IF ANYONE DESERVES TO CARRY A GRUDGE, IT’S CHRIST. BUT INSTEAD, HE CARRIED A CROSS.

He wondered if an angel had wandered down the road and put up the letters that seemed meant just for him. As they started to leave the parking lot, Thomas was glad it was dark outside.

That way Mom couldn’t see the tears coming down his cheeks.

All His Heart and All His Soul

He could still hear her sleeping when he opened his eyes to darkness on Christmas morning.

The haggard breathing of a woman in pain, a woman on painkillers and almost knocked out. A woman resting thirty hours after her prized bout and Super Bowl and World Series all rolled into one.

Kevin put on some shoes and slipped out of the room. He felt an emptiness even though it was seven on a morning when he should be full. Families would be gathering around trees and opening presents but they had already done that.

They’d had a whole day to deal with the news that Christmas Eve brought.

He walked the familiar hallway hearing the silence.

It’s going to be okay.

He could do this. He could.

Just one breath after another. One hour after another. One day at a time.

He felt half there, a spirit split in two.

It took only a few moments to get there.

He did the regular ritual, signing in and scrubbing, then stepping next to half-closed curtains.

Then he saw them.

Both of them in individual beds, both so tiny, both fast asleep, both alive and doing well.

Both.

Kevin didn’t know who to go to first.

He chose the smaller one in the enclosed clear bed.

“Good morning, Benjamin.”

The little boy, only three and a half pounds but long and content and thankfully healthy, seemed to hear his voice. He wiggled and moved slightly, then opened his eyes.

Then he did something quite unexpected in his day-old life.

Benjamin smiled.

Maybe it was just the motion of trying to move his lips, but Kevin didn’t believe that. He saw a smile on the face of the tiny one who gave them a scare, the one he prayed over and bargained with God for, the one who was so eager to come out and meet them.

The one Jenny had asked him about as he stood next to her with the drape separating them from the babies.

“How does he look?” Jenny had asked.

Just like his twin brother before him, Benjamin had looked shriveled up, with the face of an old man, but he had also looked absolutely “Beautiful,” Kevin had said.

The anxiousness had been there until they had brought both babies over briefly to introduce them to Mommy and Daddy. As the little lives cried, their heads touching as they hovered over Mommy, Kevin had known.

They’re okay. Both babies are okay.

He’d been so worried and so lost and so weak and yet . . .