Answering Machine Message

My son, Ron, just wrote me:

“Dad: It may be intentional, or maybe you just haven't been able to bring yourself to deal with it, but I thought I should remind you that your home answering machine still says, "You have reached Ralph & Frances Hiatt”… I hope this doesn't sound wrong, but I miss the two of you, together, as much as I miss Mom. I'm not saying you’re less than a full person. I'm saying that together you made up a "super-person"; even more than what two people can be separately. 1+1 = 2 is only true in silly things like math.” Ron

Dear Ron,

Oh my! Who ever listens to their own answering machine message? I’ll have to change that! Mom now lives at a new address where communications operate on a different frequency. Think of it! No daily calls offering to lower your interest rate! Must be quiet up there… except for that ultra-harmonious background music of angelic singing.

Your right, Ron. I’m really only half here… actually a little less than half. Mom was my brain. I always asked her, “What’s that pastor’s wife’s name?” and “Do you remember that paper I did in Bible School on Sermons in the book of Acts?” (Back in Bible School days I hand wrote everything and she typed my papers while I handed her the script. We were crammed together in that little 27 foot trailer house… and baby Ronny was crying and our pet parakeet kept landing on her head. 40 years later at my request she could dig up that term paper out of the heap of old boxes. She listened and observed and retained almost everything. I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without her. Beside all this, she was so nice to everybody (even to me) that she was loved by all.

Knowing what a “fly by the seat of my pants guy” I was as a teenager, it was only God that kept me from marrying a gorgeous girl named Jill. She was very talented and beautiful. I was madly in love with her and (“God be praised forever!”) she jilted me for another guy and broke my heart. She married that guy… I later heard they divorced and who knows what happened after that and where she is now, if she is still living? I didn’t often pause to think things through as I should have. I was far too “happy go lucky” and emotionally driven. Only one thing saved me from major shipwreck. God! I really did want to do His will and sought His plan for my life over and over. But He never answered me. Or so I thought. He never clued me in on the future. No words from heaven. He knew I couldn’t handle that. So I just ran full speed ahead until I hit a wall and bounced off and then ran full speed in another direction. As you know I haven’t changed that much really. I still run full speed and bounce off walls. It just takes me longer to pick myself up off the floor these days, but you’ll soon find me running in some other direction with all I’ve got.

And all the time I still feel like that teenage kid trying to do a man’s job.

Love,

Dad