"Charlie made me cry!"

This weekend I played with Charlie.

We had gone out to dinner a few weeks ago – 2 couple’s night out at Carrabas. It was great fun: good food and warm conversation as always. In fact we had had so much fun that D and I requested an encore. This time I decided to do something different: dumpling party at home instead of dining out. Charlie can be stubborn, but I am bossy. With no room for persuasion on my end, he finally caved in.

Dumplings, or Chinese raviolis, to be more exact, are the delicacy and rare honor at our home since I started working full time. They are labor intensive from chopping vegetables to dough kneading. After that, there is yet another hour of pastry making and dumpling wrapping. Nevertheless, they are not only family’s favorites but also a most-requested dish from friends. I could not think of anything better then that. So the party went on – we were at the kitchen island making dumplings and conversation for a good hour and half. He was looking pale after all that chemo treatments and radiations but none the less jovial. The dinner turned out to be somewhat a let-down for my standard, but my company did not seem to mind. Their gracious forgiveness allowed me to overlook my less than satisfactory performance and soon instead of the disappointing dishes we feasted on a better substitute: hours of intriguing conversation, which was far more scrumptious and enjoyable than any gourmet delicacy I could think of.

During the conversation, he mentioned he had been asked to substitute for a substitute at our sister church the next day due to a last-minute cancellation of the guest speaker. It’s been 2 years since he turned in his interim pastorage after our new pastor came. He had not returned to our podium since. After months of the severe attack by the ailment and far-more-hostile treatments for the ailment, he stopped taking invites from other churches. This news came both miraculous and wonderful! How many times have I relived those moments when my troubled heart and wandering eyes were set straight with God at the rise and fall of his voice? Sunday came and the bad student skipped the school to play with Charlie. The church was a pitiful sight outside and sadder inside with but a handful of congregation left. How ironic it was when the guest speaker was almost as frail and forgotten as the building itself? And yet there he walked in, on his cane or “third leg”, which he humorously quoted, his eyes twinkling and face smiling. When the long anticipated preaching finally started, with his first word the unexpected, ridiculous tears came! It was déjà vu when this Philemon was brought home again to make peace with both God and men. The magic continued on when he preached on none other than Romans 8, starting with God’s unconditional pardon through “no condemnation” for the most wretched sinner then, me, and ending with God’s immeasurable provision in “no separation” for His most suffering servant there, him. There he stood, his body stubbornly leaning against the podium to support his pain stricken legs, baring his soul how he had cried for that 20-year-old boy whom he had shepherded and lost to sea just a few weeks ago. And there I sat, with no tissues for rescue, all silly and weepy for reasons beyond the young man’s death. He was testifying to the adequacy of God’s grace through the father’s faith and example when all that reminded me was that of his own, along with his trials and tribulations, which he so sneakily avoided. I was fighting for control with my face buried low for fear of being found out what a cry baby I was, but when that last hymn “Amazing Grace” started the battle was lost. I had to flee out of the chapel. I would not be seen with my makeup all messed up like that! Word for word, the song pursued and persecuted me through the closed door. When I finally returned, the last verse ended. I turned, only to find Pat just as teary as I was. We stared into the same pain through each other’s eyes and cried together.

It was a beautiful, sunny day on the way home. The sky was blue and air was cool. The Sunday’s traffic was moving steadily like any other Sundays, oblivious of the trauma that I had just gone through. I couldn’t shake off that image: an old and almost forgotten church, the musky and gloomy sanctuary, Charlie smiling up there and me crying underneath. I was thinking, he may be afflicted by that “chronicle condition” or on that “third leg”, as he so eloquently put, he was none the less a bully. I should have known that before going out to play with him. I wanted then to tattletale on him: “Look what Charlie did! He made me cry!”