Softly, even if you can barely hear it. Gently, even if you can barely feel it. Once, twice, three times — a word, a smile, anything that might reach through and become a message. You’re lovely. You’re wonderful. You did well. You’re going to be okay. A thumbs-up. A pat on the back. A high five. A hug.
The door may be barely open, or barely closed — it doesn’t matter. I just hope that through whatever small gap exists, a little love might find its way in. That’s what I’m doing when I try to close the distance, bit by bit, between their hearts and mine. And it makes me happy, that closing.
When hearts finally come near enough to touch, something true passes between them. And I hope — I hope desperately — that riding on that truth, something even deeper might flow through.
But I should be honest: it isn’t my effort that moves me most in this work.
It’s the children.
They melt me. Just like this.
The moment I walk through the school gate, they come running. Two small figures, each clutching a fistful of wildflowers they’ve picked from somewhere in the schoolyard, holding them out to me with both hands and the widest smiles. Ferns couldn’t be more delicate than those hands.
In that moment, wildflowers become the most beautiful flowers in the world. And the children are lovelier still.
A little while later they came back and asked — so politely, so earnestly — whether they could sing me a song. And then they did. It wasn’t a short song. I stood there completely lost in it before I remembered myself and reached for my phone.
I wanted to keep it. That glimpse of something heavenly, quietly staged right here on earth.