game changer
I settle the game in front of me, sliding off the lid. The box shudders audibly, a stuttering breath, as though the insides hold more substance than half a dozen glossy, tabbed sketch books, some dry erase markers, cards. Black smudges and half-erased lines fleck the books, memories of other game nights, memories of us, plunking the markers down, chuckling over chunky drawings, laughing aloud about puzzled interpretations. We smooth an afternoon’s flyaways away from our warm faces, offering each other tired but satisfied smiles. I dole out the contents, smiling: here I am, at the table scarred and speckled with our history, surrounded by the people who have made it. Our plates empty, we are filled, and as day bleeds into night, I find more than one gift for which to give thanks.
I run a finger down the card in front of me, imagining how I might draw baby shower or funny bone or bathing suit. I cradle the die in my palm and shake until it clatters against the table.
“Okay, number 4,” I announce, looking to see what my own “secret word” will be. Baby shower. Zoe sighs at the discovery of her own word, mumbles, “Well, okay then,” sliding down into her chair, and Riley giggles.
I look over at Adam, watching to be sure he knows how to play, or rather, supervising a little so that he doesn’t make up his own rules. I point to the oval on the first page of Adam’s sketch book, then gesture toward the card in front of him.
“What’s your secret word? You need to write it down.”
He scans the card and then looks up at me, uncapping his pen. Flying carpet. He writes carefully, recording the law with deliberate precision, as though any inaccuracy might be tragic. The uppercase letters look solid and fat, the lines like bars. Finished, he glances at me again. Okay? I nod, answering his silent question.
“Now flip to tab 1 and draw that.” I turn back to my own book, sketching out a round, fat-cheeked baby with a single spiral curl for hair + my best stick figure standing under a rushing shower head. Satisfied, I close the book, passing it to Kevin so that he can try to interpret my drawing at the next tab. The book will pass all the way around the table, with a new drawing following each new interpretation, until it finds its way back to me. Adam hands me his book. He is not the worst artist at the table. In fact, when Adam’s feeling cooperative, his sketches usually qualify as a decent attempt. But when I flip to tab 1, instead of a flying carpet, Adam has drawn…a soccer ball. A soccer ball? I look over at him and let the question flash to my eyes. He has even drawn the dark colored pentagons. Of course, Adam has little imagination for fiction.
I pass the book back, flipping back to the secret word. “Adam, you’re supposed to draw this,” I say significantly, my finger jabbing lightly above the oval and his careful letters.
He flips back to the drawing, gesturing toward the soccer ball. My son and I are masterful writers of wordless paragraphs. “I see that. But that’s not this,” I say, flipping back to the secret word page, even as I know Adam’s wondering how the words flying and carpet even go together. No doubt he looked at his secret word and felt it was a secret from him too; no doubt he wondered, “What is that?” Even so, my finger bounces in the air over the words. I wait for him to say “I don’t know how” or “help me, please,” but for Adam, these words seem hardest of to say. He looks at me with those brilliant sky-blue eyes, considering. Then he lifts a cloth eraser from the game box, and drags the book out from under my finger. Flicking a glance at me with the tiniest of smiles, he rubs out flying carpet in quick strokes. He uncaps the pen and carefully writes soccer ball in the wide oval just below the “My secret word is…” headline. He looks at me: fixed. And I laugh out loud, loving my son, reaching to squeeze his shoulder.
Adam leans back, the grin sliding wide, laughing with me. He lives honest and free and open, craving structure but never fully surrendering to capture. If my son doesn’t know how to succeed one way, he’ll make up another; that’s always his strategy for navigating life in these foreign lands. But it’s only now, sitting back in my chair and tasting his joy, that I see the divine finger in what Adam’s done, that bit of Father passed on to child. When we were unable to make our own perfection, God erased our mistaken identity in quick cross-shaped strokes, revealing the true Word. Jesus. What ever it is we with our limited perspectives and cracked up hearts cannot embody–healing, wholeness, redemption, satisfaction, significance, peace, freedom, love–God rewrites just the once. While we blink, uncomprehending, at the impossible black letters corralling our hope, God changes the game all together. No, not that. Live this. Draw this. Be like this. Show me Jesus.
