"How are you?"

Tonight our associate pastor preached on how Christians should pursue honesty, even in the answering of socially conventional questions like "How are you?"

I've always had trouble with that question. It's always been much too complicated to answer. And on Sundays, it's even harder. It's not that I'm trying to hide so much as that I feel too confused by the transition-between-weeks nature of Sundays to be able to answer "How are you?" with any clarity. Especially on Sunday nights, when my brain has started to process what I need to do in the week ahead, I am likely to stare at you blankly if you ask how I am.

Also, "missing my dad" will be a given for any answer to that question for the rest of my life. Even if the rest of the answer is "really excited/happy," I'll still be wishing Dad could be part of it, too. But who wants to hear that all the time? That's not new or fun. And although lately I've been missing him more, for several reasons, there have already been and there will be more times when missing him isn't something I'll be distraught about. It'll just be there, a reality to live with. (C.S. Lewis aptly compared the death of a close loved one to the amputation of a leg.)

There's some good stuff coming up this week. The completion of my giant work project that took up last week; visits with friends; my mom coming to town and in to work with me (I know one boy there who is looking forward to this about as much as I am); possibly bringing Apollo it to work for show-and-tell of sorts; seeing a play.... I'm looking forward to it. It should be a good week. I miss my dad.

(When I was with him in the hospital, I would tell him that even though he might be wishing I would stop talking for a minute, I was just going to keep talking to him until he was able to talk back to me. When I see him next, I should keep that promise. No matter how much I have stored up to tell him by then.)

Pressed, but not crushed. That's how I am.