Lavender

Every morning my son races ahead of me down foggy Kirkham St. on his three-wheeled scooter, speeding to the limits of his rising independence (he’s allowed to wait patiently at each road crossing).  Occasionally we’ll switch things up – we’ll share hot cocoa and coffee together before scooting off to preschool.  Other days we’ll race out the door early, aiming to rope drop into Blue Class, winning prime fort-construction territory before circle time starts.  Eventually his little brother joined the commute – the three of us worked hard together learning the route to school, watching out for garage doors, throwing wary eyes to neighbor dogs, and, eventually, expertly weaving through trash cans and sidewalk lips on flashy new scooters while (less) expertly braking and swerving before the momentum carries us too far. 

My son is a man of routine and loves the things he loves – he’s asked for the same lullaby his entire life, every bedtime book is a retread of the same set of dinosaur reference manuals.  On our morning walk, without exception, he pauses in front of a neighbor’s lavender plant – he’ll brush the lavender with his fingers, breathe in its scent, look back and wave to me before jetting off again. 

Today is the last day that I get the privilege of walking him to his neighborhood forest school – next year will be Kindergarten, with a car commute, extracurriculars, extended care and homework.  Yesterday, the penultimate day –  overwhelmed by gratitude and bittersweet – I continued my morning in the Botanical Garden, meditating and praying in the last echoes of morning still before the tourists and school groups awakened to life. 

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There’s something about finiteness that’s magical and holy.  We get to experience the rises and crashes of ephemerality, riding the waves of God’s pleasure to new joys and sitting in the tension and longing when those waves recede.

When things draw to a close we get a unique opportunity to reflect and understand the depth of their impact on us.  As Christians these feelings point us towards our true home – melancholy for childhood’s dwindling hours rings with a strong echo of homesickness.  It’s an awareness of a profound love and peace and joy that we had, that we lost, that we yearn to return to someday.  My kids are young, but I can see the shape of how things are going to progress and have known some of the sadnesses – my life will be marked by celebration seasoned with mourning, both emotions building in ever-mounting intensity by the permanency of childhood – there’s no reopening any of these doors and once they’re closed they’re closed forever. 

As a wedding gift my wife and I received a beautiful video chronicling our upbringing and our early years of dating.  At our rehearsal dinner we relived crawfish boils in Golden Gate Park and fancy dress-up speakeasies, but this time with new wisdom, knowing now how God had designed these moments with the intention that they’d eventually lead to our marriage.  

We rewatch this video each anniversary and every additional year adds new gravity to these memories.  Tiny seeds of our marriage’s personality were present in those clips in ways that are only just now starting to reach maturity.  Silly voice-dub videos during a study break are echoed back in the way we read to our children at bedtime. My wife’s eyes sparkle in our wedding photos with a resurgent glitter now that I’ve seen those eyes shine on our son’s first wobbling strides on his pedal bike. God’s work reaches backward in time – even though I’ve long mourned our honeymoon season God has gifted a deeper joy that rises out of that passing away.  Just because something is over doesn’t mean it’s over – God can and does enjoy redeeming, calling back, connecting and reminding us of how masterful his plan has been all along – what artist wouldn’t take similar delight?

This kind of thing must happen when we join Christ in the New Kingdom.  Days like today, drenched in welling gratitude will regain life with us in our resurrection.  If I can discern these things in my current, broken body, how much more potent the revelation when I see my King face to face?  God designed my son, our route, one particular lavender bush, one final day of preschool and infused it with holy emotion.  If God reaches backwards now to show me his love, why not in our resurrection?  

I’m sure the Reality is beyond imagining, but I like to imagine nonetheless – that somewhere in the new Jerusalem there’s a lavender bush, that I’ll meet my son there one day in the midst of eternity, that the scent of Real lavender will awaken this long forgotten memory.   

That we’ll both be overwhelmed by a God who loved us even then, who knew how our lives would unfold and how we’d rebel, that nonetheless gave us this foretaste of holy sweetness to awaken our longings.  

That the waves and crests of childhood were meant for this kind of crescendo – where the reason for such bittersweetness will suddenly clarify and we’ll awaken to new depths of amazement and worship for a God who could compose such a beautiful creation.