The Beginning

CWK 

It all began surreptitiously. You don’t know what that word means? Well, then, I advise you to look it up. I looked it up after I wrote it, and for the record, I just gained your attention, dear reader, surreptitiously.

            Still, I’m not gonna tell you what ‘surreptitious’ means.

            When I was in grad school, I carried a dictionary around with me for a couple of years. I’d come to find that there were many words I did not understand. Not just words in books, but words people said. Basic words. I was ashamed of this, and hard on myself. Inwardly, I maligned my own pedestrian erudition. Yes, you are definitely gonna need a dictionary to read this very short story. Admit it, and just go buy a pocket dictionary. You'll thank me later.

            “He has good character, though not the erudition,” one of my professors said early in my time at grad school.

            I so lacked erudition; I did not know what erudition was. 

            This brings me back to the beginning, but now I am bound to ask, “Which beginning?”

            The beginning of all things occurred when The God called forth the universe with a simple, “Let there be.” They will not tell you that in school. The will not play this single on the radio, unless it is religious radio, but I don’t suggest anyone reading this listen to religious radio. Too irreligious. Anyway, The God called for the heavens and the earth, and that’s what happened in the beginning. Every other beginning comes after that one.

            So, I am not talking about the beginning, but a beginning. I'm not even talking about the beginning of my life, but rather the beginning of the healing.

            A single teenage mother was desperately pacing outside a hospital room. Her infant son was sick with a high fever. She, the doctors, everyone really, had given up hope. Then, a pastor came by and offered to pray. He had just lost his father. Still, he identified with the single mother. He prayed for fervently for his own loss. He prayed for me, and the fever broke, and I lived to write these words.