Present Over Perfect

quarterly report: I’m working on this, also this. Will do
better next time on this. So sorry about this, again. I’m on it.
I’m on it.
Since that Sunday, sometimes when I pray, I think about
the rescue. And then I think about the tenderness of that
conversation after the rescue. I remind myself that I’m
building a new set of stories—the ones that were true all
along, instead of my old set, whispering shame at every plot
point.
I think of swimming with our boys, and how when one
of them struggles, I don’t lecture. I don’t let them flounder a
few extra seconds while I correct them sternly. I scoop them
up, a hundred times an hour if necessary. I watch them, grab
them, keep them close. When we’re safe again, when we’re
close to shore, then we talk about deep water or clearing our
ears when we dive down deep.
But before all that, rescue. Rescue. Rescue. Even the
word moves me. And then the question: why did you
doubt? Not: what’s wrong with you? Not the frustrated and
rhetorical, “Why on earth did you do that?” that a parent
asks a child after he knocks something off a counter. But a
question, an invitation into conversation, a way of saying,
“I’m here and I care, and let’s solve this together.”
I haven’t often prayed to a God who says, “We’ve got
this; we’ll do it together. Your failure doesn’t rattle me.
Your limitations don’t bother me.” But I do now, little by
little. Because now when I step out of that boat, I’m starting
to see a man with love in his eyes, a man who will rescue