Image by mcmurryjulie from Pixabay
“OK, so I'm setting up for my nap here so I can stop looking at all the stuff other people have built and have a clear mind because sometimes you just gotta make something new.”
Six-year-old Grayson Ludlow was explaining why he had brought his pillow and blanket out to the Lego pile to his big cousin and temporary guardian Col. H.F. Lee.
“Oh, yeah, we're totally here for this!” nine-year-old George and five-year-old Lil' Robert said as they came running and nearly knocked their big cousin down. “This is a great idea!”
“Approved,” the colonel said with a smile and just walked away.
“Anytime we can get two of those three to be OK with naptime, there's no point in messing it up,” he said to his equally smiling wife, Mrs. Maggie Lee.
“I knew Grayson was serious when he went and put all his other magazines and blueprints totally away – I think he was inspired by neighbor Velma's painting,” she said.
“I think so too – that's some amazing work at any age, but it means Velma's ability for abstract thinking is prematurely coming in, at least in art,” the colonel said.
“But why does it trouble you?” Mrs. Lee said, and the colonel smiled … the ripples in his almost preternatural calm were slight, but she had gotten to know them all.
“If the Lord has a whole generation of children developing quickly,” he said, “then we must assume there is a reason for it, at the same time that so many adults are showing they have no capacity or ability to mature.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Lee said. “I see where you are going, Harry. They may well need to be ahead, to make it.”
“Our cousin Robert – I mean Big Robert – illustrates something,” Col. Lee said. “Between him and Lil' Robert there is a collapse of a whole generation. Between me and my grandfather, there is a collapse – but both those old men were empowered by God to beat in parts of the world that had to be beaten for their grandchildren. Yet they cannot live forever.”
“Big Papa Horace is doing really well, though, just cruising to 88,” Mrs. Lee said. "Robert could easily live that long, too, with the same genetics in play from Ainslee MacMurray Lee through your grandfather's sister Hilda."
“I'm just saying, that kind of longevity is not promised, so, the little ones have to be ready sooner than they would have to be otherwise. In the Trent and Stepforth family, there are some spectacular collapses of the same generations I'm referring to … and not all people blessed with a sense of purpose and longevity are doing well with it … so, when I see these little ones around here so precocious, and realize how many people our age there aren't who should be on top of things … .”
“Got it,” Mrs. Lee said. “We are childless for the moment for a reason: God has to have some people to stand in the gaps.”
“And even if the Lord grants us children of our own,” Col. Lee said, “since we see what so few others do … well, staying in the Ludlow gap is probably going to be enough personal work for us, since there are four parents missing.”
“We are two,” Mrs. Lee said.
“Sooner or later,” Col. Lee said, “the Lord is going to close the loop on Big Robert's two children who were hidden from him. They are almost in plain sight now. Lofton County is just not that big, and they could not more look like him in young adulthood if he spat them out. Yet consider: when that happens, eventually they will not be two more, but four more if each marries, and they are in a loving family that is already a distaff-Lee branch too.”
“A lot of people messed up,” Mrs. Lee said, “but the Army of the Lord seems never to be as thin in the ranks as it appears!”
“Never!” Col. Lee said. “He can always make something new -- and new again!”