Elliot in Boston

So a hundred and a half years ago, Elliot was running across the street in front of my house to get in on some neighborhood pickup baseball when an old lady hit him with her car.  Knocked him out of his flaming Vans.  Don't worry, he was fine.

Most of you know that story, how it happened, how it ended.  You can still see a few scars on his arms and nose, but if you didn't know where to look you wouldn't know they were there.

You may not know, however about the time we lost him in Boston.  A while back my friend Vern asked me about it for a sermon illustration (back when pastors still found me interesting), so I sat down and banged this out on my phone.

Here's the story:

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Elliot in Boston

Elliot, with Family and Life Ring

In 2011 the Grimes family was in Boston to take part of the 115th running of the Boston marathon.  While there are 28,000 people running the race, there are approximately 500,000 people there to watch, cheer, and hand Gatoraid and gel packs to passing runners.  

The day before the race we decided to see some of the sites around Boston and found ourself in Quincy Market for lunch.  Quincy Market is a historic building in downtown Boston that was built in 1824 and had recently been that had been converted to restaurants, retail shops, and a large eating area.  There were street performers, and musicians, lots to see and eat…

...and the place was packed full of tourists.  Runners were everywhere looking for salads.  

My family had split up to find different things to eat—Jen went for the healthy stuff, and I took my kids Sarah, Molly, and Elliot to a stall selling corn dogs.  We were staying close together, fighting through the crowds, and stood in line for a few minutes until we got to the counter.  I order the corn dogs and handed them to the kids, and Jen came from across the way to join us.  We stood there for a while, jostled by tons of people and looked for a place to sit.

Sarah looks up and says "Where's Elliot?"

He was gone.  

But he was just right there…how could he be gone?  He was...Gone. 

For a full 15 minutes, he was gone.  We were the parents of a lost child.  Jen was desperate, yelling his name.  We were running from place to place, desperately looking for our 3-year-old boy.  

My mom, who was also there, gathered my girls up and started praying.  We retraced our steps, went outside, back inside, pushed our way through the crowd.  I started looking for police, had daytime nightmares of moving to Boston and constantly searching the city, never sleeping, never finding him.  

In those 15 minutes, I became more and more desperate, terrible sadness started to cover me and my heart started breaking.  

And then, from across the way, I saw a man in a Boston Marathon jacket holding my boy.  Elliot was crying, and the man was holding him up high, looking just as hard for us as we were for him.  He looked at me full in the face, saw me from across the room and seemed to know from my desperation that I was Elliot's dad and he was my son.  I ran over to him, thanked him, and he handed Elliot to me.  I had never held him so tight.  

The man disappeared into the crowd.

We found a table, sat and ate, shattered and whole again, in silence.  My boy, who was gone, was there beside me.

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I'm not crying, you're crying.

Today Elliot turns 11.  He's a fifth grader, gnar-shreader, brother, son, baseball player, stand up comedian, alien.

He's beat death twice.

Happy Birthday Elliot.

Do They Make Genetically Modified Essential Oils?

So the other day I walked into this lady's office and saw this upward smoke fountain billowing out some sort of crazy cinnamon volcano-level action.  Essential Oils, they told me.  Diffuser, they told me.

My eyes started to water.

It was also around 100, or 150 degrees in the office.  The lights were off, shades were drawn, faces lit only by computer screen backlight, and the peaceful pulsing purple light from that defuser.

I decided to go the benefit-of-the-doubt route and started to breathe in as deeply as I could.  I put my face right in that Christmas flavored fount of misted oil, closed my eyes, and inhaled.  I felt it flit by my nose hairs, fill my sinuses, flood its way to the very darkest corners of my lungs--the corners so far only touched by body odor, or that really amazing smell that hits you when you walk into a taco bell around 3 pm.

I went to another level.

That steady stream of steam goodness showed me a clear way of solving the worlds biggest problems.  It walked me down a path where anger was set aside, hunger was managed, and teenagers made their own beds.  Without being asked!

At that moment, I realized what I had been missing in life.  Looking at me, you would think I had it all--smoking hot wife, amazing kids, house, job, multiple cars, skateboard ramp in the backyard, good looks and winning personality.

And in thinking that you'd not be wrong, I do have it all.  But... if you had been there that day, if you had put your nose where I put mine, and if you had breathed as deep as I breathed in that verticle well of wonder, you too would realize...


...that you need this graphic on a t-shirt:

I made this.  Let me know if you want one.