The Walk-Part I

This posting is dedicated to the families of Wednesday’s Loss.
God keep their families.


This is Part 1 of 3 Parts. I wrote this late summer/early fall of 2004. “The Walk” was originally published in God Answers Prayers-Military Edition © 2005. The anthology is edited by Allison Bottke, and published by Harvest House Publishers.


The Walk

After he could walk well on his own, my three-year-old son would invite his father for a walk. “We go to walk now, Daddy?”

I used to stand and watch them from our living room window. It would break my heart to watch them walk. I can’t say exactly why it hurt so much. After all, they looked so beautiful, the two of them lost in a world of their own. The small left hand of a little boy, cupped and held up by the big right hand of the daddy. The younger walked on the outside, for his dad must have known that the path was much smoother for him there, though it appeared as if the younger led the elder. It was a slow walk, not very far, through clots of red dirt alongside the plowed field of a local farmer.

We lived in a small town in Texas. Several mobile homes surrounded our own. We were a small group of people, centered between a lonesome highway and a field of dirt—this field of dirt where Aaron would take his daddy to walk.

I never knew exactly what they talked about on these walks. It was their time, and I was never given a clue from either of them as to the words that flowed back and forth between father and son. Perhaps, for Aaron, it was like a sweet secret, and for Doug…well, Doug and I didn’t talk much back then. When we spoke, it was usually to argue. Our marriage was ending, and it was a slow and painful demise.

For a while, each day was always the same. “We go to walk now, Daddy?”

“Come on, Little Man,” his dad would say.

Off they’d go, and I’d stand at the window, looking and wishing. Now I can’t even remember what my heart must have wished for.

Things changed, and we divorced. Now when Doug called, Aaron asked his dad, “We go to walk?” But during these times, his little voice quivered and then broke.

Doug and I both loved him so much. At one point, Aaron went to live with daddy. Then, finally, it was back and forth. Perhaps he was too young to voice his feelings to me about all of this then, but I know he must have voiced them to someone else, for I’ve been granted the privilege of reading at least a part of these conversations, rendered in Aaron’s own young hand.

I don’t know when the prayers of my son were written. I found them several years ago. By his penmanship, it’s evident Aaron was just learning to write in cursive. I remember all the practice hours he spent back then. Cursive writing covered our phone books and used pieces of mail. His wobbly words were everywhere. He must have been in the third grade when he wrote the first three prayers.

Aaron would watch me read, then mark and write in this blue book, and at some point, he must have felt inclined to do the same. For on a particular page, there are the numbers from one to sixteen, with each number being circled. Circle number one: Help me learn about God. Circle number two: Help dad with taxes. Circle number three: Help mom and dad stay to gather.

The first three prayers are written in blue ink, circle number four is skipped and beside circle number five, written with a pink felt-tip pen are these words: Help Roy and Doug be friends. Circle number six is skipped and circle number seven is in the same pink ink: June 15, Thur. 1993, help Greg and De’on be happy. So, these last two prayers were written at a later date than the first three. Circles number eight through sixteen are empty, without written words.

Aaron used to say, “I wish my whole family could all just live together in one big, happy house.”

So much to ask.