Guest Post from Dad: Jesus & Garrett

Yesterday, our plans for having Garrett with his developmental therapist while I ran the girls to gymnastics and dance and Grouchy worked on a broken plow fell through due to the therapist's illness. Grouchy ended up with Garrett for a couple of hours until I came to get him and take him to the Y while the girls were in their classes. Grouchy had a neat experience in the truck with Garrett, and I asked him to share as a guest-blog-post. Priceless stuff!! And welcome back, Grouchy. I LOVE your writing, as always!!

3-11-13

One of my constant sources of stress is ensuring that Garrett knows Jesus as well as he can for his cognitive ability, knowing down deep that he has a much better chance of getting to Heaven than any of us so-called normal people with all of our obsessions and worries and worldly matters.  I was busy this afternoon trying to get a plow fixed and finish plowing the corn stubble.  I end up with Garrett for the evening which means no work on the plow, which means a totally lost afternoon for work and basically picking up in the morning where I left off at 2 this afternoon…

Conversation with Garrett in my truck this afternoon:

A Christian song starts playing on the radio and within the first few lines is a reference to Jesus on the Cross.

JG: ‘Daddy, Jesus died on the Cross.’

OE: (Surprised) ‘He sure did, buddy.  Do you know why?’ (expecting something JG-esque like ‘because he did.’)

JG: ‘He died for our sins.’

OE: (Really surprised) ‘That’s right.  It’s the only way we can wash away our sins.’

JG: ‘But, Daddy, how come we don’t have any more sense?”

OE: (sensing a rare moment to witness to my li’l man) ‘Li’l Buddy, we all have sins.  Everybody on earth has sins.  But as long as we have Jesus and love Him, He will wash them away for us.’

JG:  ‘How come we all have sense if Jesus didn’t want us to have sense?’

OE:  ‘Well, we try not to sin, but we all do.  Jesus was the only person on earth to ever live and not sin.’

JG: ‘Awe, I miss Jesus.’

OE: ‘It’s OK, He’s always with us in spirit, but we’ll get to meet Him when we die.’

JG: ‘When will we die?  I want to see Jesus.  Are we on the earth right now?’

OE: (fighting back tears as the range of emotions from the almost certainty of him preceding us to the totally random but appreciated moment with my little man)  ‘Yep, we’re on earth.’

JG:  ‘Why are we on earth if Jesus is in Heaven?’

OE:  ‘Because He wants us to help other people meet Him on earth before we go to see Him.’

JG: ‘When I see Jesus, I’m going to tell him thank you for taking my sense…. (Arriving at the grocery store...) Daddy, can I go in?  I want a doughnut.’

Simplicity can be so genius….