Designated Doodler

Tonight I heard a former Muslim man named Saleem talk. Here's what happened: Saleem brought up a young man in college, he pulled out three colored scarves. One white, one red and one black. He draped the white one around his shoulders and pulled the young man in next to him, sharing the scarf. He said, "this is what God wanted when he created man. He was like a daddy that wanted children. He desired fellowship with us and we were blameless. He told Adam and Eve that they could eat from any tree, except for one, the tree of life. And that if they did, surely they would die." "And what did they do? They ate the fruit. And although their physical bodies didn't die in that moment, they suffered a spiritual death," Saleem said, removing his arm (and the scarf) from the young man. "And so the world fell to sin," he said, draping a black scarf over the boy. "But we were still God's children and he did not forsake us. Instead,...

On nights like this, I wish I had someone I could run to. Someone I could fall apart to. Someone who would wrap me in his arms and not even try to convince me everything would be okay, because he was smart enough to know that it wouldn’t be. But who would sit there in the silence with me. “Is there a cure?” is one of the first things people ask when you tell them your father has cancer. And I hate the answer. I had a nightmare last night, one part of which involved me knowing that I was only going to live for one more day. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what it must feel like to not be certain that you’d be around tomorrow? I experienced that feeling in a dream, for a brief amount of time. And it was an awful feeling. Yet, every night when my Dad goes to bed, he’s not sure if he’ll wake up the next day. And as I sit here with burning eyes, the most painful throbbing in my head and that familiar ache in my chest, it breaks my heart to think of how my Dad must feel. Occasionally h...