Goodbye Mordor.

I can’t stop sweating. If you open a door, the humidity is like a hot toilet steaming it’s foulness right up your nose. I remember once being acclimated…at this point, I’m not. I’ll tell you what I am though, thankful to be here in Florida.  This week is the first time I’m able to say it honestly, wholly, truly.  My mother flew to Las Vegas to be with my sister as she gave birth to my second nephew, making me an uncle for the third time. Thankful. In that interim, my dad and I have spent a lot of time together.  A LOT of time together. Coffee in the mornings, working in the yard, riding and sitting in Orlando traffic, making dinner, watching mind numbing entertainment on a large screen tv, debating “important” political issues, playing with the chihuahuas, eating at the Waffle house…I have seen his heart more closely than in many years, and it seems a wilderness of dried up pools, burned down forests, plane crashes, destroyed villages with hastily abandoned graves. My dad lives in  a  wasteland of death, and at the center of this desert, a fortress of self-imposed solitude, guarded fiercely by the demons who convinced him to retreat from the pain of this life behind thick walls of self-protection and fear.  It is painful to witness because the darkness seems so impenetrable almost as if life has no place even trying.  I have prayed so much for something, anything to pierce the veil of this night, and bring a new morning to my dad.

Yesterday, my dad decided to live.  He decided to not die. Depression is such an effective downer.  The past can get ahold of you, digging deep into your mind, will, and emotions, effectively rendering your soul a slave to seemingly unending sadness.  I am my father’s son and have felt what he feels, have met his pain and hurt with him, but Yesterday, God blessing yesterday, a breath entered that dank and lightless room and stirred my dad to stand up.

  Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick, but a desire fulfilled is the tree of life.  Hope makes groundhog day seem tolerable. Hope kills sadness.  To see hope in my dad’s face reminds me that economic recession or not, sick or well, lonely or surrounded, sordid past or squeaky clean,  joy or not, God is good and keeps his promises. He really does.  I saw the darkness go, I witnessed the dark bow to light and recede. I have seen this present glory change a man enslaved to the dark and I am thankful.