And Kevin nods and follows her.

Please come down and help us out. Please, God.

And walking down that white, sterile hallway to the operating room where Jenny is ready for an emergency surgery, Kevin realizes something else.

He is not a designer or a businessman or an entrepreneur or an artist walking down this hallway.

He is just a father, praying and hoping that his sons will be okay.

That is all he is, and that is all that matters.

Receiving

It was in the early minutes of Christmas Eve when Kevin and Jenny got their answers.

He stood next to her, reassuring her, smiling at her, kissing her forehead. All he had eyes for was her round, angelic face beaming up at him. The rest of the sounds in the room went away. It was just the two of them, like on their wedding day after her father gave him her hand.

It’s just the two of us from here on out.

But in a strange way, Kevin felt like they were surrounded by a whole host of faces watching them. Watching and waiting. Watching and helping. Not the doctors and nurses but a roomful of angels looking after them.

It was a nice thought. Perhaps an overly hopeful, delirious thought. But it filled him and gave him strength to smile.

The first baby’s cry was hoarse and strangled. The doctor talked calmly to him. Kevin stood behind the blue sheet with Jenny, waiting to see what their Christmas presents looked like. Waiting to unwrap them and hold them.

Tears rounded his eyes and he smiled out of pure joy, waiting, looking down at Jenny, then looking back up to see the doctor’s face.

He used to think the best part of Christmas was the waiting.

But, like many things in his life, Kevin decided he was wrong about that.

It wasn’t about waiting.

The true joy came in receiving.

The Sign

Mom had brought them to a Christmas Eve service that had been simple and short. At the end everybody in the sanctuary held lit candles and sang “Silent Night.” It had been a while since they’d gone to church, and even though Thomas was glad to be going, he couldn’t help being distracted. The entire time he sat in the pew, he thought of his father, probably sitting in his usual place back at their house, drinking his night away and drowning whatever sorrows he could come up with. It made him angry that they were there and his father was somewhere else. It made him angry that all this time hadn’t changed the man he still loved but no longer respected.

As they left to go back home, Thomas saw a lit-up sign alongside the road next to the church’s parking lot. He hadn’t spotted it when they first walked into the Baptist church. Underneath the name of the church and the time of the evening service, there was a quote: