Trembling with Love and Dread

Slow motion replay…audio is muted…movie tape runs in my mind. Nostalgia.

Sunny day…Troy’s sun-lotion-streaked face is grinning. He’s wearing his blue and green UV protective swim suit (shorts AND shirt)…running pell-mell with his characteristic arm-pumping motion across the yard…carrying a bright orange and yellow handmade gun fashioned from tubular building toys…laughing…looking back over one shoulder…escaping and yet inviting the pursuit of his boy-cousins.

The lake stands as a backdrop to the scene.

Our old rope hammock waits…he plunges into it…a refuge…the others follow in hot pursuit…pow-pow-pow. Boydom…little flashes of manhood…seeds of emerging men.

Troy is quick…action figure.

Just last month. That was just last month.

I woke this morning with these slow motion memories replaying. Troy is not running today. His legs remain still and quiet as he waits for more testing in a bed in Children’s Memorial in Chicago.

His father, my firstborn…constantly by Troy’s side…an advocate…faithful in love…giving his all, exemplifying The Father. My blood is there in that room as well, coursing with hope, aching all the while. John posted a video of Troy on his facebook page to keep us all updated, as well as a excerpt from St. Augustine that showed up around 5 hours ago (which would have been around 3:30-ish this morning):

“I trembled at once with love and dread.”

I looked up the entire quote. Here it is. The last paragraph particularly speaks to me this morning:

“O eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity. You are my God. To you I sigh day and night. When I first came to know you, you drew me to yourself so that I might see that there were things for me to see, but that I myself was not yet ready to see them. Meanwhile you overcame the weakness of my vision, sending forth most strongly the beams of your light, and I trembled at once with love and dread.

“I sought at once to gain the strength which I needed to enjoy you. But I did not find it until I embraced ‘the mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who is above all, God blessed forever.’ He was calling me and saying, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you; now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”