Inflatable Death

It bobs around on our neighbor's lawn with a gigantic axe and frightens my innocent children (and the dog). Behind it is an array of severed heads hanging from tree limbs and impaled on wooden posts, all draped in faux spider webs. It is irritatingly festive if you are a psychopathic serial killer.

Which I am not.

I have to sneak up behind the stupid thing and unplug the air pump before Toby will walk by. I encourage him to be brave while explaining how it is not a real person, just a blown-up Halloween decoration. But it doesn't seem fair. Reality is very elastic to him and I toss truth and illusion around in an ironically confusing jumble. This ugly, scary thing he can see is not real. The invisible, silent, elusive God is.

"God is bigger than those scary things," I say as I whisk he and Charlie past the skeletal hand reaching forth from its bloody grave. He looks at the grave skeptically and I know I failed the writer's highest calling: show, don't tell.

At night we say our prayers as he crawls into bed. "Where is God?" he says unphilosophically, as if asking for the nearest bathroom. "God is everywhere," I offer because I can't think of an unlousy answer. He sits up quickly and looks at his mattress in confusion. "Am I squishing him?" Excellent question.

No dear, mommy is.

I've been a Christian so long that I barf out illogical religious rhetoric when I don't know what to say. Which is a lot. Toby is bright for three and I can see doubt on his face. Maybe it is my own reflection. Inside, my heart longs for God-- the God who satisfies, the God I used to trust. But an inflatable Death looms in front of my eyes and I can't reach the plug.

My boys are precious and I want them to know a powerful, real Savior.

God, start with me.