IF ONLY OUR CHILDREN COULD HAVE KNOWN US THEN

A NEW LEARNING
I will always wish that my children could have known us and seen us when Christine and I were young. When Christine walked with long legs under pleated skirts, with her waspish waist, and confident stride. When she sat with her cascading brunette hair over her shoulders, and smiled so infectiously the room became happy. I wish my children could have heard her sing as she sang in the years before they were born. The young voice, untrained yet, still finding its way but with the promise of accomplishment and joy, striking notes that soared to the highest ceiling. I wish they might have known her when her faith was still fresh from God’s work in her heart at seventeen and she was willing to follow God anywhere.

I wonder what my children might have thought of me if they had seen me as a young man of eighteen, with strong body, legs of power, lean and muscled torso. Would they have said, “wow” when they watched me on the two hundred metre track or rolling over the bar at the high jump pit. I would like to have them see my hair swept back at the sides and dovetailed behind, held in place by Brylcream, a curly whisp of hair falling at the forehead. If only they might have heard me sing when I was sixteen and winning vocal contests as a boy soprano and then within months singing a resonant baritone song. And what pleasure they might enjoy to see me baptized at seventeen years of age, and later at eighteen attending Urbana Inter Varsity Conference in Illinois and telling God that I would set a career in art aside to serve Him with my life.