WLSU, After The Thing - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

We read these stories of memorable moments. We call them defining. In many ways they are. The miracles define the lives of those who experience them. And the curses - the illnesses, and deaths of which Jesus cures people - they are themselves definitive. The bleeding woman, the dying child, the dead man. Is this life defined? A collection of maladies and miracles, of blessings and curses - bullet points and highlights, the things found in an obituary. But my life is filled with so many unmemorable moments - daily, hourly, I am doing things the details of which get forgotten almost immediately. It's the things that happens after the thing happens. I have written and preached and spoken repeatedly about the day my father died. I have detailed at length my conversion experience on a seaside trail in Italy. I have gleaned my parents' divorce, my wedding day, and the birth of my children for sermon material. A collection of curses and miracles that I call definitive. But right now I am thinking about picking my kids up from school. The days I've done this bleed into one another, my memory of them is an amalgamation. I don't remember any specific time I locked eyes with one of my children as they made their way out of the school building, any specific time they broke into a run toward me, any specific time they tried to knock me down with a hug. But it has happened so many times, so consistently, so unmemorably, that it has begun to define me.