“I just love all my people.”
This is what our grandson said one evening as his dad tucked him into bed.
He had just prayed for us and his other grandparents and his cousins and uncle and aunt. And he must have been struck in a toddler sort of a way with the richness of his relationships.
This is how I’ve been struck, only in a senior sort of a way.
As I read over the responses to Steve’s biopsy results, I was fascinated to read Brady Smith’s comment in the same list with my Yoder School friend, Gertrude. When I first knew Brady Smith, he was a scampy little kid with a big vocabulary who lived down the street from us in Flint, Michigan. He was so smart that he sometimes preferred going into my dad’s study to talk instead of hanging out with us. These were the days we were new to the city and I was missing Gertrude, my best friend, who still lived back in the mountains. Now Brady is an undertaker in Flint, and Gertrude is a nurse and a grandma like me.
The juxtapositions continued—a former student from London City Schools next to a Bendle High School friend, a friend from Sudan alongside someone I see at Kroger in London, a cousin commenting just before a former colleague, someone we met while visiting churches for Steve’s job just after an author I learned to know at a writing conference—young friends and old, old friends, all sending words of care.
And this is why I remembered what my grandson said that evening in bed, words I can’t say any better: I just love all my people!
Apple to Apple 