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Slaying Giants






Days like this begin when the night before I choose not to sleep, because I must read a few more lines from some news site or scroll one last time through the glowing screen of my iPhone instead of making good on my resolve to read quality literature and journal prior to bed. They continue when I wake up earlier than usual to teach, but finish teaching to realize that my children also went to bed later then they should. So now, everyone’s patience operates like feet hitting a wet spot on a wood floor. Bam. You loose traction. And first one then another is upset and done. That tantrum sparked another melt-down from someone else, and as I try to not join the melt-downs, and instead attempt to be the adult I hazard some words of explanation. 

“Your choices impact us all.” I tell one of them. 

My children’s choice do change the tenor of the room for good or for ill, but so do my choices. On days of this sort, where nothing is really wrong, other than a strong case of the grumpies, that gets passed on like some contagious disease it feels absurd that it should even be called A DAY LIKE THIS. 

And yet, and yet—as I heard in a story from a party in which the guests told stories, and in a book that I read recently this is what must happen. You must “keep putting one foot in front of the other,” and “make a beginning.” And from this all, I know that I must keep beginning, and beginning again. Even now, at the end of A DAY LIKE THIS they have yet to fall to sleep, because Gabe is scared of heaven and giants. 

Maybe we are all a little bit scared of heaven, that wonderful unknown, that remains unknown, because as the bard said, “No traveler has returned.” But someone did return.

It was Christ, and I picture Mary crying in the garden, and imagine the warmth and goodness of His voice, as he called her by name. Maybe one shouldn’t be scared. And if there are giants, aren’t they just the DAYS LIKE THIS waiting to be slain? Only giant slayers must remember that they are the people of God.  












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