guess what?
Just home in the afternoon, her cheeks sun-warm, Riley pauses in front of me. She smells of tree bark and budding flowers, of grass crushed underfoot, even though as far as I know she’s only just walked from the car to the door. She brings the whole world through our front door, and with it some news she’s holding just for me.
“Mom Jones, guess what?” she says, her eyes alight with anticipation, bright with joy.
“What?” I say, playing my part, though almost every day the subject of these announcements is the same.
“Today, while I was at school, Max put his head on my lap.” Her tone is can-you-believe-it, wow, her enthusiasm, brand new. Max, the school’s therapy dog, comforts, as he’s trained to do. Once, when Riley had a seizure at school, Max plopped down on top of her feet and wouldn’t move until she had completely returned to herself. Max has upended Riley’s usually inconsistent affection for animals. She loves Max.
“That’s great!” I say, sharing her enthusiasm.
“Mom Jones?”
“Yes?”
“Today while I was at school, Max licked my pants and my shirt, too.”
I smile in response, but Riley finds my silence out of proportion to the story.
“Today while I was at school, Max licked my pants and my shirt, too,” she says again. “Me and Max have a special connection. He does that because he loves me.” Riley says this jabbing the air with her finger, pointing down, as though toward a hovering memory of Max, sniffing at her feet.
“I know he loves you. And you love him,” I say, still smiling.
“Yes, I do, Mom Jones,” she says. Satisfied, she turns to Zoe, who sits on the recliner beside me, comfortably sunk into the cushions.
“Guess what?” Riley says to her sister.
Zoe groans, swinging one dangling foot off the edge of the foot rest. “I know, I heard you tell Mom,” she says, lifting her eyes in acknowledgement. I smile, wondering if Riley would have repeated the story even if Zoe had chimed in with enthusiasm over the first telling. But to Riley, good news, when understood, evokes a discernible reaction. Short of that, really good news is always worth repeating.
We smile over this because every day Riley’s tales about Max sound similar. He licked her cheek, her hand; he stayed beside her chair during reading. Nearly always, Max puts his head on Riley’s lap. When Kevin gets home, Riley will make a point to tell him about this too; she tells everyone she can find who will listen. One afternoon recently, Kevin interrupted Riley to ask if today’s story was all new, and she said, “No, it’s the same one,” and then proceeded, with undeterred eagerness, to recount the details as though she had just discovered Max’s affection for the very first time. Hers is a love that does not grow cold.
“Max put his head on my lap at school today,” she says now to Zoe, ignoring her sister’s comments.
“That’s cool,” Zoe says, giving in, “I bet he licked your pants and your shirt, too.”
“Yep, he sure did,” Riley says, grinning, happiness bouncing her up on the balls of her feet. Suddenly I realize her repetition means more than ritual. Riley actually experiences new joy with every telling, as though the ability to share extends her experience of the original gift. With words, she brings Max home to us, carefully sketching out his dropped head on her leg, his smooth, gold-brown fur, his swinging tail. Love becomes the breath, the warmth, the sound. Each time Riley tells us about Max, she makes him known to us.
Her joy, fresh and blooming on her cheeks, reminds me of a few poetic verses of lament:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
Lamentations 3:22-23
for his compassions never fail.
2They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Sometimes I stop saying thank you for every day things, as though experiencing faithful love should ever cease to be new. Certainly I imagine that my repetitive witness to the most meaningful Love I’ve ever known could inspire a few eye rolls from time to time, and I’ve yet to learn not to take that personally. But today Riley teaches me again that what matters isn’t what you think of me, but how much you see of Christ by way of my testimony. I wonder if you feel His strength, if you begin to comprehend His love, if you know His peace when I tell you that today, all over again, He loved me anyway. Today—Guess what? Today, all over again, He took my brokenness and made something new. I wonder if you see the shape of His hands, the angle of His arms, when I tell you that today, He reached for you through me.
