In A Field

I wonder if you remember me. I've been present in every instance of your life.  I was with you when you took your first breath; your eyes bright, your life spread out before you. I delight in you.  I love seeing your face, hearing your voice, watching you grow.  I know every little thing about you.  What takes your breath away, what makes you angry, what you're really afraid of and how many times you've given up only to begin again.  There is no mystery in you that I cannot solve. You have a knack for going from one thing to the next, waiting for your life to start.  You want desperately to truly live and you seek so much of who you are in places where you'll never find it. Those places leave you with a dismal contentment that comes and goes with the setting of the sun. I've cried with you in the darkest moments of your life, sat with you when you felt like you couldn't bear to take another step, when you thought you'd come to the end of you...

And he is six and he walks into the kitchen, all tousled hair, sleepy eyes, and sweetness.  And we tell him. His face is so small and dear, so tiny and he doesn't understand the depth of our words.  In that moment I am 11 and instantly have wisdom beyond my years because of that look of innocence and because I know a little more than he. And he is thirteen and he is confused, growing and lonely.  I'm driving us down the road and I'm singing a song of love for a God Who is beginning to fill in my blank and wrecked spaces.  He is dozing beside me, mumbling that I am a good singer, that he likes the song.  Yet I cannot be the arms that hold him because my own grief wells inside of me, by times, that I fear it may consume me.  He is still so small and young and yet he knows too much and has felt too much.  I feel I am his protector and I am not able to fix this.  I cannot be what he needs and there is an ache that I shouldn't know and I do and be...