There’s a picture I keep. I took it on May 25, 2022. It is of my son’s bedroom. At the time, he was 10 years old. I can’t tell you how many times I have walked through the door of his bedroom and into this picture. Pretty much every morning. Pretty much every morning still. The socks and pants from the day before lying on the floor, bunched up in a ball, not turned right-side-out. The bed looking like a monkey had slept in it. The curtains surrendered to laziness, never pulled back to let in the brand new day.
There used to be a lot of mornings when this scene frustrated my heart. When the dirty, unkempt laundry screamed at me, “Look what’s become of your hard earned money!” When I couldn’t decide if I cared too much about the wrong things as a parent, or too little about the right things.
But then came May 24, 2022, when 19 children and 2 adults were gunned down at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
It wasn’t the first time such tragedy had struck. It was simply the first time I remember feeling struck as a father.
The next morning I walked into my son’s bedroom. I stared at the mess before me and wept. I wept with gratitude for the boy who had slept safe and sound the whole night through, because he came home from school yesterday. I wept at the sight of his socks, clearly stripped off quickly and tossed to the floor without care, because bedtime was calling his name, and he must have been so tuckered out from his day of learning and play. I wept to think that the last thought to go through his mind before closing his eyes must have been, Dad will take care of it tomorrow. I wept for the gift of one more day and the chance to prove him right. And I wept for the dads and moms whose children would never come home again to fill their socks.
I snapped a picture and turned and walked out of his bedroom, leaving everything as it was. A beautiful mess.
I have wept so many days since that one. I weep again today for the 3 children and 1 teacher killed by a teenager, still a child, with a gun, at Silver Rail Elementary School in Oregon. I weep at our failure as a nation and people of the earth to choose the care and protection of children, yours and mine, as our highest and only good.
Today my son is 15. The floor in his bedroom still gets decorated every night with the day’s socks and underwear. And the monkey who sleeps in his bed–forever a boy. But I look upon each piece of clothing as a consolation prize, and a trusting sign from Rowan that, tomorrow will come, and Dad will take care of it.
God, I hope to prove him right.
