Eating Pecan Rolls from a Gas Station

One of the things that I thought about so often this past month was how much joy and freedom comes from having a single focus of loving someone.  I promise I am not exaggerating when I tell you I did not turn on the vacuum cleaner one time.  I swept the floors twice, before we had guests, and I cooked maybe 5 dinners.  Maybe less.  I went to Short Pump to grocery shop only one time (where our battery on our car died :-), and just ran into Kroger a few times for the essentials.  I didn't worry about vegetables, or what was organic.  My kids ate God-knows-what, and because Sergey loved it, got to play hours of FIFA on the X-box.  We rode around on scooters at Walmart at midnight.  We went on bike rides, dressed up all in camo, pushed each other off of a giant plastic hippo, and ate at Subway WAY more times than I am even willing to admit at this point.  I even (gasp) let the kids order soda a few times ;-), because MAN did that kid love Coke!  We spent money on things like going to the climbing gym, because I knew he would love it (and he did).  I drove all the way to the South Side for a week to sit in a chair and watch soccer for 7 hours a day just because he would look over and smile at me every few minutes.  We stayed up crazy late and slept in even later.  We wasted money on boat gas so he could tube and ski.  WE ATE CATFISH because he caught it.  I hovered around his bedroom door each night like an idiot hoping to catch a hug before he would jump into bed.  I ate PECAN ROLLS. From a GAS STATION just because he wanted so much for me to share them with him.  I watched an Adam Sandler movie. On a cell phone. In Russian.  The one about the Zohar or Zohan or something.  I am serious.  And why did I/we do all these things?  Because I knew we had one glorious month to pour as much love as we could into this boy, and we have missed so very many months along the way.  Sunday before church there were firemen out near the school doing some practice drills.  As they sprayed massive amounts of water out of those huge hoses, I thought "THAT is how I want Sergey to feel our love pouring out on him." But, and this is the beautiful thing - it felt like our whole family was dancing under that hose together.  All the laughter. All the water balloons.  All the swimming. And tubing. And wrestling. And lightning bug catching. And games of flashlight tag. And wink murder.  And game after game after game.  It truly was like dancing under a fire hose full of love pouring on us from our Heavenly Father.  I don't know, and probably never will, why He chose to give our family this gift.  But as our dear friend Johnny McConnell's grandmother always says, "Don't say no, say thank you."  Thank you, Jesus.