Something Different Down To Sleep

Last night Jeffrey wanted to read a book to his mom who had just gotten home from choir minutes before (Martha said she'd try to be home from choir practice by nine and just made it), and picked up one off the bottom shelf as Sarah was coming out of the bathroom ready for bed. The four of us had macaroni and cheese for dinner and I'd just finished giving Jeffrey a bath too, so he pulled out a book – I believe that he got as a gift from the Mathistads (Pastor Janet's and Krista's family, for my frequent readers) shortly after he was born – and started to read it. Then he suggested with childlike enthusiasm that instead of our regular bedtime prayer (the “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep” that Mary, Martha's sister, taught them when she still lived with us) the four of us each read one page at a time from this book, Joni Walker's Jesus Knows Me (ISBN 0758605072). I hope I'll be forgiven for quoting the book today … ah, I don't feel like fighting her publisher's copyright department. Read it yourself.

I forgot that Sunday we all went out that afternoon to our local Ground Round restaurant, where from eleven to two kids under ten years old get to pay what they weigh and it almost seems Jeffrey and Sarah are losing weight! Sarah's cheese pizza cost sixty-five cents and Jeffrey's chicken fingers cost fifty-five cents, while Martha and I went as low-price as we could … I believe my wife still had her signature fettucini alfredo and I actually had a salad. A cranberry walnut chicken salad (it had a cooler name on the menu, something with “nuts” that I'm blanking on right now) and for me it was lunch and dinner too! This morning the kids are getting their school pictures taken at Longfellow, and wow do they look good! I'm reminded especially that … heck, in a few years I think Jeffrey will easily tower over me. They grow fast, it's all that feeding of them we do – I don't even have to stretch them on the bed at night anymore!

 

 

You're an overcomer, David