I recently spent about a week away from my family. It’s true that clichés and maxims and anecdotes come about because they represent truths of various profundity, and it’s no different for the old saw “absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
My wife and two boys travelled with my extended family to Oregon about a week ago, and I and my brother-in-law stayed back in Idaho to work and bring home bacon, planning to drive together to meet up with everyone over the following weekend. Let me tell you—it was a shock.
It’s not that I’ve never been apart from my family; I have. It’s just that the interval was a little longer than ever before, to the point where I found myself struggling with unique sleeping habits. It’s just bizarre sleeping on one side of a bed when the other side’s empty, and one hears the oddest sounds when a house is unusually quiet.
A man’s sons are like an edifying balm to him; arrows in a warrior’s quiver. I missed hearing them snore softly. I missed being awakened in the middle of the night to quell nightmares, to quench thirsts, to check on them even when they’re not necessarily in need of my attention. There’s something satisfying about watching one’s own children sleeping. All the heavens open up in the middle of the night and the positive possibilities of the future yawn wide, beckoning whatever wild dreams a father can bring to bear for the best of his strapping boys.
I discovered the benefits of Facebook anew just the other day. I had tagged my wife in a post about how I was on my way to meet her. Up popped an old batch of photos; my wife and my boys about two years ago in Hawaii. In the photos my oldest son, now eight, reminded me of my youngest son, now three—and my youngest son reminded me of my oldest son when he was just a little guy and pretty much brand new to the world. Memories and reveries crashed on me as I sat alone at my kitchen table, and I found myself thanking God that I would see my family again soon.
The irony here is that I often complain, inwardly or outwardly, that I have little time to “get things done” with the boys crashing around the house or my wife singing her way through her morning routine. Family might be something you eventually “get used to.” But you never appreciate it enough. Not until the house is too quiet, anyway. Besides, family isn’t something to endure. It’s something to relish. Even on the worst days.
This is just to encourage you if you’ve forgotten what really matters, if even for a moment. I know I did, but I hold fast now. My reunion with my wife and my boys was beyond sweet. It was a taste of heaven, really.
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