Setting the Stage (Part I)

Hi friends! Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. It is my hope that you will not relinquish your time in vain, as the pages that consume this blog will be filled with the depths of my heart in its truest forms. This life is short. Let us hold nothing back.

I thought it fitting to start this blog by giving you a little background about myself. Hopefully, setting for you the stage of my life will more clearly reveal how my plot unfolds upon it.

As a child, I had a decent knowledge of God. I knew that He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-sovereign - you know, that He has ‘everything under control.’ But herein lied the problem, I knew just enough to be dangerous to myself and to anyone caught in the aftermath of my childhood. I knew only enough to see as if in a mirror dimly with wounded eyes nearly closed.

For the majority of people, the most significant life changes occur in high school or college, when hormones rage like atom bombs and hunting... I mean, dating season is utterly in session. For most, it’s a era of discovering new truths about the world and how we fit into it. For me, however, the most drastic amendment in my life was written on May 6th, in the fourth grade, on a day I will never forget.

The phone called out to my teacher with a low, sinister quality; taunting her with each ring. She answered and, after agonizingly hanging up, slowly approached me. After reaching my desk, she held a heavy pause. Then apprehensively said, “You’ve been summoned to the principle's office.”


“The principle’s office?” I thought. “Could I have done something so improper as to demand principle punishment? Don’t they know little boys show interest in little girls by way of juvenile buffoonery and ridicule?"

"Maybe it's not bad at all. Maybe he wants to celebrate my nine and 1/8 birthday with me! Maybe he finally realizes what a substantial student I am and wants to present me with a handsome reward for my scholastic contributions.” I was hoping for the latter, but my teacher’s expression led me to believe otherwise.

It was a warm San Diego day without a cloud in the sky. But the rain was about to come. As we marched to the office, the breeze felt oddly frigid - as if the sun’s heart had stopped beating altogether, leaving only a lifeless shell. Each step was frozen. Reluctant to advance. But there was no escaping it. The pages had already been written. The story began to unfold.

Upon entering the principle’s quarters, there stood my grandmother with heavy eyes and a heavier heart. “Why is she here? Did they call in reinforcements?” I considered. But her countenance carried not a hint of vehemence, only a burden. One that relentlessly weighed on her. The principle, hesitantly but firmly - as if he was forcing himself to give a command he never wished to relay - relieved me from my scholarly duties immediately.

Discharged. And before lunch? Any fourth grader would be ecstatic! I, however, felt no sense of such jubilee; for this freedom would enslave me to an imprisonment far worse than school.

My siblings soon marched in after me. “Why are they here? We aren’t that unruly of a crew so as to all be in trouble at the same time... Are we?”

The ride home was strangely silent. The air had become stiff with sorrow. The conventionally brief journey seemed to take hours. It was as if the road itself was extending its reach, desperate to hold us back and safeguard us from our sentence. But its grasp was too weak. It could not contend with fate.

We entered my grandmother’s driveway, and as I opened my door, there stood the tall pecan tree out front that, for years, had served as our own youthful fortress. But this time, she cried out to us with the whimpering breeze, pleading for us to find refuge in her branches. The sea of ivy that surrounded her reached out to us, attempting to pull us into its tide, desperately trying to drown us in safety. They too knew our days of innocence were over. They knew we would never again play as we once did. They knew that our childish ignorance had been stolen.

As we walked around the side of the house, my mother’s grief swiftly drown out all other sounds of sorrow. Her lament was such that I had never seen nor heard before, and have not since. Agony consumed her voice. She could scarcely fight it back as she spoke to us saying, “Kids... I have something to tell you...”

And yet she need not say another word.

It was written in her eyes and on her cheeks. Her tears spelled it plainly. I knew before she said another word that my father had died.

(...Thank you for reading. To be continued next Monday... Until then, may the LORD bless and keep you. The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The LORD turn His face toward you and give you peace. For the glory of His name. - Numbers 6:24-26)