This is a recent personal Facebook post that I want to share on my blog sites and on the Cecil Taylor Ministries Facebook page.
This may just look like a disassembled bed. But it's much more. It's a hope and a memory that is going away today.
My wife Sara and I try not to get too attached to temporary things. But this is a temporary thing that makes me pause as it leaves. I got up in the middle of the night just to touch the smooth finish of the headboard again and remember.
This was our daughter Rebecca's bed before there was a Rebecca. Oh, she existed, of course, but we didn't know her yet. We assembled a bedroom when we knew our adoption would go through, but before we even had a picture of her.
The bed waited for her. We waited for her. I would sit on that bed and hope and dream.
Then the day came that Rebecca arrived and met her very own bed. Somewhere is a non-digitized photo of three-year-old Rebecca sitting on the bed with her god sisters Amanda and Jean. A lot of joy was on the bed that day!
Over the years, there were bedtime stories and exercises to memorize state capitals and bouncing that led us to send her to gymnastics class to get out the energy. On some mornings, I would go to wake her up and just pause for a moment to marvel at her sleeping presence.
As the bed has sat in her old room, it's her absence I feel now. She has flown. The nest is empty. The bed has been waiting again.
We had a bed and hoped for a little girl. Somewhere there is a little girl who has hoped for a bed. Tonight she'll sleep on her very own bed, thanks to Bed Start at Custer Road United Methodist. There's something very right about this disassembled bed being assembled and used again.
And tonight Rebecca will come over to watch the football game and eat game food and plan a road trip we're taking together.
As for me, yes, as Groucho Marx coined it, I'm a sentimental old fluff.
My latest book, Live Like You're Loved, is now available for pre-order at the Cecil Taylor Ministries online store, along with the already-ready video series and accompanying Participant's Guides that can be pre-ordered. Please check it all out for a transforming individual and group study.
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