"Home" with Shepherd

Shepherd had a bad day today. We think he is teething (or, at least, that is what I tell myself to give the hours of crying meaning). To complicate things, BJ has been gone four to five nights a week for the past month, leaving me wondering how in the world single moms do it.

By the end of today, I was haggard to say the least, so when BJ left once again at 7:30ish, I didn't know how I would make it through the next half hour until Shepherd's bath and bedtime. Suddenly, I remembered a day a month ago when Shepherd and I listened to indie music from NPR's tiny desk concerts. He actually seemed calmed by the music, so I ran with my crying baby on my hip to the computer and pulled up Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros singing "Home". I started twirling and dancing silly and singing and basically doing anything I could think of to make my baby smile. And in a moment of pure grace, it worked.

There is something about dancing in circles singing the words, "Ahh, Home/Let me come Home/Home is wherever I’m with you/Ahh, Home/Let me come Home/Home is when I’m alone with you," to your giggling baby boy that just makes the world seem like a wonderful place. When I was a child, I was told that heaven would be a place where we would sit around singing hymns all day. That sort of sounds like torture. I hope instead that heaven is simply a place where the feeling I had tonight dancing with Shepherd is multiplied infinitely. At the end of this very long day, my mind is too exhausted to be sure of much, but I am sure of one thing: I see God's creativity, grace, and beauty in my four-month old son everyday, and it is astounding.