men with chests.

Four strapping men sit at my parent’s table and prove C.S. Lewis wrong (! Sorry Lewy… this pains me to type it). Or maybe more that there is more truth beyond the truth he wrote on. The premise of Lewis’ The Abolition of Man is that the post-modern man-without-chest represents humanity’s collective loss of heart as it loses it's connection to Love.
These four are a hope of a remnant; His gift of common good and grace. They are carpenters, with work-hewn hands who first showed up on the doorstep of my family home with pizza in hand and a rented movie. They have been living there, week by week since February.
They said they ‘didn’t even think about it’. They said ‘it’s what friends do’.
But they became my brothers the moment that they loved mine.
They stepped into my family when so many others left, who were unable to bridge the gap of illness and mystery that only love can.
It’s not mushy love.
It’s the sort of love that pounds nails into my brother’s house.
It’s the sort of love that teases me at the table that I should maybe come home more often for family dinners (I live in a city 7 hours away).
It’s the sort of love that lives together for a week at a time in my parents' basement, affectionately renamed, “The Orphanage”.
It’s the sort of love that takes international flights together without fear of ‘what if’s?’
A love that doesn’t focus on the count of the cost – because love is priceless.
It’s the love Christ spoke of,
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
- John 15:13
And this love sits at my family’s table every weeknight, talking about facial hair grooming techniques, bicep size, Mom’s cooking and how Grandma (now nicknamed, Gwen Stefani) has a new haircut. And we are blessed.

Today, I am thankful:

• for A, C, D, & G (the 'bro-skis').
• lavender.
• the way of flags in soft breezes.
• linking arms.