on knights, dragons and dinosaurs

Knights N Dragons - (C) Kevin Middleton 

The conversation on the car ride home from preschool went like this...

"Mommy, when I grow up I want to be a knight!" 

"Oh my, that's exciting, I love it!"

"Then I can fight dragons!"

"Yes I suppose that's what knights do, right?"

"Mommy, are there knights in our life?" (This is Tate's way of asking if something is for real or not.)

"What about dragons?"

"Honey, there are people who are knights, but dragons are pretend."

"What about dinosaurs?"

"Well, they are extinct. So no, there are no dinosaurs either."

"Ugh, then there is NOTHING left to fight!"

I love my sons imagination. Sometimes I love it so much I wish that it could take on a life of it's own. Somehow things seems so much more right in a child's mind. The heroes always win, good conquers all. That last statement from Tate made me think. "There's nothing left to fight." Oh dear.

My first thought was that there is plenty left to fight. There are hundreds of things I'd throw up on the figurative list of dragons and dinosaurs. 

Cancer. (It's so incredibly ugly and ravaging. I know first hand from my own father's struggle with it, and I'm currently watching a story unfold of a sweet, unblemished seven year old boy reach the end of his fight.)

Orphan crisis. (Currently 153 million worldwide, over 1 billion children estimated worldwide suffer from deprivation of at least one basic need, like water, food or sanitation.)

My friend's little newborn boy undergoing heart surgery to correct a birth defect due to Down's Syndrome. 

Depression, loneliness, infertility, family strife, divorce, the list really could go on forever. 

I'm not going to keep on going with the current tone here, we all know about the realities of this world we live in, but how often do we take a second to remember those in the fight? We're all in the fight aren't we? No one gets off this crazy planet with out their "thing." Those things that distinguish us as either a knight or a peasant. Hard things. Life altering things. Heart crippling, yet character developing things.

My son's conversation reminded me that I wanna be a knight too. I want to feel the exhilaration of doing my part in this life on mission. Almost as if I could sense a sword being touched lightly on each shoulder and then briefly resting on my head. We are knights. In a fight began long ago before the dawn of time. 

God, please grant me a bold grace to face the dragons of today. To stand for truth even when everything seems upside down and backwards, to uphold virtue as if it still might be attained, and to love so deeply I can't help but lift others up who are also in the fray.