At the 27th Threshold

Carrying the Boy through the Dark of the Valley

It’s like the old saying goes: all those moments gone like tears in rain. And Pan cries—he screams—he wants desperately for things to stay so that he doesn’t feel alone. Abandoned. Afraid. Time seems to pass on faster and faster, and he knows that so much more death and loss await him ahead. And he’s scared. He just wants comfort.

I saw my dad on the 27^th, the day before the party, and we went to dinner. I convinced him to try sushi for the first time—which had an unsurprising result—but, before that, we talked about how much things had changed. That his experience of time was so much swifter. He could hardly believe I was already 27—it felt like just the other day I was twelve and he was picking me up from school on a Wednesday afternoon. And I remembered that too—Pan remembered that—and he wanted to weep. He’s still there, that kid—he’s there in all the times I’ve left behind. And he always feels abandoned. How do I show him that he’s not?

How do I tell him that I love him? That I’m here? That, no matter what changes, I’m always here? How do I convince him that God is always there, and has always been? How do I make him feel like the future is more than just a shadow? Pan is the immortal child, the Lost Boy, the one forever terrified of growing up—of time and death and endings. I feel him cry out whenever I finish a great video game, or watch the final movie in a trilogy, or near the end of a book. He doesn’t want it to end—he doesn’t know how to deal with the end—and too long he’s sat alone in the dark, crying for his parents. He hardly knows how to do anything more than cry.

But I’m here and I have him. I have you. In my arms, safe and sound. And I won’t let you go again. Never again. We invoked the 27^th together, and it wasn’t just a spot of poetry—it was the real deal. We make it real with our sacrifice of the 26^th and all that came before it—make it real in the eyes of God, which is the only kind of real that matters. Things won’t just be the same now, not after this. We have crossed a threshold. And though it is often dark along this path, you need not fear the shadows; not while I have you in my arms, walking in the Light. All those times and eras—all the things that ever happened to us—they’re not gone. They’re a part of us. They may be dead, but they live on through us—they make us what we are, and they help make us whole. Nothing is ever truly erased, only changed, and its effects, whether perceived or not, understood or not, live on always.

The way ahead is winding,

it’s milestones reminding,

that whether wood or cliff

or Valley frightening,

forward is the way defining.

So onward now,

keep going.