the good life

Yesterday my son Nate and I spent most of the day in Madera with my grandparents. He and I worked together in the hot sun, weeding and pruning and mowing their front yard, and working in Grampo's vegetable garden. At some point Nate stopped and said, "It feels so good to be out here in the country... just listening to the quiet and working. I miss this."

For the first nine years of Nate's life he lived on the farm. Most of the time he was naked, dirty, and dripping with grape juice from his procurement of fruit from the vines. We swam in the ditches together, and walked through orange groves to Grams and Grampo's house, where there was always a big meal on the table.

Yesterday I let Nate drive, though he is only 15 and has no license. This of course is standard fare in the country. He was driving tractors and trucks around when he was five, as was I at that age.

We drove past our farmhouse where we lived before moving into the city at Dakota House. We saw our old stuff: a swing set, and our dog house too... abandoned by the side of the barn. The pen where our geese lived was dilapidated, and the chicken coop, though still standing, was lopped over to one side and barely hanging on.

It was sort of weird for Nate. Everything looked smaller than he remembered, of course. And he is grown now, no longer the little boy with his BB gun slung over his shoulder, out hunting for frogs with one eye out for the coyotes. Now here he was driving around the dirt roads he had walked as a child. He got a little sad. If he'd had his way we never would have moved into the ghetto and away from the beloved grape vines and all he knew as his world. He had to grow up pretty fast on Dakota. He was threatened and beaten up, saw his mother threatened and her heart broken, was required to share his mother and family with all the neighborhood kids, and had lots of his personal stuff stolen. It was hard. I believe he grew so much, and his heart took in things that God will use. But most everything has a cost, and often we don't know what we have paid until the purchase has been made.

I was very proud of Nate yesterday, as I always am. He worked hard and loved his grandparents well. He is growing into a good young man, and I have a lot to thank Jesus for. He paid the price for all of our blunders, and even brings beauty to them. As we flew along down country roads, windows open, heat pouring in, I looked over at my son, who smiled back at me and said, "Man...I have a good life."

And thanks to Jesus, this is true.