My soul is swelling right now. I really can only find one word to describe it: Joy. As I sit I am listing to Joe Purdy, waiting for the waffles to rise, hearing Nathan’s happy noises as Natalie reads him nursery rhymes, and looking at the wonderful Valentines day gift my darling wife gave me. It is very simple, like most joys. A thin black poster frame, filled with nearly a dozen photos from our honeymoon. The photos are from a disposable camera we got while in North Carolina that I have been meaning to get developed for the last year and a half. Unbeknownst to me, Natalie had them devoloped and then arrenged them tastefully in this frame.
The pictures capture the happiness of that time, the joy of the memories. It especially rings true this morning as we enjoy the continued joy, a joy that has matured over time, and will continue to mature. These memories are powerful mostly because of the reality of the present, and the hope of the future. It is this trajectory that makes memories worth making. The past, the present, and the future are dependent on one another in a sort of way that seems to reflect the Trinity. They are all dependant on each other. Any over-emphasis of one distorts the others. Memories are made for maturing, they seem to look forward, while the future must keep them in mind to keep going forward. All of this connects in the ever-constant present. Sometimes all three connect powerfully, in hope, love, and joy. And Joe Purdy.
Nathan is constantly amazing me. It hasn’t been long since he was completely immobile. Now he crawls quickly across the floor, stopping periodically to clap his hands and cough, “haqck, haqck”. (The ‘q’ is of course there to imply the gutteral quality.) There is, of course, nothing wrong the silly fellow. He just knows, inately, that noise is the way to get attention. Right now he says, “haqck”. In a couple months he will say, “momma” and “daddy”. Though he won’t know why we are excited and giving him attention, he will know that we are. There is a progression there.
I’m sure it is much the same with most boys. First you have gutteral noises, and then words, and then back and forth for different periods of time. Boys make no random noises. They are all calcualated to achieve maximum attention. Eventually the noises get strung together, as sentances are found to more affective, if not repulsive (repulsion is one of the highest forms of attention giving). But still, boys always fight the temptation to growl, roar, or walk into a room and blurt out the biggest word they know. “Anti-oxidant!”
I myself am subject to the same urges and instincts. Why, only yesterday I was standing around, with no one to listening to me, and I had to fight the urge to just scream, “Super-lapsarianism!”