Six
By Faith Bigelow Walker © January 2005
I gazed around our table, and my heart was full. I saw six chairs, six place settings, six diners, and six happy faces. Had it really been six long years since there were six around our table? Derek and Jacob took turns razzing one another, as brothers often do, and it was bittersweet. I felt a deep sadness for the lost years—years that the older could have been leading and teaching the younger. Joy mingled with melancholy, however, as I listened to the playful banter they now exchanged. Next, I glanced at Amanda and Kayla, where I observed the close bond of sisterhood, the kind forged only through years of time invested in one another’s lives. Again my feelings were ambivalent. The intimacy I witnessed between the two sisters magnified what the brothers had lost. Finally, my eyes wandered to my sweet husband, Jim, now manifesting the vestiges of middle age in lines around his eyes and salt and pepper seasoning in his thinning hair, once thick and black. Two decades of marriage had borne both hardship and kindness to us; together we had shared burdens and blessings, and my heart smiled.
Memory took over where my eyes had paused. Lost in the “video” of my mind’s eye, I scarcely noticed as the family carried on around me. Together my heart and I rewound the years to when Jim and I met on a blind date and married nine months later. I gained a husband and “birthed” my first child—Derek was then three years old—through marriage. Heart and I, we then fast-forwarded through that first year, where my second-time husband taught his first-time wife that marriage wasn’t just a fairy tale, but lots and lots of hard work. Heart and I now paused, because here, around our first anniversary, Jim and I both received the Lord Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. Our union was even stronger now, because a three-fold cord is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes
The next three years brought two new additions, a boy and then a girl, to the first son born of marriage. These two arrived with their own complications, Jacob premature, and Amanda forcing me to bedrest for three months. At this point, Derek came to live with us full-time, which created a dilemma for my heart; my gain was another woman’s loss. It was a blessing to add Derek to our numbers, yet I grieved over his mom’s sacrifice. Family bonding was both challenging and fulfilling—we were learning to love, being woven together in the process.
During the spinning of this family tapestry, Kayla was born. This sweet, dark-eyed delight spent the week following her birth in the neonatal intensive care unit, overcoming what doctors called a precipitous birth—six to ten centimeters in less than ten minutes, a single push popping her into the world, completely blue from lack of oxygen. While she awaited a clean bill of health, I recuperated from what felt like giving birth to a blue bowling ball.
Our family had now grown from three to six. Our precious children, a heritage from the Lord, would be arrows in our warrior hands as we marched through the future, advancing the cause of Christ (Psalm 127: 3&4). Our desires mirrored those of any parent—to nurture, to protect, to bless, and to give our children the best. Jim and I defined the best as salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. We didn’t want to see them spend one second in the desert wilderness, much less twenty-five years, as father and mother had. We eagerly set about the task of introducing our progeny to their heavenly Father; we sowed kingdom seeds into their lives every chance we got—at home, at church, and in prayer. These children belonged to God first and to us second.
The present pulled me from my reverie. I gazed anew around the table, all six places full, and it felt right. “This feels good,” I declared.
“The table’s full.” Twenty-four-year-old Derek smiled, reading my mind.
“Yes.” I returned his smile.
Heart and I drifted again, this time to the night of the argument. That night was forever etched in my brain and on my heart. I heard again the angry words that numbered us five when once we were six, and I remembered the exodus in dead of night—that night, six years ago. I relived the emotional amputation, and my heart recalled afresh six years of meals for five. I saw again brokenhearted Kayla sobbing with me after Derek left.
Prior to Derek’s departure, a yawning chasm had formed between us, parents on one side, and son on the other. We three dug that chasm with shovels of misunderstanding and fear. We stacked the earth high on either side with bulldozers of resentment, offense, and bitterness. Finally, the breach had grown too big to cross, the differences too many to overlook.
My flesh tempted me often to dwell on that final confrontation: two parents who needed to be in control, maybe too much; a son demanding independence; fateful words spoken by a father, “We must have rules, Derek, your siblings look up to you;” Derek’s choice to depart, leaving broken hearts and broken dreams in his wake.
“Go after him!” I had shrieked.
“No, he made his choice,” my husband sighed.
Over the subsequent six years, contact was at best sporadic and superficial. Early on, doubt and confusion battered our weary minds with pain, fear, guilt, and worry. Our hearts grew guarded and cynical, enslaved by anger, self-pity, and feelings of failure. Only one thing remained constant amidst the shifting emotional sand—the empty place at the table and the desire for him to come home, to us and to his heavenly Father.
As the years passed, Jim and I began to understand our need to forgive and be forgiven. Wounded hearts warred with strengthening spirits, and mercy and grace prevailed. As we learned to walk more and more by faith, our feelings could no longer rule. We clung to God’s promise in Proverbs 22:6 as a lifeline; we had raised Derek the way he should go, and God would be faithful to bring his prodigal son home. Our job as parents was to be ready when the time came.
As the seventh year dawned, our son called. “Can I come home? I want to make things right.”
Prepared by the mercy of God’s grace to receive him with love and forgiveness, Jim and I dared to trust again. That same grace had given Derek the courage and humility to make the call. Our son was coming home! In the seventh year, God’s number for completion, we were again six.
Scriptures taken from NKJV