so sweet

“That’s so sweet,” Riley says, head bent over her phone. At first I forget to respond, or am at least so focused on traffic and stuck in my own muddled mind that I don’t, even though I hear her. So she repeats the comment, glancing up at me, “Aww, that’s so sweet,” her emphasis like a finger pointing.

“What?” I ask, intentionally loosening my grip on the steering wheel, stretching my neck as we come to a stop at a light. It’s like she’s lifting goodies to me on her open palm, offering me a taste. Taste and see that the Lord is good, the Word says, and I hear the whisper of that daily invitation simmering below her comment. Everyday, there’s a treat, one of my friends likes to say, and I can’t hear that phrase anymore–so sweet–without remembering that I am a consumer, that I get to choose how I seek to assuage my hunger. As Tish Warren writes so well in Liturgy of the Ordinary, God teaches me to experience His goodness with all of my senses, to know by experience, by taste (128-129). Riley holds out a morsel, waiting for me to investigate. “What’s so sweet?”

She looks back down at her phone, tells me that one of my dearest friends texted her this morning. “She wants to know how she can pray for me! That’s so sweet.” She glances at me with glittering eyes, grins when she sees I understand, then bends back over her phone and begins to type. I turn my eyes back to the road, thinking that if Riley tried to define love in words, she would say something about the people who pray for her. For Riley, prayer is the currency of grace.

Oh yes, I’m thinking, as traffic begins to crawl through the intersection, that’s so sweet; that’s the sweetness of God’s goodness divided by the hands of a friend. I can’t help but smile because this particular friend always shows up for coffee carrying something sweet. On the hardest days, she leaves baked goods on my front porch. She lives to distribute God’s grace in all its various forms.

My own prayer list for Riley stretches long, and God has a way of answering me, at least in part, by parsing out the definitions of nourishment and fullness, by showing me how far flung human ideas about flourishing can be from the truth. When Riley’s challenges feel insurmountable, God shows me again that her life bears eternal fruit. See now, He whispers, she knows what‘s sweet. She has the food that Jesus says last for eternity. For Riley, reliance on God has long been the only true source of satisfaction, the only way to strength. Christ said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.” This, then, is living without lack, not that we live without struggle, but that we live filled by the goodness of God.

Riley giggles as she types, bubbling over with the same joy she feels when Kevin and I show each other affection in front of her. My friend says, how can I pray for you and Riley hears, how can I love you? Love, in all its forms, makes Riley happy. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“Okay, here’s what I said,” Riley says now, lifting her head to gaze at the road in front of us before she begins to read. Her sentences sound smooth as she articulates her needs; it feels as though the words of prayer represent the only kind she can compose without a fight. Sometimes she struggles just to tell me what has happened, but if I ask her specifically how to entrust her to God, the words come out in an eloquent rush. There’s certainly nothing broken about Riley’s faith.

I can hear her smile now, even though I’m watching the road in front of me, as she shares her list; as she verbally remembers she’s not alone; as she tastes the sweetness of God and offers it also to me, bit by luscious bit.

“That’s so sweet that she prays for me,” Riley says, glancing up at last as sunlit leaves–red, gold, orange–drift across the road on the breeze.

I nod, still tasting it on my tongue. “Yes it is. So so sweet.”