I have survived

It was stressful. It was scary. It was. . . my son's seventh birthday party.

We haven't had a party for my son for a couple of years so apparently the memory of how painful it could be had escaped us. The party started at eleven a.m. but that did not stop my son from getting up at 6 a.m. ON A SATURDAY and ask us every three minutes when people were coming.

We spent the next few hours getting things ready. And then came the flood of children. There were a total of 13 children between the ages of 4 and 8 years old in my house for over three hours. They came in innocently enough. But once I turned on the ultra-super cool slip and slide all you know what broke loose. People were cutting in line, screaming and jumping. A couple of kids became air borne when they slid over a bump in our uneven front yard. It was quite a sight.

Then came lunch. They descended on the patio much like the locust of biblical times. They devoured 16 hotdogs, 24 hamburgers, three huge bags of potato chips, three cantalopes and one honey dew mellon. All of them of course insisted on talking with their mouths open so for the adults present lunch became an excersie in dodging projectile food products.

After lunch came the cake. As my wife brought it out from the kitchen, all the kids surrounded her chanting "I want that piece, I want that piece!" each pointing to various parts of the cake. It was like a scene out of Lord of the Flies. I was about to get a stick and pry some of them loose from my wife's pants when they settled down. As more parents arrived in the house they helped with crowd control and we all sat and ate and visited while the kids played. Time simply just passed by.

And then I started looking around the room and taking in the whole situation. My son was surrounded by friends who cared about him, they were having fun. They were living the joyously unencumbered life of children. The adults were all together, many from the neighborhood, many of them I consider friends. We were talking, sharing, laughing. I had an opportunity to tell one of the dads who is looking for a new church all about ours. My son was marking the passage of another year in his life. He is growing, becoming I pray the the person God wants him to be. This is the stuff that life is made of. Moments of just being thankful. All the stress of the morning, the heat, the anxiety of entertaining all melted away.

I will never be a rich man, when it comes to money. But yesterday I tell ya, I felt like one of the most sucessful people in the world. To see my wife, children, friends and neighbors all together enjoying the day was all the fortune I need.
 
Be well all.