Charlie-- a blessing

- Tonight, you were in my arms as I walked up on the stage at our church Saddleback where Pastor Rick was going to say a blessing over you as a baby. You were in front of a few thousand people perhaps and I said my name and your name and that your dad was over in the audience. In the shuffle of getting people on and off the stage-- Pastor Rick actually never even said a prayer- I don't know if this was an accident or not. So when I was putting you to bed tonight- I did it myself as you were in the partially dark of your room, in my arms looking up at me. This is what I prayed,
"Lord, thank you so much for Charlie- thank you for the gift of his health, his sweetness, his tenacious spirit. Thank you for giving him to me on loan. Please be with him as a boy, as a teenager, as a young man, as a father, husband and older man. Please be with him in the moments when someone around him is violent- either physically or with their words. Please be with him when he sees images that are unnecessary and a tool the devil uses to distract him from Your light. Please be with him when someone needs him, please be with him when someone loves him, please be with him when he fails and please be with him when he succeeds. Please be with him at all these times and point his eyes Your direction for the definition of all these moments. Help him to use You as his guide and his best friend, his comfort, his shield against the crazy things this world is going to evolve into to try and fight him because he will be strong.

Lord- I know this is a bold amount to request- but I know WHO I am asking it of. You are a God who has the ability to bless and I am asking that you make Charlie's life the kind that is called blessed. Please let him live a life that someone may say about him-- he was a man after God's heart. That he would seek you and know that You are the source of true joy.


Then I rubbed our noses together, laid you down and you fell asleep.