CWWC | Challenge Five

August 18th, 2017

I used all three prompts. I am on Team Shire.

For years, they laughed at you.

Called you and your antics and everything you did crazy. Truth be told, you didn’t mind. It only confirmed what you knew to be true in your soul. You believed you had to be crazy to be able to do what you did on a daily basis.

Night after night, you would toil on your invention and work hard on that dream. The reward sure to come was so worth the risk of your so-called “friends” laughing at you in the midnight hours.

The core of your invention laid in an idea long ago. You wanted to see what it was like to fly on your own. Late nights and moon light were all you knew of the summer hours as your toiled tirelessly in your work.

You were so diligent. Four AM, bare chested and in shorts and still working on that idea from every angle. From natural sticks to plastic hangers you worked on your dream to fly.

Sure, you could’ve used jetpacks or jumped out of an airplane. But you liked the challenge of doing what no one’s ever done to get what no one else had gotten. You loved the feeling of your mind stretching as you struggled and eventually conquered that mathematical question or creative cue in your problem. And you mastered that art of pushing yourself beyond how far you think you can go and operating in that.

Now you stand at the edge of this canyon, and I’m watching you, son. I want to tell you I’m proud of you. There were the losers who laughed at the dreams placed inside your heart. The chickens who pecked at the ground and guffawed at the eagle born to soar. The lukewarm lazies who ridiculed you only because you challenged their faith beyond what they desired the work ethic to achieve.

There’s them… and then there’s you.

What a handsome son you’ve grown to be. Please let me hug you one more time before you live your dream. Thank you for not listening to me when I was the loser. The chicken. The lukewarm lazy.

You’ve grown to be more of a man than I could ever hope to be. You have so much more with God that I wish I had. I love you. You make me proud.

And there you go.

You jump, bending your knees and thrusting yourself into the air off the canyon. Your spread your arms as an eagle would spread his glorious wings — and you fly.

I hear you let out a gleeful laugh as you feel the freedom of the wind whipping through your hair, howling through your ears, and drying your mouth.

You bring a smile to my lips as you curve a sharp left and flap upward to meet the sunset. I bring my right hand to shade my eyes, and I lock eyes with those of yours through the silhouette against the sun.

And then you dive downward again, feeling the freedom of the birds and the crispness of mountain air.

You make me proud, son. You wanted to fly, and you did. You’ve put into sight an analogy of the freedom I felt in my soul when you introduced me to my Savior — and I still feel it today.

May you always be an inspiring light for the One who gives us dreams and desires. May you reflect the freedom He brings to all those who desire it.

 Jesus is so awesome.

Actually, awesome doesn’t define Jesus. Jesus defines awesome.