Forever
Sally yelled an “I love you” as she chased their son Jared down the hall, carrying the clothes he didn’t really want to put on. She could probably make breakfast and lunches with her eyes closed, and it seemed that was exactly what she was doing this morning. After the final kid was on the final bus, Sally sat slumped on the big leather couch in the family room with the requisite cup of Earl Grey tea, and she had trouble remembering the morning she had just been through. Had she been patient with the kids? Were they all dressed appropriately? Did they all eat breakfast? What in the world was in their lunches? Often on these frenetic school mornings, Sally’s head wasn’t in her own life. She had begun to feel that most of the time she was elsewhere. It was not that she was unhappy or that she wanted out. Sally loved Jack, and she had always wanted children. The routine was what got to Sally. It felt like the proverbial roller coaster that never stops but goes and goes and always ends up at the same place. Is this what life was about — repetitive routines on an end- less stream of similar days? Sally didn’t want to change anything, but as she got up to restore order to the kitchen, she told herself that she was not satis- fied with what she was feeling. Josh and Sally, two people who seem to be different from each other, are deep down very much the same. They share the same dream, and they are in the middle of the same struggle. Hard- wired inside each of them is a desire for life to mean something, for it to be going somewhere. Hardwired inside of each of them is distaste for meaninglessness. Hardwired into the very cells of their personhood is a thing called eternity. Deep inside them is a cry for forever. The curse of the old man at his inability to get his leg to do what it was meant to do is a cry for forever. The hurt inside the teenager who has been mocked by a peer is more than adolescent angst; it is a cry for forever. The whimper of the toddler who has
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