The Whole Truth

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

I wish I could say this is a holiday celebrated by our family down through the years. But the truth is, we have no ethnic heritage to speak of. Frank and I are simply two kids that were born in the deep South; with a European linage we've never really traced.

So, we celebrate vicariously through other friends who ARE blessed with fabulous ethnicity. The advantage to this would be our ability to join in with multiple celebrations: Italian, Hispanic, African, Norwegian, etc. Kind of a plus if you think of it in those terms.

Today actually finds me in a rather unpleasant circumstance.

I'm sitting in a law office waiting for Frank and Kristin to get through the rigors of a deposition. Six years ago, a car hit our girls as they were on their way to a secondary college job.

We owned the car (Frank's part of the deposition); Kristin was driving (her part of the deposition).

To people who deal with this type of legal matter on a daily basis it's no big deal. Simply tell the truth. But for the rest of us, it's nerve-wracking!

• What kind of questions will be asked?
• The accident happened six years ago!
  
• Will the opposing lawyer be antagonistic?
• How many times are you allowed to say, "I don't really remember."?

To top it all off, Kristin has a terrible cough that Ny-quil and Robitussin haven't been able to quell. (I've waited a long time for an appropriate place to use the word 'quell'; there it was. Smile.) So, I hear her coughing non-stop in the room next to me.

I can't see her but I know she's shivering with cold and nerves. I know she's alternating between her two nervous habits: a foot wiggling back and forth, back and forth and the single bouncing leg. I know she is occasionally taking deep breaths to steady herself. And periodically she will push her hair back behind one ear.

I know these things because I'm her Mama and I've observed these habits since her elementary days. I know these things because like all Mamas, the nuances of my children are memorized and rehearsed multiple times every day as I think of them and pray for them.

Yep, I know these things.

Although I can't be in there with her (I'm offering moral support from the next room), her daddy is. And better still, they are both joined by the Heavenly Father!

No walls - legal, medical, emotional, literal - can keep out the greatest Encourager during our most unsettling moments.

Ah, the peace in knowing the simple truth celebrated by every culture!