Nate, Jon, Noah, Hannah, Kaylee, Mary, Janna, Faith, and Birthday Joe gather around the Lightning McQueen cake that Lori and the girls decorated to perfection, including a lovely blue tinted window.


I said “any piece you give me is fine” but She Gave Me the One With the Window In It

Lori always has a way of giving me the window. Windows are wonderful things, they hold the elements at bay and yet they let us peer into a larger space that gives us perspective and allows the fresh air of God’s greatness and our comparable smallness to put every fear in it’s proper place.

Today was an unusual day: Josiah David’s forth birthday breakfast, an overly talkative friend, late to work, computer problems, mediating a conflict I’d rather avoid, unexpected traffic, a long wait for a clerk to find the right cables “in the back,” running just late enough to have to reschedule a meeting, distracted and trying to make up for lost time, I lose track of time and get a call from Lori who I was supposed to have met 10 minutes previously at the gravel and sand company where we have arranged for Josiah to see the heavy equipment up close for his birthday, supper at McDonalds, and home just in time to realize that we were supposed to be home so a single mom could drop off her son at our place and get to work had to drop off her son at our neighbor’s house instead, finally at home and eager to relax, Oh joy, the bath water is seeping out around the toilet, the same toilet that we had to take apart and extract two building blocks from just two evenings ago, and now it is time for cake…Lori sooths the savage beast that is ready to launch into a full blown lecture on the importance of keeping our two year old away from the toilet, Lori reminds me that celebrating Joe’s birthday is more important than our flooded bathroom, when she asked which piece of cake that I wanted I said “ I’ll take anything that you give me” and she gave me that one with the window in it. – March 4, 2009