Hands Of Time [Chapter 16, last chapter]

As I sat at the dinner table that evening, I looked at my four beautiful children and thanked God for each and every one of them. Our supper table had six chairs around it, all of them filled with an occupant. When we bought our kitchen table the sales person threw in an extra chair, ‘just in case one got broken’, an added bonus. For convenience sake we had kept this chair in the corner of the kitchen, in case we had an extra mouth to feed. This evening as we sat, eating and talking, our youngest turned his head and asked me, “Dad, why do we have one extra chair that’s empty?” As I looked into his young, inquisitive eyes I thought I was going to explode. Emotions from deep inside my heart strained and struggled to break loose. How would I tell him that the chair was meant for the “unwanted” child? How could I tell my children of the sibling they would never meet, of memories that were never given the chance to materialize? How could I tell them of the child, who now would be an adult? As I looked at my children and remembered all the phases of their childhood, all the things we did, I simultaneously thought of my eldest child and his/her non-life, all the things that could have been and were not. I fought the back the tears like a mighty dam against a torrent of bashing waves against its walls. As I sat in the defense seat, speechless, no answer coming forth from my lips, my wife suddenly broke the uncomfortable silence with a message sent from above. “We reserve that seat for our most special guest, it reminds us that Jesus is always with us, even when we sit to eat.”
My wife gave us all her usual wonderful smile, not really knowing what her simple answer had accomplished in my heart. A single tear escaped from each of my eyes. One was a tear of regret for the past that I could never change, the other a tear of infinite gratitude for the One who had given me a new start in life, and had forever changed my future. As I stared across the table into my wife’s face, I noticed myself rubbing my wrist where time held me in its grasp, and nevertheless smiled the smile that only a pardoned man could.




Dale Callahan