No Proofreads. No Edits.

I struggle to like your kids. It’s hard for me to not find him annoying. It’s hard for me to talk sweetly to her. I am trying, despite speaking to all small humans as if they are a business associate. The good news is that your kids grow on me. Their annoyance and spastic behavior eventually gets ignored. It’s just a slow burn for me and I don’t feel bad when they cry. I am trying.

There is this one kid I always wondered about. High energy. Never seemed to listen. Loud. At times rude and defiant. I never understood because his parents were/are great parents. I never understood why he stayed jacked to the tits 24/7. I wasn’t sure I would ever come around on the exhaustion that was my child’s friendship.

It all changed in an instant…

No one knew I was watching. My son fell in a bouncy house. He was getting rocked by bigger kids double bouncing as his body flailed on the ground. His high-energy, sometimes rude, friend was there with him. As my son began to cry from confusion, disorientation, and overall loss of control of his body, I watched this little boy who couldn’t sit still, often forgot the word “please”, and is closer to speaking Spanish than he is to speaking in an inside voice, throw his body on top of my son’s and yell “stop it!” “stop jumping.” I then watched him lead my son out of the bouncy house and hug him as he cried making sure he was ok.

Fuck anything I ever thought this kid was… he’s ok with me. I’ll die protecting that friendship. My son doesn’t know who he has in that dude.

I think we overestimate the amount of people who have our back. I truly think that most friends will freeze at the edge of the foxhole. They don’t know it and you don’t know it. You’ll both die thinking that you have the other’s back but it’s only because life never called for it that you that you weren’t found wanting…or, heaven forbid, being wanted. I include myself in this yet-to-be discovered pussilaminous inaction.

The foster experience has made me really wonder who is in the foxhole and who thinks they are in the foxhole. It’s weird trying to integrate 6 people into one unit overnight. It’s hard. Maybe it’s even agaisnt biology. I sit awake most nights wondering why I feel alone.

The truth is, the outside world other’s us. You don’t mean to, and that makes it ok. But you do. Two kids looking for a place to call home, different skin color, different last name, no fucking clue how they got here, and all they want to do is blend in. Good luck bub. The Gaffer and I aren’t miracle workers and you don’t have a clue or the fucking time to deal with this riddle. It’s easier not to help fix. To mess with the edges and hope it does something.

To you, right now, we are your friends with foster kids. We are a family of 4 with 2 other kids. Not six. We don’t have 3 kids around the same age a toddler, we have 2 kids around the same age and 2 foster kids. You aren’t ready to be uncomfortable and you don’t even know it. Frankly, you aren’t ready for a family of 6 either, and that has to be ok.

This season is not our identity. It’s why I cant make BJJ practices anymore, it’s why I cant get rid of this daycare cough, and it’s why my wife and I can’t find a moment of silence. But it’s not our identity. We are racing to normalcy. It’s not the distance that sucks, it’s the 900 pound ruck on our backs. It’s been so nice for people to take a pound or two, for a moment or two. A very select few have taken the full ruck but they are out there. They have taken the 900 pounds to the dome, if only for a moment, so that we could exhale. Those moments will never be forgotten. You are our protector in the bouncy house.

Simon of Cyrene is the ultimate throw in to the crucifiction story. Truly minding his own business and the next thing you know he is carrying the entire cross by himself. Jesus was broken and Simon was given every pound of that wood. Then he moved it up the hill just so instead of Jesus having to carry it, He could simply be nailed to it.

Simon didn’t stop the crucifiction. He didn’t make it so the nails themselves wouldn’t drive into God’s son’s wrists. But he took everything off of Jesus for a moment. Despite everything going on in Jesus head at that time, I have to think He was thankful for Simon.

Simon didn’t save Jesus. He didn’t rescue Him. He didn’t even delay the inevitable. However, he took the whole thing for a small moment in time and didn’t cherry-pick or ask for a reprieve. He got in the foxhole and no one can say he didn’t.

I think Simon is worth contemplating.