Bono, Me, and the Kids

About a year ago I was going to go to Seattle to see a U2 concert.

Let me tell you more: my youngest son, as a Father's Day gift, purchased tickets that he and I (and two of his siblings) might attend the U2 concert scheduled for June of 2010. I was excited to be included and excited to be with my kids for an event I knew they would love.

Then there was the emergency back surgery. Not mine, but Bono's. He was in the Netherlands and had to have emergency back surgery which resulted in the postponement of the Seattle concert (and several others).

Now it is a year later. I am just recovering from my own little medical emergency, and the concert is at hand. The four of us drive to Seattle (I am driven by my children!), find what we hope to be legitimate parking and we walk to the stadium, dining along the way (sometimes a hot dog has to pass as real food). Along with thousands of others we enter the stadium and are overwhelmed with the scale and crowd and the stage and the everything else. It is an event and a large event at that.

The warm-up band plays and we enjoy it ... mostly. Then, the road crew begins to rearrange the stage and at 9 p.m. the show begins. We see the band enter, we are on our feet clapping wildly and cheering. They begin to play and we all go nuts and cheer more and clap more and we never sit down.

I can't begin to describe the joy of the evening: joy at being with my kids, the joy of knowing that they were doing something for me that they knew I would like, the joy of them being there and seeing the band play and soaking up the performance that was flawless and awesome. But most of all it was my joy in seeing my kids so enraptured, so entranced, so absorbed in music that spoke to them, that moved them. It brought such a joy to me to be with them, to be part of this experience, to be a part of their lives.

And that is the best Father's Day gift ever!

The ER, God's Love and Sludge Suckers

I never planned on going to the ER last week; but then I suppose that is why they call it an emergency -- you don't really plan on it. Having had a routine procedure that decided to get complicated, I ended up in the ER and then stayed the night at the hospital. Having lost a fair amount of blood I realized that upon my release my normal slate of activities for that week was out of the question.

During this time the building where I live and am the manager, developed a lake in the parking lot because the storm drain became filled with sludge. Tending to be hyper-responsible, I was trying to figure out how to de-sludge the drain knowing that physically I could not (and should not) attempt the task.

That is where the goodness of God and the sludge-sucking truck converged! I was watching out my kitchen window and saw a truck pull up to a nearby drain, the operators got out, attached a bunch of hoses and they began cleaning out a drain on the sidewalk near ours. Eureka! There are people who get paid to suck sludge from drains!

This normally would not be a high point of my day, but when I realized that a.) I shouldn't be doing this and b.) God knew I would worry about it and c.) there are other people who have the equipment and skill to do these things, I immediately rejoiced and relaxed and thanked God for this small mercy.

Just to let you know: they agreed to look at my drain and in very short order had it cleaned out and explained to me how it worked and how to clear it in an emergency and that there really is no way to deal with a full drain other than to have them come now and then and clean it out. Yay for these guys! A small mercy but a great joy!

Who knew that God loved me that much?