There’s no Point to This

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m sitting with Jeremiah on a couch covered in cat hair in a narrow little beauty shop wedged between two buildings, maybe a dozen feet wide, while Isaac gets his dread maintenance in the back.

My heart is racing.

I shared at church today about Jeremiah’s meeting with the immigration folks on Tuesday. I asked for their prayers. I didn’t tell them that my wife is living with another man.

My heart is racing.

It is unlikely they will determine he should be deported to Haiti. But beside that unthinkable possibility there is a range of outcomes, most of them not very good for him.

I read this morning a news story about a U.N. policeman in Port au Prince, Haiti. That is the place where my children were before coming to the United States fifteen years ago. During a riot the officer was pulled from his U.N. marked car and executed in the street.

I miss my wife.

I don’t know where I’m going with this.

I facilitated a Sunday School class this morning, a discussion of the novel The Shack. My voice hardly trembled at all during the whole class.

Because of my request during the service folks were asking for details about the interview on Tuesday.

Jeremiah tells me he is scared.

So am I.

I just paused to ask Jeremiah what he is thinking about. He nervously told me he is thinking about Tuesday.

“But everything will be alright, right?” he asked.

His eyes were on mine, and then slipped off and back again, and out the door, and back again.

“Look at me,” I told him.

I held his eyes with mine.

“Nothing is going to happen to you. I’m your dad. I love you, and I will protect you. You are a good boy and it is going to be OK.”

“All right.”

I should have taken a Xanax today. It can’t be good for me to have my heart hammering in my chest hour after hour like this.

The Bible tells me not to be anxious.

We had a fundraiser Friday night. It was pretty cool. Our students fielded a dozen air bands (they lip synch to songs, pretending to sing and play instruments). There was everything from hip hop to mariachi bands. I was the lead singer for the staff band, The Majestics. I somehow managed to look like I was comfortable duck walking and singing “Louie, Louie” while they pulled out the stops with the lights and turned on a fog machine.

There were lots of prizes, and the kids raised over $9,000. One incentive for them was for every $5 they spent on The Battle of the Bands merchandise they got their name in a drawing for my beard. So, sometime soon, one of the students will shape my beard and mustache any way he likes and I’ll wear it for a week.

I’m pretty open to almost anything they want to do, but there was a suggestion I get a Hitler mustache, and I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen.

I want to write something interesting in this post. I want to turn my mind to spiritual matters, or matters of science, or something else besides the two issues which grip me, make me tremble.

I wrote something yesterday. It is much better than this weird little post, this essay which has no point at all. Still, this little bit of random thought, this soliloquy of anxiety and fear, belongs with the other posts which chronicle my life.

I guess I’ll post this Monday afternoon. I imagine I will want to write about the experience with immigration on Tuesday, and so this meaningless bit of writing will rest at the top of my blog for only a short period.

I like that. I want to write about better things, deeper things, but all I have today are random paragraphs that have no point.