he wants to fart. Now, that’s freedom, baby.
- We’d pack up and cross the whole world over, skip breakfast or starve, and willingly die in some dark, dank place to save our children. Kinda reminds me of Someone Else I know. How deep the Father’s Love for us, yeah?
- If they’re ok, then we’re ok. Everything else is gravy.
- Did I mention, OH! How I wish he could play and talk with me…
- We didn’t expect our lives to be a fairy tale (although we are guaranteed to live Happily Forever After.) We were just doing our thing: raising kids, paying bills and just trying to make a living. But somehow, we still became a story worth telling.
And it’s not quite The End.
