My Little Pineapple

I'm a big believer in new opportunities and fresh starts. I don't need to remind anyone that sometimes, well, life can just suck and not make a whole lot of sense. But luckily, I don't think that this mud and glop are things we have to toss back and forth for any longer than we want to.

Do you remember your All-Time Classic Heartbreak? Sure you do. Mine happened sometime in that interminably long and fuzzy part of my life between the times I walked across the stage at my college graduation and the moment I felt even a bit confident about the direction my life was taking. By the way: nowhere in my life manual do I remember reading that life in your 20s would be so confusing. Where's the self-help literature here?

One of the major redeeming factors in that interim, dark part in my life was a job I had working in a short-term day care at a posh athletic club in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Believe it or not, it wasn't the brown diapers or spit-up that most appealed to me (though, after leaving this job, I truly do believe I am now officially Mr. Mom-certified), but of course, it was the people that I met at the club that made the difference.

One particular difference-maker was a little fuzzy new pineapple named Jack. Jack and I bonded over the baby swinger, the bopper, and romping on the floor with the orange and blue plastic rings. Jack's mom also took to me, really helping make me feel welcome in her young family and reassuring me about my own future. Literally, I made a wonderful new friendship that helped pass me through the Chicago winter. But it wasn't until I connected the dots on Jack's birthday that I really had an ah-ha moment.

It was the very night of Jack’s birth, in a nearby part of Chicago on an otherwise typical and brutally cold December night, that my heart took its devastated u-turn. Just as Jack and his parents entered a world of their own firsts, I entered my time of beginnings.

To me, Jack represents the promise and amazing possibilities that accompany any change. The winter months weren’t easy, but as I grew closer to Jack and the other kids and staff at my job, I slowly uncovered a new path that would brighten my days, a path that would lead me to where I am today. A place that I feel pretty damn good about.

I'm starting to feel more and more confident that God's love is like this--only better. No matter what happens, no matter how badly we screw it up, God waits, and indeed wants, to hold and guide us. Now, on the nights when I lie awake and stare at the ceiling, too anxious to sleep, I try to recall the promise that last Sunday we heard once came crashing down from the skies over the River Jordan:

“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Not a bad deal, if you ask me.