3-13-18 thru 3-15-18 Cork Road

3-13-18

So The Little Boy ran out the front door and started walking down the road. He noticed with these new shoes, he couldn’t feel the rocks in the road as much. They didn’t hurt his feet as much. Instead of looking down at his feet, he lifted his head. He felt good. He saw there was blue sky with white clouds in it. He wondered if it was always like that, he had never bothered to look.

He heard a bird sing and wished he could whistle. He looked over to his right and there was a bird sitting on a fence of one of the neighbor’s houses. He was just singing and singing and it seemed to The Little Boy like the bird was singing for him. He thought, ‘I wonder if I can sing like that’. So he pursed his lips together like he’d seen the boys at school do and tried blowing through them. ‘whoosh, whoosh’, no sound came out. So all the way to school he kept trying to make a whistle sound come out of his lips.

It wasn’t until he got to school that he remembered the boys were not gathered on their bikes where the rocky road meets The Cork Road.

There was something different in the air. Everybody could feel it. Nobody knew what it was. When he got to his classroom, everyone was already sitting in their seats. He wondered what was going on. He knew he wasn’t late. When he walked in, the teacher looked at him and all the kids turned around in their seats and looked at him.

He felt his face get red like when they picked on him and said mean things. All the old fear came rushing back. The hope he had, the good feeling that he had, disappeared as if it never was.

They all looked at him and he looked down at his feet. The teacher cleared her throat. The Little Boy looked up and the teacher looked from him over to his left. Her whole head turned. So he turned his head too and he saw The Stranger leaning against the wall in the corner.

He had on brown, cuffed slacks, very nice brown leather shoes, a belt, a blue shirt and a jacket. It looked just like The Little Boy’s new jacket. It was tan corduroy. The man had a hat in his hands and he was leaning there with his feet crossed.

When The Little Boy saw him, his face lit up! He was so happy to see him! The man looked at The Little Boy and his face lit up too! He was so happy to see The Little Boy! He said, “I’m so glad you’re here. No, you’re not late. Everyone here was early. I have a surprise for you.”

The Little Boy’s heart started thumping a lot, he was so excited! Everyone in the school room was very quiet. All eyes were on him and The Stranger. Even the teacher wasn’t talking.

The Little Boy excitedly exclaimed, “Yes? What is it? What is it?”

“I have something I want you to give to everyone in the class, including your teacher. Will you do that?”

The Little Boy said, “Yes, of course.”

So The Stranger turned around and for the first time everyone saw this huge box. It was a red box with very pretty wrapping on the outside. Part of it looked like a hologram, part of it looked velvet. It’s the prettiest box anyone had ever seen.

The Stranger opened up the box and inside were all these other red boxes, identical to the big box. The Stranger started handing boxes to The Little Boy and said, “Give one to everyone in the room.”

So The Little Boy took one in each hand and he started at the front row on the far side. The Stranger said, “No no, start in the back rows.”

So The Little Boy went to the back row, far corner and he gave one to The Little Girl who was sitting there. She looked up at him, her hair was blonde, matted and snarled. She had tears in her eyes as The Little Boy gave her the box. He wondered why she was crying. She whispered, “Thank you, no one has ever given me a present before.” The Little Boy said in a soft voice only she could hear, “No one? Nobody? Even your parents?”

She said, “No, my parents don’t give presents.”

The boy pursed his lips but no whistle came out. He said, “Wow. Well this one’s for you especially and it’s got my heart in it too. If you want to be friends, I’ll be your friend”. She smiled and nodded her head yes.

The Little Boy turned and gave a box to the boy sitting across from her at the bottom of the row. That little boy was younger than him, he saw. At least he looked younger. He eagerly grabbed the box and started to open it. The Stranger said, “Wait to open it, don’t open it yet, we’re all going to open them together.”

So The Little Boy got all the boxes from The Stranger handed out to the children. Then he gave one to the teacher. This whole time nobody said a thing. The Little Boy thought that was weird.

As soon as everyone had a box, The Stranger went to the front of the room. He asked, “Can everyone see me?” They all said “Yes.”

Except The Little Girl in the back. A little voice said, “No, I can’t see you.” So The Stranger went back to The Little Girl and he took her by the hand and brought her to the front of the room and sat her on his lap. The little girl felt like a princess. She felt like this man loved her and she didn’t even know why. It was weird. She didn’t know what the feelings were, but she knew that she felt better. And for the first time in her life, she felt loved. She was five.

So The Stranger was sitting down and had his right arm around her. He was facing the class. He said, “Okay, I want you all to look at your boxes.” The little girl said, “I need to go get my box.” So she got down off The Strangers’ lap and walked back to her desk, got her box and came back. He lifted her onto his lap again.

Everyone was feeling their boxes because it was so soft and velvety and everybody thought it was the most beautiful box they had ever seen. It had a bow on top. A red bow. The Stranger said, “The box feels good doesn’t it?” Everyone nodded their heads yes.

The Stranger said, “I want you all to think about how the box makes you feel. I want you to feel the box and I want you to slowly take the lid off.” So everybody slowly took the lid off. Except one boy in the back. He ripped the box lid off in his haste to hurry up and see what was inside. It was one of the mean bike boys. When he did that, it flipped the box over and what was inside the box fell on the floor and broke.

Everybody heard it and turned around, looking at the boy. His face got really red. The Little Boy knew how he felt, but he didn’t want to say anything because it was one of the boys that still bullies him.

The Stranger just looked at that boy. The look on The Stranger’s face wasn’t mad or anything. It was a look that simply said, ‘yeah, I knew that was going to happen if you did that’.

So The Stranger asked The Little Boy to go get another box out of the big box and give it to that boy. The Little Boy didn’t think that was very fair since the mean boy didn’t follow directions. But he did as he was asked. He went and got a box and gave it to the mean boy. The Stranger told the mean boy, “Now run your hands gently over the box and feel how soft it is and slowly take the lid off.”

With everyone in the classroom watching him, he slowly ran his hands over the outside of the box. His fingers kind of twisted at the softness of it. He wasn’t used to doing things in a slow way. He always felt he had to hurry and do things fast in order to get what he needed. He lifted up a corner of the box and looked inside. He gasped. He didn’t say a word, he just looked at The Stranger.

The Stranger told everyone to look in the box. They did and they all saw a red heart. Everyone had a red heart. It was sort of glowing. The Stranger said, “Now this is a very special box and it’s a very special heart. You need to take care of the box and the heart inside. Do you all understand me?”  The whole class nodded their heads and so did the teacher. The Stranger said, “I want to hear you say it.” Everyone said, ” we will take care of the box and the heart inside the box’.

The Stranger smiled.

3-14-18

———

“Jesus? You’re teaching me like a Daddy teaches his girl, aren’t you?” Jesus said “Yes I am honey. Because you are my daughter and I love you very much. I’m also teaching you things that a mother would teach. My girl is going to be well-rounded when she grows up.”

“Jesus? The story about the cork road, it’s got lots of lessons, doesn’t it?”

“Yes it does. And you’ll see more and more different lessons each time you read it. It’s like the Bible. I like to tell stories like that, that you get something else out of it each time you read it. It makes the book so much more valuable, don’t you think?”

“I dunno, I guess so. Jesus? Can I have a blanket on my lap when I sit on your lap?”

“Sure honey. Are you cold?”

“No, it just makes me feel good to have a blanket on. Jesus? I know Janine does that too. Should I ask you to heal me of that?”

“Only if you want. It’s not going to hurt you, or her.”

“Ok then, I won’t ask.”

“Nini, do you want to skip tonite?”

“I kind of do, but I kind of don’t. Cause if I do, then it’s like, it’s harder to get back into it, so can we just do a little bit maybe? Not as much?”

“Sure.” [end of reading 1.3.21]

———

So all the kids opened their boxes and saw what was inside them. It was a red heart, lying on a bed of tissue shredded up. Really sparkly. It had silver and gold sparkles all over it. The Stranger said, “I want you all to look at this heart and remember what it looks like. I want you to put the lid back on it and when I tell you to, I want you to put it on the windowsill over there and leave it alone until I come back, day after tomorrow.”

The kids were really quiet. Even The Little Boy was really quiet and in awe of what he was seeing. They all said “Yes sir.” The Little Boy kind of laughed to himself cause he knew those mean boys probably never said ‘sir’ to anybody in their life.

The teacher said, “Yes sir.” She said, “I will make sure the children don’t touch them, that nothing happens to them.” The Stranger said, “No, I don’t want you to do that. Each child is responsible for their own box. If they look in it, then it’s on them. I don’t want you stressing about it or taking care of other people’s things. I want you to take care of your box. They know, I told them not to get into it.”

The teacher said, “All right, yes.”

The Stranger said to The Little Boy, “I will be back to pick you up when school is out, ok? You wait in the front and I’ll be back. I’ve got things to do.” He smiled at The Little Boy. The Little Boy said, “Yes sir” and smiled back at The Stranger.

They went out to recess and quickly forgot about the boxes. The Little Boy went and sat down on the bench like he always had before, but the boy he shared his lunch with, came over and said, “Come on, let’s play with my friends.” So the two boys went over and joined the other two boys playing kick ball. On the far side of the playground the two mean boys were watching the two little girls on a teeter-totter. One of them was the little blond girl from The Little Boy’s class and the other one was a little girl from another class.

Every time the little blonde girl would come down on her side of the teeter-totter, one of the boys would run over to her and pull on her braid. She kept telling him to stop it, but he wouldn’t. Then he came over and pulled so hard on her braid that he pulled her off the teeter-totter. She screamed as she fell off and hit the ground. Then she just laid there.

Everyone on the playground heard her scream and everybody stopped what they were doing and looked over. The Little Boy saw her laying on the ground and ran over to her. They all thought she was dead because she just laid there with her eyes closed. One of the teachers came over and picked her up. She wasn’t dead, she just had the wind knocked out of her, said the teacher. So they took her to the nurse. The nurse checked her over and saw she was ok, just scared. The yard teacher that picked her up, brought the two mean boys into the principal’s office. They were afraid. They didn’t know The Little Girl was ok. They sat on the bench outside his office, not even talking to each other. The principal came out and brought them into his office. Each one sat in one of the big leather chairs. They didn’t know what to do, they didn’t know what to think.

The principal asked them, “Why were you tormenting The Little Girl?” Both boys shrugged and said, “I don’t know. It seemed like fun.” The principal told them to write a 100 word essay on why they thought it was fun. Then he said to write another 100 word essay on why they should not do it. He told them he didn’t want them to just write the same thing over and over, he wanted concrete examples and reasons.

He told them he wanted them to bring the essays to his office the day after tomorrow, right after they got in their classroom.

Both boys hung their heads and said, “Yes sir” and they left.

At lunch time, The Little Girl was feeling better and was back in the classroom. At recess, she went outside and sat on the bench that she always sits on. The Little Boy did not know she always sat on a bench. He never saw her because he was always looking down at his feet. But today, he was looking up and he saw her sitting all by herself over on a bench. So he walked over to her and said, “Hi friend!” she shyly said, “Hi friend.”

He said, “I’ve never seen you sitting here before,” she said, “Yeah, I’ve been sitting here since school started. I’ve seen you sitting over there with your head down.” The Little Boy said, “Well I’m not sitting with my head down anymore. I usually go over under that tree and have my lunch. Do you want to come and eat lunch with me?” She said, “I don’t have lunch.” The Little Boy asked, “What do you eat at lunch?” She replied, “I don’t eat lunch. Sometimes I come into the classroom later because I go get in the trash and get some of the stuff the other kids throw away.” The Little Boy didn’t like that, but he understood it, because sometimes he had thought about doing that because he was so hungry too, sometimes.

Today he said, “Well come with me and you can share our lunches ‘cause we share our lunches under the tree. The other little boy’s mother gives him meat but no bread and my mother gives me bread but no meat. Then we share the fruit and have some water. You can share it too with us.” She said “Ok.” She got down off the bench and followed him over to the tree. The town boy was already there and The Little Boy told him he had invited her to come share their lunch. The town boy said, “Sure!”

So the three new friends sat under the tree and shared their lunches with each other. The Town Boy reached into his sack and pulled out some meat and gave it to The Little Boy, who had pulled out the bread from his sack. It turns out he had extra big slices of bread, so they put the meat on it and it made enough sandwich for all three of them. The Town Boy reached in his sack to get the knife to cut the sandwhichs. He found an apple. He was very surprised because he never gets an apple in his lunch.

They ate their sandwiches and then The Little Boy opened his sack and he had two apples! He didn’t understand it. Why would his mother give him two apples? But he pulled them out and gave one to The Little Girl and he ate one and the town boy ate his. They were very, very full after that. so they went back to their class laughing about some silly things on the way.

The mean boys heard them laughing and looked over at them with a mean look on their faces. The Little Boy looked over at them and they stuck their tongues out at him. He just shook his head. All three of them went into the classroom and sat down and did their class work.

The Little Boy was antsy. He wanted to go meet with his friend. His teacher had a clock on the wall that they had made with craft paper, showing where the big hand and the little hand would be when school was over with. So he kept looking at that, and looking at the big one on the wall above the blackboard.

FINALLY! Everything matched up and he knew school was over! The teacher said “Don’t forget to bring your colored craft paper in tomorrow!”

The Little Boy’s heart sank. He didn’t have money for craft paper. He didn’t have any at home and he knew his parents didn’t have any money for craft paper.

He walked to the back of the room where The Little Girl was putting on her coat. He asked her, “Do you have craft paper?” she said, “no”. The Little Boy said, “Do you want to come with me to meet The Stranger?” She nodded her head and said “Oh yes!”

———

Me, “Jesus, I see that you have a little girl in here now. I don’t feel very little tonight. Lord, can we do this tomorrow?” Jesus reminded me there’s going to be people in the house tomorrow.

“Ok, a little more.”

———

So The Little Boy and girl walked out to the front of the school and The Stranger was already there. His face lit up when he saw The Little Boy and he said, “Oh? Who is this?”

The Little Boy said, “This is my new friend from school. Stranger? We don’t have any colored craft paper and we don’t have any money to buy any and the teacher said for us to remember to bring it tomorrow.” The Stranger said, “oh! That is not a problem. I think we should go to the store and buy some colored craft paper. What do you think?”

The Little Boy said “yes!” so The Stranger took The Little Boy in his right hand and The Little Girl with his left hand and they were walking down the street to the drugstore.

As they were walking along, the three boys that turned nicer, started riding their bikes pn the street alongside them. They asked, “can we come too?” The Stranger looked at The Little Boy, “Can they come?” The Little Boy said “Sure,” shrugging his shoulders. They all go to the drugstore, the town boys on their bikes, the others walking. Then right in front of them the two mean boys are blocking their way. The Stranger said, “Excuse us boys, do you mind moving so we can go to the drugstore?” They said, “We don’t want to move. We don’t think you should be in this town. Our parents said that you’re no good and that you’re trying to weasel your way into things here.” The Stranger asked, “Do you know what the word ‘weasel’ means?” The mean boys said “No, but it sure can’t be anything good.”

The Stranger said, to them, “To ‘weasel into something’ means that you’re up to no good and that you’re trying to get something that either doesn’t belong to you or that you have no right trying to get. Do you think I’m doing that?” The mean boys thought for a second and said, ‘”No.”

So The Stranger asked The Little Boy, “Do you want to invite them along with us?” The Little Boy looked up at The Stranger with wide eyes because he was afraid of the mean boys. He started to shake his head no, but The Stranger smiled at him and all of a sudden The Little Boy said “Yes” when he meant to say no! He scratched his head. He didn’t know why he said that.

So The Stranger said to The Little Boy, “Why don’t you invite them to come with us?” So The Little Boy turned to the two mean boys and said, “Do you want to come with us?” The two mean boys said, “Yeah, sure.”

Secretly that’s really what they wanted, they wanted to be included in things and they wanted to have friends and they wanted to have a nice family. But they didn’t know how to act in order to get those things. So the boys all parked their bikes in the bike stand in front of the drugstore and they all went inside.

What a strange sight people saw! The adults thought this guy must have been the pied piper with all those kids hanging around him. The Stranger seemed to really enjoy it. So they went over to where the colored craft paper was and The Stranger asked everybody if they wanted to pick out the paper they wanted. The Stranger said, “Ladies first” so The Little Girl went over and picked up a pad of paper that had a whole bunch of different colors in it. Then it was The Little Boy, then the three nicer boys, then the two mean boys.

The Stranger said, “Well, how about we all go sit at the counter and have an ice cream? Would everybody like that?” You could hear, “YES YES YES!”

So they all went over to the counter, but The Stranger saw there was a round table, so everyone sat there instead. The waitress came over and she asked everyone what they wanted. They had a special that day for chocolate fudge sundaes. They all choose that. Some had nuts on top, some didn’t, but they all had whipped cream with a cherry on top.

Everyone grabbed their spoons and started to dig in. The Stranger asked the waitress to bring water for everyone. The Little Boy asked him why, The Stranger said “Because ice cream makes you thirsty.”

The Little Boy didn’t know that because he didn’t have experience with it. So everybody ate their ice cream and The Stranger paid for it. They got their packages and all left the store.

The mean boys started acting nicer, The Little Boy noticed. But he didn’t know why. He figured they’d be back to their mean selves in the morning. But for right now, they were being nice. The Stranger said, “I have some bird food, shall we go to the park and feed the birds?” Everyone said “Yes!”

So they all went over to the park, the boys on their bicycles and The Little Boy and the The Little Girl holding The Stranger’s hand. They sat on the park bench and they started throwing out the bird food. All these birds came. Even more than there was the first day they did this. There were peacocks, roosters, chickens, sparrows, blue jays, there are even mockingbirds. Doves, bright yellow birds and parrots, really colorful parrots. It was amazing. The Little Boy had never seen these birds in town before.

One of the birds that had all the colors on it, came over and sat on the bench next to The Stranger. Another one, a big white bird, came over and sat on the back of the bench near The Stranger’s shoulder. The bird said, ‘I love you’. Everyone stopped what they were doing! They looked over at the bird and they looked at The Stranger! Again, the bird said, ‘I love you’. The Stranger laughed. He said, “This is a bird that knows how to talk when you train him what to say.”

The Little Boy said, “Can I train him? Can I train him?” The Stranger said, “He’s already been trained. But you can try to train him to say something nice.” The Little Boy went over to the bird and said, “You’re pretty.” The bird just looked at him. The Stranger said, “You have to repeat it a lot of times.” So The Little Boy said, “You’re pretty, you’re pretty, you’re pretty.”

The bird squawked and then said, “You’re pretty.” The Little Boy clapped his hands and jumped up and down. He shyly told The Little Girl, “I told the bird to say that because I think you’re pretty.” The little girl smiled and said “Thank you.”

All the children started talking at once about the talking bird. The Stranger said, “Well, let’s finish feeding these birds. And don’t forget to pet the birds, because even though they don’t talk, they still have feelings and they like to be petted.”

So they finished feeding all the birds and one of the peacocks started shaking his body and he shook his tail feathers. Then his whole tail raised and it looked like a fan his mother had. It sure was pretty. When the peacock’s tail went down they started to leave the park. “All the boys are asking if you’re coming back tomorrow. Are you coming back tomorrow?” The Stranger said “No, I’ll be back day after tomorrow.”

The boys with the bikes asked if they could walk with The Stranger down to The Little Boy’s house. The Stranger looked at The Little Boy who nodded his head yes. One of the mean boys asked The Little Girl if she wanted to ride on his handlebars. She said yes.

The Little Boy held the hand of The Stranger and they started walking down the Cork Road. Then it got to the part where there was no more Cork and it started to be the Rocky Lane. The boys with bikes looked at each other, they were kind of afraid to go down that road because everybody that lived down that road was poor and the road didn’t look soft and they’ve never been down that road. But The Stranger and The Little Boy stepped off the Cork onto the Rocky Road and started walking, so the boys on the bikes did the same thing. But the sharp rocks punctured the tires of two of the boys’ bikes. These were the nice boys. So they decided to leave their bikes at the head of the road and walk down.

They’re walking along the road and these boys had never walked on a road that rocky. In fact, they’ve never walked on a rocky road ever, in their lives. The town boy who had become friends with The Little Boy said proudly, “I’ve walked down this road before! It really hurts your feet and your legs and your back, but it goes away the next day.”

The Little Boy said, “It never hurts my feet or legs or back.” The Stranger said “That’s because you are used to it. These boys have walked on a soft road all of their lives. They’ve never had skinned knees, they’ve never had a bloody lip from falling down on the rocks.” When he said that, all five boys hung their heads and felt bad, because they remember when then teased him about that fat lip.

“You’re way ahead of the game,” he said to The Little Boy, “You’ve gotten stronger just because you live on a street that has been hard to walk on your whole life.” So you are stronger in some areas and you didn’t even know it! So you can teach these boys how to walk on this narrow, sometimes Rocky Road. You can teach them which rocks to go over and which rocks to go around.

These boys have lived on the Cork road all their lives. Their bodies are soft. The best thing for them would be to walk on this road every day so they could also get strong.”

By this time, they were halfway down the block and The Little Girl said, “I live here.” She got down off the handlebars and said, “Bye!” Everyone said ‘bye’ and she went into her house.

They continued walking down the road to The Little Boy’s house. When they got to the fence, the man said “Well this is where we go in.” The boys said, “Ok, bye! See you!” They turned around to go back up the road. Two of them had already fallen down on the rocks on the way down and they had skinned knees and one’s hand was bleeding from one of the rocks. Seems like they were all groaning as they made their way back to their bikes.

The Stranger and The Little Boy went through the gate and up to the house. When they got to the front, his mom threw open the front door and she said, “Oh my! You would not believe what happened today! Come in! Come in!

I had to go out a little bit today and when I got back there were three bags of groceries on the front doorstep. There was a roast and potatoes and carrots and lettuce. There was an angel food cake, chicken, rice, there was so much food! So I put it all away and I made us a very nice dinner! Come in! Come in! Sit down!”

She asked The Stranger, “Would you like a glass of iced tea?”  The Stranger said “Yes please, that would be nice.” She said to her son, “Go wash your hands and face now.” So he went to wash his hands and face and he could hear his Mama talking to The Stranger about all the food that had been left on the doorstep. He came back into the living room and held his hands out to his Mama so he could see they were clean. She looked at him and looked behind his ears and said, “You did a good job son.” He beamed at her, “Thank you Mama.”

She said, “Your Father has some special news too. He’s taking a shower right now, but he’ll be down in a minute. Son, set the table please. We have a feast tonight!”

So The Little Boy went in and set the table. His Mama came in to the kitchen and lifted the lid on the pot. It smelled so good.

His Dad came downstairs and his hair was slicked back from the water. He had on his after work clothes. He came over and shook The Stranger’s hand and said, “Welcome.” Then he kissed his son on the top of head and said, “Hello son.” The Little Boy said, “Hi Daddy! I got to train a bird to talk! And I had ice cream and we fed the birds in the park and..and…” His Father laughed and said, “Whoa! Slow down Son! There’s plenty of time to talk about all this at the dinner table. Come on, let’s go eat. Your mom says dinner is ready.”

So The Little Boy went in the kitchen and The Stranger got up from the sofa and his Dad followed The Stranger. In the kitchen they all pulled out their chairs and sat down to eat.

The Stranger asked my Dad, “How was your day?” My Dad said, “The strangest things have happened today that I’ve ever experienced in my life. Someone came up to me and offered me a job at a company I applied to years ago, but they turned me down. It’s as a foreman and it will be a lot more money than I’m making now. The one catch is that we have to move to the  neighboring town. So I would have to pull my boy out of the school here, in the middle of the year. But I can’t pass the deal up. It will be so good for all of us. I talked to my wife and I’m going to tell the man yes in the morning.” I don’t remember ever hearing my Dad this excited and full of joy.

The Stranger exclaimed, “That is so exciting! You were just walking down the street and you met him?” His Dad said, “Yes, that’s exactly how it happened, the strangest thing. I’ve never seen that man in this town, but today, he was in this town.

And my wife here, she came home from being out and found all these groceries on the front step. Things that we haven’t had in years. A roast! In fact, I think that’s what we’re having tonight. In honor of you being here. How was your day?” my Dad asked The Stranger.

The Stranger smiled and said, “My day went very well, thank you. I had some things to do and I got most of them done.”

The Little Boy’s mom started putting supper on the table. The roast was on a big plate right in the middle of the table and there were little bowls on the table of carrots, onions, mashed potatoes and gravy! The Little Boy couldn’t remember if he ever had gravy before. His mom said they used to have it when he was a baby. It sure was a feast.

———

“Jesus? JESUS!!???”

“I’m right here little one.”

“where did you go?” I asked, almost in an accusatory tone.

Jesus said, “I was right over there, tidying things up.”

“I was afraid you were gone or I couldn’t find you.”

“I am always with you. All you ever have to do is call my name and I’m right there. Sometimes you can’t see me, sometimes you won’t be able to hear me, sometimes you won’t be able to feel me, but I’m always right with you. Nini, I want you to do something for me.”

I looked up and nodded yes and said “Ok.”

Jesus said, “Breathe in. Take a deep breath in.” So I did. Then Jesus said, “Let it out.” So I blew it out.

Jesus said, “Now take a little breath in.” So I did. Then he said, “Turn around three times.” So I did. Jesus asked me, “You didn’t know you were breathing in and out did you?”

“No, Jesus I didn’t!”

“I am as close to you as your breath. I will never ever leave you. Not ever. It doesn’t matter where you go, I’m going to go there with you. It doesn’t matter if you can see me like you can now, or if you can’t. I am still there with you. It does not matter if you can hear me like you can now or if it seems like you can’t, I am still with you. All you have to do is whisper my name, or shout my name. Just call me and I will make myself known to you.”

“really Jesus?”

‘Yes, Nini, really.”

“Jesus, I know that sometimes Janine called your name and she hasn’t felt you.”

“That’s because she didn’t know all the facts, all the truth that I’m telling you now.”

“So Jesus, even when we’re not doing this story you’re with me all the time?”

“Yes, I am.”

“It’s you and not an angel?”

“It’s me sweetheart.”

“Daddy? Is that when they say that you are everywhere all the time at the same time? Is that what they mean?”

“Yes honey, that’s what they mean.”

“Daddy? Can I go to bed?”

“Sure honey. We’ll do this tomorrow.”

“Thank you Daddy!”

“You’re welcome my sweet.”

[3.15.18 is a prayer in the physical book] [9.14.21, i’ll have to re-read all this to figure out what that means]

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