Graduation Day – Final Sermon

* This is the manuscript for my final sermon as Youth Pastor at Chestnut Grove Baptist Church. After much prayer and thought, my family has stepped away from full-time pastoral work so I can pursue a career as a writer and speaker. I’ll have another job too (it’s almost a necessity) but my main focus is on expanding my writing and speaking opportunities.

To all of you who have supported or helped me in the ministry over the past fifteen years, please know that I am grateful for each of you. Your contributions, far more than my own, were the reason that God was able to transform so many students. Thank you for being such a blessed part of my service as a pastor.

*****

“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” – Romans 8:29

There’s a book that’s been sitting on my nightstand now for almost a month. It’s less than a hundred pages thick, and the stark white cover almost mocks me every time I walk by.

“Risk is Right” it tells me. John Piper says so.

I’m not a very risky person. Never have been. When I was a kid, my idea of taking a risk was dunking an Oreo into milk after I’d taken a bite, thus allowing for the potential of tiny black cookie crumbs to contaminate the pure white milk. It was my brother who jumped off the house with only a shopping bag for a parachute. It was my friends who snuck out of the house at night to sit on their front porches and feel the rush of the cool night air combined with the knowledge that they’d broken a rule. It was the heroes in my comic books that dared to do things that common sense and insurance agents said was, to put it bluntly, stupid.

But not me. I was the good kid. The (semi) obedient one. I set the example. I toed the mark. Always have.

Sure, there were times when I did things that were risky. Once, when I was about 15, my friends convinced me that it would be fun to camp out in my neighbor’s yard as a cover for sneaking down to a store that was rumored to sell cigarettes to under-age kids. I didn’t smoke, had no interest in smoking, but I was the straight-arrow, so they figured I could just walk in, be my normal polite self and procure a couple of packs of smokes for the heathens. The plan, they said, was flawless.

Except for the fact that I froze up. I couldn’t go inside the store. I had visions of the police being called, of my arrest and incarceration, of my parents sobbing as the judge threw the book at me and derailed my chance for college, which would derail my chance for a good job, which meant that I was inevitably headed towards a future of riding the rails like the hobos in Hardy Boy novels, destined to either help Frank and Joe solve a mystery or be a shadowy figure who foretold their doom.

So my friends took my learner’s permit and went inside to try and by smokes anyway. The clerk kicked them out, laughing. I was relieved until, as we crossed the street, I got hit in the knee by a car that didn’t have its lights on. I was knocked head over heels into a drainage ditch, convinced that my leg had been severed as punishment for being so stupid. I just knew I was going to die in that ditch, becoming a cautionary tale to other kids and a source of embarrassment to my family.

“Poor Jason,” my grandparents would say as they sat on the carport shelling peas. “He seemed like such a good boy.”

Obviously, my leg was fine. My knee did swell to the size of a mini-basketball, but I hid it from my parents by wearing baggy pants for two weeks and pretending my limp was just some new kind of strut. It is entirely possible that I was responsible for starting the gangsta lean. I should’ve thought to trademark it.

But that’s just not who I was.

I could tell you more stories, stories about how I didn’t take the right kind of risks, stories about how the risks I did take were either coldly calculated to the point that there was no risk at all, or wildly impulsive, resulting in a day-after sense of shame and regret that made me burrow deeper into myself. Bottom line is that I’ve never taken the right kind of risks. Never figured out that there are healthy and productive ones to be taken.

Which is why I picked up that book, “Risk is Right”, in the first place. I needed to know how to do what God was telling me to do.

I needed to know how to leave this church, step out in faith, and see where God would take me.

It’s funny that this is all coming together on Graduation Sunday. A lot of people are here to celebrate and acknowledge the preschoolers and high schoolers and college folks who’ve put in their time, completed a major season of their lives, and are moving on to other things. New things. Scary things. I look at Austin and Madison and Cody and Brandon and Jon and Haley and Victoria and I remember what it felt like to walk in their shoes. After high school, the choice was simple: college. After college, the choice wasn’t so simple, especially for me.

There’s not a lot of people banging down the door to hire English majors. Though there are a lot of English majors banging down doors to deliver you a fresh, tasty pizza in 30 minutes or less.

It’s funny that this annual ritual comes around and we stand in front of these kids and extol the virtues of risk, of stepping out, of change. We tell them to chase dreams and find their passions, and we slip them a couple bucks and we wait for the inevitable: for them to do what so many of us did, and settle down, find a job, start a family, and leave risk behind.

Change, for some of us, is best left to the younger. Or to the marketers behind clever political ads.

And yet change is at the very heart of what it means to be human. From conception onward, we are constantly in flux. Life is steady progression from one stage to the next, only we stop acknowledging it at some point when we feel safe. Maybe it comes when we make “enough money”. Maybe it comes when we get that dream house. Maybe it comes when we find a church we like that has people like us and we feel at home. I can’t say what it is for you, but for some of us out there, you know what I’m talking about.

You find that comfortable spot and you set up camp and you say, “This is where I’m supposed to be. I ain’t moving.”

Which would be great if life worked that way. But it doesn’t. We’re not meant to become static. We’re meant to be ever-changing. Just look at what Paul is saying in Romans 8:29 – we are meant to be conformed into the image of Christ.

Conformed. It’s a verb. It means continually shaped. Molded. Remolded. Occasionally taken back to the drawing board and started over again. It’s the truth about our lives and character: we are constantly being remade by the One who made us, the One who doesn’t have to be remade.

Have you ever thought about that? That God doesn’t have to be remade? I grew up hearing that “God doesn’t change” and while that’s true, it’s misleading. It makes God sound stale. It makes God sound like the old man who lived in my former neighborhood and threatened us with a shotgun for walking on the neighbor’s side of the property line.

“You’re almost on my grass! Do it again and I’ll shoot! Whippersnappers!”

The reason that God doesn’t change isn’t because He’s crusty, it’s because He is infinite. He is all things in all times to all people. That’s why He’s just as accessible to people today as He was in the time of Moses. That’s why His word still has wisdom and power in our modern world just as it did when the majority of people thought that sailing too far would make you fall off the edge of the planet. Because God is infinite, which means that He is always sufficient, it means that He never has to grow or change or learn. He simply is and that’s always enough.

So when we, who must change, decide that we’re not going to anymore, we establish ourselves as equal with God. The Bible says that’s blasphemy.

Our comfortable, familiar lives are blasphemous.

Now that’s a powerful thought. It’s no wonder we resonate so strongly whenever we hear speeches that implore us to strive for more. We are built for that kind of thing, and when we become too entrenched in a blasphemous lifestyle of complacency or apathy or fear, we sense deep within our hearts that God not only means for us to do more than just sit there, He is grieved by our self-satisfaction because it means we no longer listen to Him.

I was in that spot. I didn’t want to risk being obedient to God, which sounds pretty dumb for a pastor to say. But obedience to God meant walking away from a sure thing; it meant leaving behind friends and family and security and hope for a future. It meant stepping away from students that I’ve come to love very, very much. It meant defying conventional wisdom that life is better when we mitigate risk, settle in for something comfortable and dependable, and only consider stepping outside that zone if we’re sure that there’s something better waiting on the other side.

In fifteen years of preaching about having faith in God and obeying Him no matter what, this is the first time I’ve followed His leading without knowing where I’m going to land. It’s the first time I’ve truly put my life and the life of my family into the hands that formed the universe and said, “Okay. Show me what you’ve got.” It’s scary. There are days when I wonder what the heck I’ve done. There are days when I want to say, “No! I take it back!”

It’s like falling in love with the person you’re meant to be with for the rest of your life: there is no safe. It’s all risk – but you never feel more alive than when you take that chance. And you never feel more certain that you blew it than when you let it pass by.

Jesus knew all this stuff, of course. He knew when to push, when to withdraw, when to challenge and when to comfort. As it says in John 13:3, “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God.” Jesus knew who he was, whose he was, and what he was supposed to do. This is the image that we’re being conformed into: it’s not one of weakness or timidity, it’s of power and love and sound judgment; it’s not one that is easily defeated, but it’s more than a conqueror; we are not conformed to the things of this world, the ideas and beliefs that tell us to settle and hold tight, but we are conformed to the image of the One who didn’t think equality with God was something to hold onto, who instead submitted Himself to death on a cross so that His Spirit might echo in our hearts, telling us the will of the Father is for us to “Go.”

So I’m going. It’s Graduation Sunday, after all.

What if you chose likewise? What if you didn’t accept the premise that safe is best? What if you put your hand into the hand of God and said, “Show me what you’ve got?” What would change? What would be different?

Because here’s the thing, and it’s unavoidable: the world is changing. Grayson is changing. The things that people hold as right and dear and true are changing, and we are called to be witnesses to them. But how can we tell them with a straight face, much less convicting power, that the greatest Truth in the world is that God loves them and wants to change them into the likeness of His Son, if we ourselves are content to sit tight and not change a thing?

Risk is Right, Piper says. So says the Lord. What will you do with that truth today?

My Daughter’s Salvation

I can officially tell this story now. It’s been killing me for a couple of weeks, but I wanted to respect my daughter and only tell it once she’d had the chance to do so herself. Yesterday, at the close of our church service, during the invitation time, my daughter walked forward and told the church that she had given her life to Jesus Christ, her Lord and Savior. The church then got a good laugh out of her when the senior pastor asked whom she wanted to baptize her: me or the senior pastor.

“You,” she said, swinging a thumb in the senior pastor’s direction. It was a totally unscripted moment.

Which really, if you know my daughter, is absolutely perfect. But to be clear, she didn’t accept Christ yesterday; she did it a couple of weeks ago, during the big Discipleship Now weekend that my students participated in. Every year, around 20 some-odd churches in Gwinnett County and beyond pull together for one massive DNOW event. The past couple of years it’s been graciously hosted by Cross Pointe Church (senior pastor James Merritt) and over 800 students have come for a weekend of music, the Gospel and fellowship. This was my students’ third year participating.

Thus, it was my daughter’s third year participating. That’s what happens when you’re the preacher’s kid – you get to go to every event, regardless of whether or not you actually want to. We try and do our best (Rachel and I) to make it fun for Ella, and she genuinely enjoys the music and the freedom she has to run to the front of the stage and dance or hop around while the music plays. It’s part child’s play, part unfettered worship, and she only gets that chance during youth events like DNOW. So we let her go for the gusto.

Now, the past two years, she’s brought along books or a notepad for the sermon time. She would look up every once and while during the messages, but for the most part, she was more interested in the world of her own imagination than in the world of the Bible. And Rachel and I were okay with that.

See we’re weird – we’ve prayed for Ella’s salvation since before she was born (Jon’s too), and while we’ve always prayed that she would come to Christ while she was young, we’ve never felt the need to push her. Several of her friends have made confessions of faith long before Ella, and while she was always curious and asked plenty of questions (which we answered thoroughly without trying to push her one way or the other) she never seemed all that interested in making a decision herself.

In her mind there were three things she knew: Jesus was God, Jesus was Lord, and saying you believed that meant you had to get baptized, which meant getting wet in public in a very strange pool. Which meant, in her mind: no thank you.

But this recent DNOW changed things for her. She actually paid attention to our speaker for the weekend, the wonderful Clayton King. Clayton is a gifted speaker and an anointed preacher, and something about him – specifically, his humor – grabbed Ella’s imagination. On Friday night, she had her notebook and was doodling, but she would laugh right along with the audience, sometimes just before. Never took her eyes off her notebook, but was still engaged.

She was listening. Clayton had her attention.

So it was that on Saturday night, as we waited for the doors to the sanctuary to open, Ella walked over to me and said, “Daddy, will there be music tonight?”

“Yes, Ella,” I said.

“Well how long til that funny preacher man starts talking? I want to hear him because he’s funny.”

In retrospect, I know why that line struck me so hard, but in the moment it didn’t register. I just thought it was funny that my little girl wanted to actually hear the preacher preach. After years of being dragged to events like this on, she’d finally found a speaker who could hold her focus. It struck me as so funny that, when I realized Clayton King was seated on the row behind us, I made it a point to relate the story to him and introduce Ella. She smiled and waved coyly. Clayton waved back.

The music was great, but when Clayton started preaching, it just felt different. Ella was doodling, but she was sitting next to me, all snuggled up. Usually, that’s reserved for her mother, not me. As Clayton went through his message on the significance of Christ being Lord, I began to feel a familiar sensation. My heart began beating rather quickly. As Clayton neared the end of his message and began his invitation, I suddenly realized something.

I had the same sensation I’d had years ago when I gave my life to Christ. As Clayton continued talking about how Christ must be Lord of our lives if we’re going to be Christians, I began to pray: God, are you telling me I’m not saved?

I mean, I was sure of my salvation, but I’m nothing if not wiling to question things.

That’s when it became clear: it wasn’t me God was working on. It was Ella. And when Clayton gave the invitation to stand up and say “JESUS IS LORD!” if you had accepted Christ as your Savior, Ella turned to me, eyes full of confidence, and I nodded.

And she stood up and said, “JESUS IS LORD!”

I’ve been in ministry now for over 15 years, 12 of them as a youth pastor. In all of those years, that was the single-most precious moment. As someone prone to question whether or not the church still has what it takes to win the world to Christ, God reminded me very powerfully and personally on Saturday March 2 that the Gospel still changes lives, and always will. The church may sometimes limp forward, but the Gospel forever marches on, strong, bold, calling people to realize their sinfulness and Christ’s power to save them.

Ella went down front that night by herself. She didn’t ask me to come with her. And when she went down yesterday morning, it was completely on her own as well. Seven years of prayer for our daughter’s salvation came to fruition in a little girl who chose Jesus all on her own – and was so sure of it that the needed no one to guide her on the journey. She’ll be baptized soon, probably by the senior pastor, and I’ll be sure to post pictures.

Jesus saves. Never forget.

The Birthday Princess

Today is Ella’s seventh birthday, and we’ve been celebrating since this morning. She’s enjoyed some special treats throughout the day, and expects even more this weekend at her birthday party. I guess you could say we spoil her.

But we don’t see it that way.

We’re celebrating her life, which is something we don’t take for granted. Believe me when I tell you that there’s nothing on this earth that makes my heart swell like her slipping her hand into mine as we walk. Sure, the hand that’s reaching out for me has gotten bigger than I’d like to admit, and yeah, my heart breaks to think that I might only have a few more years of such unfettered, un-self-conscious love to enjoy, but it’s still overwhelming to be loved so innocently.

*****

Sometimes when I look at her, I find it hard to remember what she was like as an infant. She’s so much more herself now that’s she’s older that those early months/years seem a blur. To watch her float around the house, dancing to music only she can hear, making up words to songs that only she understands, is to watch my daughter without a filter. To see her as she really is, all the way down to her soul.

When she sits down to draw a picture now, a clear figure emerges – complete with perspective, shading, detail – and fits within a larger narrative picture. She tells you the whole story when she shows it to you, and even gives you a hint of character voices. It’s impressive.

She still sleeps like a wild animal. She’s all over the bed, arms and legs akimbo beneath the covers, breathing so deeply you would think her near comatose. Trying to wake her up on a school day is sometimes like arguing on the internet: pointless and not very productive. Then, on days when she doesn’t need to sleep late, she’s up by 6:20 and racing through the house like a deranged cat.

Talking to her has become an adventure. It’s a combination of her high-level reading skills, ever-listening ear, and decidedly animated friends that produces the first grade equivalent of a Robin Williams stand up, which is to say that she’s hysterical and full of non-sequiturs. What’s really funny is when she throws in an inflection that quite obviously came from someone else – an adult, one of her school friends, her mother – and it sounds like an entirely different person but still fully Ella. And the best part is, she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it.

*****

She looked at me this morning in the car. We were waiting for her bus to arrive, and she had this funny expression, a mix between sheer joy and hopeless confusion. Finally she looked at me, eyebrow raised and said, “You know I’m only three years away from ten, don’t you? Today I’m seven, then eight, nine, ten. I’ll be practically grown up. And then I’ll be a teenager. You can handle that, right?”

I looked at her and lied. “Sure I can handle that.”

But my heart knew it couldn’t. As much joy as there is in watching my child grow up, I can’t help but feel the tinge of sadness that comes as she passes ever farther away from the little girl she once was. I know I still have a lot more time with her before she starts hating my guts, but the weight of those days, the preciousness of them, makes me wish they could linger a bit.

And then she drops something on the floor, or accidentally spills grape juice on the freshly cleaned carpet and I wonder, “How long ’til college?”

*****

The birthday princess is growing up. The world is slowly becoming hers; I find that instead of her encountering things through my eyes or Rachel’s eyes, she’s seeing things through her own eyes more and more. And it’s a fascinating world to view, even if it sometimes gets a bit myopic (“When can I have a snack again? You said fifteen minutes fifteen minutes ago. It’s been fifteen minutes. So I can have a snack now, right? Because it’s been fifteen minutes. It has. Really. Why is your eyeball suddenly bleeding, daddy?”). Here’s to enjoying the ride through her childhood, to infinity and beyond.

Happy birthday, Princess Ella! Your mommy and daddy love you very much.

Does Every Life Have a Purpose?

I pray a lot over my kids. I pray for their salvation. I pray for them to be healthy. I pray for them to find the right spouse. I pray for them to be safe, be strong, be smart, be kind. But perhaps more than anything, I pray for them to discover and own their purpose for living.

It’s not exactly an uncommon prayer – I can think of other parents who pray the same thing for their children – but it’s an uncommonly strong desire of mine that they find themselves sooner rather than later. I don’t want them walking vacantly through their lives, wondering what they’re meant to do, only coming to discover their purpose and passion at a late age when changing their lives to accomodate their purpose is hard. I say that from experience. I pray for them out of that experience.

But sometimes, if I’m honest with myself, I wonder if every life has a purpose. If everyone is meant to do something with the time they have on earth. I’ve grown up hearing that each life does have a purpose; I’ve made it a point to study the Scriptures that reveal that purpose; I’ve spent hours exhorting people to find that purpose and fulfill their God-given reason for being. And yet still I occasionally wonder: does every life really have a purpose?

If the answer is no, then my prayers for my kids is a bit vain. in fact, if the answer is no, then my life is possibly vain – after all, who’s to say that what I’ve discovered as my purpose isn’t really just my feeble attempt to give meaning to life that’s ultimately meaningless? That my purpose isn’t just me manufacturing something to give my life direction so I could feel as grounded as those people who actually do have a purpose?

This sounds stupid. I know. But I’m getting somewhere with it. Just hold on.

In the end, thinking about whether life is meaningless or meaningful isn’t really a question. I believe, and am backed by Scripture, that each life has a purpose. The ancient Christians believed this too, and built it into the first question of the Westminster Catechism:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

We exist to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That’s our purpose. Each and every person is meant – created – so God would be glorified. That’s an awesome thought.

And it’s part of what I’m praying for my kids. That they’ll learn who they are in Christ, learn those things about themselves that makes them unique among his creation, and learn how to bring glory to God by being the fullest expression of themselves. Or to be more concrete: that my kids would find those things that they are good at, excel at those things, and bring God glory through the effort.

Jon loves to build. Ella loves to sing. Jon loves playing games and solving puzzles. Ella loves creating imaginary worlds with words and illustrations. Might those interests fall by the wayside as they grow up? Certainly. But they might also be the very things that God gifted them to do in this life, things that – in their doing – will bring God glory that no other person can bring Him.

Does that mean they’ll be famous? No.

But it means they’ll be fulfilled. Which is what I’m really praying for anyway. It’s what I want for my life, and for anyone who walks the face of the earth: to be fulfilled by being who God made them to be. Fathers, poets, politicians, teachers, firemen, soldiers, chefs, nurses, trainers, managers, pilots, preachers, singers, servers, and saints – plus every person in between. All living their lives to the fullest to bring glory to God. 

Does it mean they’ll never encounter hardship or heartache? No.

But it means that when they are tested, they’ll remember in the correct context that God works things out for our good (Romans 8:28), that He uses our life circumstances to help us achieve our purpose – bringing Him glory. See, we tend to take the glory for ourselves, even when we’re well-intentioned. Humility suffers at the hand of prosperity, and life has this way of bringing us back down too earth. It’s unpleasant to say, but all too often God only gets glory when we cannot have it for ourselves. We have to be reminded, sometimes frequently, that the glory belongs to Him alone.

So I pray for my kids. That they’ll learn these lessons early. That they’ll approach life humbly, and with great appreciation for the blessings that carry them each day. I pray that they’ll learn from my life that chasing after God may entail heartache and trial, but it will always produce God’s glory and our greatest joy.

And in typing that, I think I understand why I came to my purpose so late: in order to show my children what it means to live that way.

To God be the glory.

My Daughter’s Valentine

For the past couple of days my daughter, Ella, has been on a covert mission. She’s pulled her mother aside for numerous private conversations, whispered into her brother’s ear countless times, and just been furtive in general. Finally, last night, she filled me in on the CIA-level spywork.

“Daddy, this year, I’m giving you a Valentine’s Surprise.”

My heart felt a little tug. My baby girl wants to give me a Valentine? Sweet.

“So I need a dollar from you tomorrow. Do you have a dollar, Daddy?”

So much for sweet.

“Uh, sure, Ella. I can give you a dollar. No problem.”

She kissed me on the cheek. “Ok. Great, daddy! Thank you.”

And with that, she skipped off to her room. I was left to marvel at what I’ve done right as a dad to inspire such a kind gesture from my daughter. Sure, we went to the Daddy-Daughter Date Night thing that Chick-fil-A put on (and she still badgers me about the unfinished Daddy-Daughter Conversation Book we received that night); and next week, we’ll tip-toe across the gym floor at her school under the balloon-festooned banners of the Daddy-Daughter Dance (which we attended last year and I got dumped by my daughter less than 5 minutes in). But I’m thinking there has to be more.

Is it the fact that I hug her whenever I get a chance because I want her to know I love her? Is it because I constantly make up funny stories (usually involving flatulence) at her request? Is it because I find her fascinating, with her creativity and kind heartedness being a combination I’ve never seen before?

Maybe it’s because I love her mother so desperately, and tell her all the time that she’s a mini-Mommy. Or because I allow her and Jon (her brother, my son) to tackle and wrestle with me on the floor.

Or is it because I wake her up each day and get her ready for school?

Because I answer her non-stop questions?

Because I allow her to have dance parties where we just boogie down as a family?

What inspires such love in a little one? I could spend all day trying to justify why she loves me. But in the end, there’s only one answer, and it’s as mysterious as it is satisfying.

She loves me because she loves me.

There are a thousand different variables that go into that truth, but at the end of the day, my daughter chooses – out of the great well of love and compassion and kindness in her heart – to love me, flaws and all. I haven’t earned it. I haven’t deserved it. She just freely gives it.

And it’s awesome.

This morning, she asked me about the dollar again. I thought I was off the hook because her Nonna (my mom) gave her a dollar last night to help fund her Valentine’s Surprise. So when Ella came to me this morning and said, “Daddy? I need another dollar,” I instinctively reached for my wallet.

She stopped me.

“No, Daddy,” she said. “I need you to get a dollar from my piggy bank.”

“But I can just give you a dollar, Ella. It’d be easier.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “No. I want to spend my money. Besides, I have lots of dollars in my piggy bank!”

I was floored. I sometimes wonder if I spoil my children too much; we sacrifice around our house, but we don’t make huge deal out of it. Sometimes, I worry that by not drawing attention to the idea of giving, I make things to easy for them, make them feel entitled. But there she was, wanting to spend her own money to purchase a gift she didn’t really have to buy, but wanted to as an expression of love. I thought about King David’s line on sacrifices that cost nothing.

So I did the only honorable thing: I ripped the bottom off her piggy bank and fished out a dollar. She smiled and took it in her little hands and said, “Thanks, Daddy. I love you.”

She was still holding her two dollars as we waited for her bus to come. I gently took the money and put it in a pouch on her backpack. She approved. (“Good idea, Daddy. I might drop it because I can be a bit spacey sometimes.”) We sat there in my car and she reached over and patted my hand.

When the bus turned onto our street, we got out of the car and Ella said, “Daddy! Real quick: what’s your favorite smell?”

“My favorite smell?”

“Yeah. Only it has to be something like a fruit: orange, cherry, banana. Quick! Pick one.”

“Okay,” I said as the pulled pulled to a stop and I handed her her backpack. “I pick orange.”

She stopped and looked at me. “Seriously? Orange?”

“Yes. I choose orange.”

She rolled her eyes and started up the bus steps. “Orange? Who wants an Orange Smencil?”

The bus doors closed and she was gone, but my Valentine’s Surprise had been unintentionally revealed: sometime this afternoon, I will be the proud recipient of an Orange scented pencil, a pencil that she will inevitably claim as her own. But she will have bought it with her own money, of her own volition, as a way of telling me what her words and hugs and life tell me every day: she loves me.

And I love her right back. More than she’ll ever know.