unscripted

ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS about a blackberry moment is that you won’t find it in any dictionary anywhere. It’s a Johnson family thing and thus open to any definition we choose to come up with. So if the folks at Merriam-Webster or Funk and Wagnalls were to give me space, I guess the entry would look like this:

blackberry moment n

1. an unpredictable moment that makes life extraordinary

2. an unforeseen moment that catches you off guard and marks you forever

3. a moment so sweet that you savor the taste for a lifetime

4. a moment when God winks and you can swear you hear him whisper, “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

We are surrounded by moments that fit these descriptions. It’s not as if they come along so rarely that if we miss one, we’ll never get the chance again. We’ve all heard the local weatherman finish his forecast by saying, “If you look into the eastern sky between 11:14 and 11:43 tonight, you’ll see something that happens only once every 231 years.” Blackberry moments aren’t like that. And for the most part, they can’t be predicted. They just happen. And hopefully, you’ve got a front-row seat to watch them. But here’s the thing—you have to be present, and you have to be on the lookout, because they can pop up at any time, any place. And they have the power to change your perspective and in the process change your life . . . or somebody else’s.

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences hosts the Sports Emmy Awards every spring. In the category of outstanding sports personality—studio host Bob Costas has been the gold standard for more than two decades. I have long maintained that the honor should be renamed the Costas. The guy has won seventeen of them in a twenty-three-year span. I’ve been fortunate enough to earn nine nominations in that category and to win it three times. And that third, in May 2015, was a blackberry. But not for me.

Among the five nominees that year was the popular Stuart Scott of ESPN, who in the course of eight years had battled cancer valiantly until it claimed his life in January 2015. It was safe to say that on Emmy night that year, the five other nominees in the category—Costas, Matt Vasgersian of MLB Network, Keith Olbermann of ESPN 2, Rich Eisen of NFL Network, and I—expected that when the winner was announced, Stuart Scott’s name would be called, and his two daughters, Taelor and Sydni, would walk to the stage and accept the Emmy for their late father. We all knew it, and so did every other person in the ballroom filled with TV types from across the country.

Tom Verducci, the Emmy Award–winning reporter for MLB Network and Fox Sports, presented the night’s final award. He opened the envelope and said, “And the Emmy goes to Ernie Johnson, TNT.” Cheryl was with me in New York. We heard it but couldn’t quite believe it. In fact, I had told her beforehand that surely Stuart would win and it would be a special moment to hear his daughters’ acceptance speech. I had also vowed to myself that if I were ever lucky enough to win another Emmy, I would bring my wife onstage with me and salute her in front of the crowd for all she had meant to me throughout the years, for all the sacrifices she had made while putting up with my crazy schedule, and for holding our family together in the midst of all that. Now I had the opportunity to do so, but at the same time, I knew I would not be walking off the stage with that trophy. With Cheryl by my side, I made good on my personal promise to let everybody in the room know what a treasure she was.

“As for this,” I said, gesturing toward the Emmy, “there’s only one place it belongs—and that’s on the mantel at Stuart Scott’s house. So if the girls could come up, please . . . this is not for me.”

Stuart and I had worked thousands of miles apart for different networks but had crossed paths from time to time, and we had encouraged each other in our respective cancer fights over the years. I had never met his daughters, Taelor and Sydni, but I knew from experience the toll that cancer takes on a family. My own kids had struggled knowing their dad was in the fight of his life. Tae and Syd had lost their dad. They needed a blackberry moment.

And you know what’s crazy? A few months later the St. Louis Sports Commission, which annually holds the Stan Musial Sportsmanship Awards, notified me that I would be receiving one of those. They wanted to give me a statue for giving one up. And that became a blackberry moment for me. Because who had they secretly arranged to be there in St. Louis to present it? Taelor and Sydni Scott.

I got a call from Roger Thompson the other day. I know what you’re thinking. “Hold on . . . wait a second—that Roger Thompson? C’mon, you know him?” Actually, you’re doing none of that. You’ve probably never heard of Roger, but if you ever did get a chance to sit and talk with him, get to know him a little, there is no doubt you’d come away proudly saying, “Yeah, I know that Roger Thompson.”

In 1967, he was the coach of the Big Apple Tigers, a Little League Baseball team comprised of ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-olds. Big Apple was the grocery store that sponsored the team. Tigers was the name Roger picked for us, not for some deep motivational reason but because tigers were his favorite animal. I was the ten-year-old second baseman on that team and oddly enough went by the name Tiger. It’s something my dad and mom called me early on, and it actually stuck until I was about twelve. I bring that up because when Roger, who’s eighty-seven now, left a message on my phone recently, just calling to touch base, he ended it by saying, “Keep up the good work, Tiger.” Nobody has called me that in more than forty years.

Coach had remained good friends with my mom and dad long after I played for him, and they had passed his number on to me one day, and I’m so glad they did. Every now and then I call him or he calls me, and we talk for a minute or two, which usually becomes five or ten or thirty-seven, as it did today. I’m always amazed at his recall of exact games and situations.

I told him I’ll never forget the three-word mantra he hammered home at each practice and each game of what was a championship season, the same three words that were etched on the ink pens he gave each of us at our end-of-the-season party: dedication, pride, togetherness.

We can talk about common ground now that we’ve both got kids out in the real world and we’re both grandfathers, but in a very special way, every time I have Roger on the phone, it’s like I’m having a conversation with my dad, who died at the age Coach is now. Every time we’re about to hang up, he says he’s proud of me, and while he’s speaking to me from his home in the mountains of North Carolina, it’s as if my dad were standing right there.

All of us who have put in a sufficient number of years in the parents club know that when a child becomes a teenager, the dynamic between that child and the parent can change just a bit. It can become strained just a bit. It can become difficult to some extent. It can totally implode one day, return to normalcy in the span of twenty-four hours, and then implode again with even greater force twenty minutes after that. Look, I try to be as positive, as optimistic a dad as I can possibly be. And I’ve always wanted my kids to know, especially during their teens, that I have the utmost confidence in them to do the right thing and make the proper decision at the proper time. Part of that comes from believing I’ve done the best job of parenting I could possibly do. But I’ve fallen short more times than I care to count.

Picture this. It happened in 1991 while Cheryl was in Romania adopting Michael. Eric is seven and Maggie is four. They’re in the backseat as I pull into a parking spot right up front at the mall, thirty yards from the Macy’s door. I tell them I need to run in and pick up a pair of pants that have been altered—it’ll take three minutes. I tell Eric he is in charge. “Just sit tight, and I’ll be back in a second.” I dash inside and tell the cashier what I am there for, and he goes to a back room to get my pants. Then I see three women crouching down near the door I just entered.

Maggie had left the car and walked alone from the parking lot to the Macy’s men’s department, and now I am making the walk of shame to scoop her up and dry her tears, all the while being absolutely pierced by the daggers coming from the eyes of these moms. I deserve it. I was careless and stupid, and well, you probably have a few more fitting adjectives. I walk back to the car with my pants and my distraught four-year-old and of course immediately blame it all on the seven-year-old in the backseat.

“Eric, what did I tell you? You were supposed to watch your sister! What were you thinking letting her get out of the car?”

Now I have two kids bawling in the backseat, and I sit behind the wheel angry and humiliated. Not a word is spoken on the drive home. As soon as we hit the garage, the kids scramble out of the car, through the back door, and into their rooms. I sit alone at the kitchen table replaying the worst parenting episode I had yet authored. And it hits me. The parent isn’t always right. The parent may make the rules, and the parent may enforce the punishment, but the parent isn’t always right. While we spend a lot of time instructing our kids how to say, “I’m sorry,” there are times we need a refresher course.

I call the kids downstairs, and they have a seat in the piano room, which is occasionally used for piano playing but more often is used as the place where Dad has a “come to Jesus” meeting with a child who has broken the rules. They are probably expecting a continuation of my parking lot tantrum. That’s not what they get.

“What happened today at the mall wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I was wrong. And I was wrong to blame you. I’m so sorry. What happened today would never have happened if I was a better parent, and I can promise you it will never happen again.”

The mood in the room, as you might guess, lightens considerably. The kids hug me and forgive me as only a seven-year-old and a four-year-old can—with a simple, “That’s okay, Dad.” And then they go skipping out of the piano room, fully aware that on this night a request for pizza and a hot fudge sundae will not be denied. And me—well, I am thankful for a couple things. Number one, that my boneheaded move at the mall didn’t result in something much worse. And number two, that I have a few more weeks before I have to explain the whole thing to Cheryl when she gets home from Romania. I’ll have to have a seat in the piano room when that happens.

The lesson for me was simple. Your focus can be so razor sharp on what your kids are doing and what decisions they’re making that you forget to look in the mirror sometimes and take a good, long, maybe difficult look at how you’re doing. There are times when you need to step out from behind the protective shield that reads, “I’m the dad—I’m right” and admit that you made a mistake. I want my kids to have that same honesty as they’re growing up and that same willingness to face up to their mistakes. Look, you may have worked your tail off to raise them the right way and to instill the values they’ll need for a lifetime. Your kids have a solid foundation; they’re grounded; they’re “good kids” who other parents tell you are just “so polite and well mannered.” But I know this. And excuse me if I offend you because I don’t know what’s going on under your roof and I haven’t met your perfect son or daughter. And if such an animal truly exists and he or she is yours, you have my heartfelt apology. But they’re gonna screw up. It’s gonna happen. And it’s gonna rock you.

Wayne Watson wrote a song almost twenty years ago called “Come Home,” and a line in there doesn’t just speak to me but screams at me in describing what it’s like to be a parent and to wait up to see my kid’s headlights hit the driveway so I can go to sleep: “You pray to keep from worrying, then you worry you ain’t prayin’ enough.” Been there. How about you? I know what it’s like to have a 2:35 a.m. conversation with a police officer about my child’s conduct. I am familiar with the term bail. I am not tossing anybody under the Greyhound here. Just realize that I’ve been there and know what it’s like to feel as though I have somehow failed as a parent.

Only by God’s grace have those lapses in judgment, or downright stupid decisions, not led to something catastrophic. Certainly, there are parents out there who could write a far different story. One of heartbreak and loss. Cheryl and I are lucky. The kids are all still around, living their lives, making us proud, making us cringe, and on a regular basis providing us with blackberries.

It didn’t take long after we adopted Carmen from Paraguay for Cheryl and me to realize that she was going to do things at her pace. When she was just four years old, her room was routinely a disaster area. One morning we offered her a dollar if she would clean her room. She was thrilled and ran upstairs while Cheryl and I high-fived. Ten minutes later she came back downstairs and said, “Thanks anyway” and gave Cheryl the dollar back. She would eventually get it done, but doing it when we requested apparently wasn’t worth the princely sum we had offered her.

When Carmen was fifteen, she would ride to church with me and Cheryl and Michael and then would vanish. Our church, 12 Stone, features a circular auditorium that seats twenty-six hundred. Carmen and her high school friends would sit as far away from us as possible and still be within the confines of the church. One particular Sunday Pastor Kevin Myers, in the midst of his message, felt moved to offer to anyone in the church a chance to be baptized—right then. We hadn’t pressured Carmen on this in the past. We had had discussions about it and had pointed out that most of her friends had been baptized, but we didn’t want her to do it because it was our wish but because she had reached a point in her spiritual growth where it was what she wanted. And apparently, this was that day. Cheryl elbowed me and pointed toward the stage, where among the first to step forward was our Carmen.

An unscripted moment like that can’t be put on the calendar in advance. It can’t be the work of a mom and dad double-team breaking down a teenager’s resolve. That was just a moment between Carmen and the God who made her. And we got to see it.

Our family of six became a family of eight after my wife and I had both hit our fifties. While some of our friends were figuring out the cool ways they could spend their new free time with no kids in the house, we were not. While we had known for a long time that the empty nester thing wasn’t going to happen in our house, with Michael needing constant care, that didn’t mean we had to add two more kids to the mix, but that’s what happened. The initial suggestion to adopt again came from Cheryl, who while leading the Street Grace fight against child sex trafficking had told me that many of the young women who age out of the foster care system get caught in the sex trade. They are targets for pimps, who give them the attention, or money, or personal value they so desperately crave but then in no time have them under their control. Some of these young women are performing dozens of sex acts in a single day—every day.

When Cheryl brought up the idea of adopting a girl out of foster care, a girl who might fall into the trap I detailed above, I did not jump on board immediately. Not that I didn’t see the need. I just thought the adoption ship not only had sailed but also was circling the globe and would never stop by our port again. But the more Cheryl and I talked, the more adoption became not something we could do but something we should do.

We wouldn’t be adopting an infant but an older child who was about to enter a very formative period of her life. So we made ourselves available. That has kind of an Old Testament feel to it, like the prophet Isaiah answering the Lord’s “Whom shall I send?” with a “Here I am, send me.” Turns out we didn’t adopt a girl. We adopted two. Ashley, nine, and Allison, ten, were half sisters (same mom, different dads). They had bounced around half a dozen foster homes. There had been abuse in their past. They had learning disabilities. I would tell my friends that the girls didn’t have many possessions, but they had a lot of baggage. Unpacking it was difficult. We were trying to show them love. They were trying to trust that we were not going to be just another stop on the road. Early on there was this unforgettable exchange between Cheryl and Allison that spoke to the heart of the struggle.

I would love to spin a tale of how Allison and Ashley walked into their new home and were so overcome with gratitude, so thrilled with this new “forever” opportunity that their past quickly faded from memory and we all lived happily ever after. That would be a lie. It was so hard. I’ll be brutally honest here. Cheryl and I wondered if we had done the right thing, if we had overestimated our ability to parent a couple girls who had endured their life experience.

At times, the two of us had controlled, commonsense, matter-of-fact conversations about it. On one of those occasions, we were strolling through a sprawling local park and got so wrapped up in the discussion that we took a wrong turn and got . . . lost. It was a fitting metaphor for where we were mentally in that early stage after the adoption. After finding our way to a parking lot, we actually had to beg a ride from a woman who was backing out of a parking spot, and she drove us three miles to where we had left our car. Sometimes those conversations got heated, and we hated what those differences of opinion were doing to us as a couple. I was in Orlando one night when Cheryl called to tell me about the most recent incident of unacceptable behavior by one of the girls, and I was furious.

“This isn’t what either of us wanted, but I didn’t think this was about what we wanted but what we felt called to do.”

She was right. And that was a defining moment for us. We rediscovered our purpose in bringing these two young girls into our family. Rather than expending so much energy sparring over who had the better idea about how to raise them and how they were affecting us, we determined to simply focus on the girls and what would be best for their future, understanding and accepting that it would not be easy.

Allison and Ashley are in their teens now, and we still unpack their baggage from time to time. The truth is some of my bags have turned up too. The one labeled “patience” is pretty heavy. I had to pick the lock on the one called “understanding” so I could remember the background of these new Johnson girls. And I couldn’t quite remember the combination to that designer piece called “joy” until I realized that circumstances, difficulties, and roadblocks can’t steal joy. Turns out that bag wasn’t even locked—I just didn’t know how to open it. But I’m continuing to learn in a process that’s had blackberries and thorns. If it’s all right with you, I’ll just keep my focus on the blackberries.

I’ve never been a big car guy. I can drive ’em and wash ’em, and that’s about it. If somebody tells me about a ’63 “this” with a “whatever” engine, I don’t even know enough about it to be impressed. And forget about car repair of any type. Look, I’ve changed a few tires through the years and always proudly walked around the house with my grime-covered shirt, just hoping somebody would ask about it. “Oh, this? Yeah . . . I uh . . changed a tire on the van today. It was pretty tough. Those lug nuts were on there pretty good. But I got it done—myself. Phew, that tire changing . . . that’s no joke.”

Well, when you have a son like Michael, who has this Rain Man–type fixation with and memory about cars, you find yourself at the auto show in downtown Atlanta every year. I’m still not a car guy, but I’ve seen every new model for the last fifteen years in the course of a four-hour trip through the Georgia World Congress Center with Michael. That show is like a Christmas in April blackberry for him.

My buddy Phil Bollier, Michael’s high school basketball coach, obviously knows about his fascination with cars and for his eighteenth birthday thought it would be cool for him to take a ride in a convertible. So Phil arranged with a Ford dealership to borrow a Mustang for the afternoon. It took a little finagling with a portable lift system, but I was able to lower Michael into the front seat and strap him in. Maggie sat in the backseat shooting video, and we drove around for a half hour. This was a treat for Michael, who always rides in a van sitting in his wheelchair.

We came home, cut the cake, and popped the video in. You could hear the roar of the engine, see the wind whipping through Michael’s hair, and not help but see the huge smile on his face as he experienced something he hadn’t done since becoming wheelchair-bound six years earlier.

The story doesn’t end there. Cheryl is the financial wizard of our house. She has always known, down to the penny, our balance. The video of Michael in that convertible was pretty powerful. Cheryl bought that used Mustang, and here’s how she explained it: “There’s no way in the world I was going to see you guys share a moment like that just once. Ernie, we’re lucky, we’re blessed, we can afford it. I just had to do it.”

We’ve had that Mustang for ten years now, and every time I take it in for service, the technician is amazed at how few miles are on the odometer, and I tell him I drive it only on special occasions. Those are spring or fall days when the temperature is just right—when the sun won’t bake us or the wind won’t make us shiver. Even now with the ventilator Michael’s constant companion and the extra gear we need to bring along, I can still lower Michael into the passenger seat. I can still make him toss his head back and laugh when I fire up the engine. We’ll drive around for a few hours, play our music loud and sing off-key, and maybe swing by a friend’s house. It’s not the destination; it’s the journey. And those trips—well, just call me the driver who’s along for the ride.

I love Sunday dinner. It doesn’t matter what we’re having; it’s all about who we’re having over. For years, it’s been this way. It really started to become a “thing” when I discovered that my father-in-law, Lou Deluca, could fix anything. I don’t mean “fix” as in preparing dinner. I mean, he could fix whatever was broken in our house, and he has always been more than happy to display his skills while at the same time chuckling at my inability to master anything in the household repair realm. Oftentimes, he and my mother-in-law, Joan, would come over, and Lou would fix the vacuum, or repair a leaky faucet, or fix a toilet that wouldn’t stop running, and Cheryl and I would talk them into staying for dinner. Now it’s a Sunday night Johnson tradition, and Lou isn’t required to bring his toolbox.

When I was growing up in Milwaukee and later Atlanta, I rarely saw my grandparents. Thorwald and Inkie lived in Vermont, and Nenny and Koko were in California, so the opportunities were rare. I love the fact that my kids see their grandparents all the time, and Sunday dinner has become the perfect vehicle for nurturing that relationship and for reminding all of us that when you get right down to it, there’s nothing quite like family.

Aside from figuring out what we’ll cook, and it can range from burgers, to barbecued chicken, to Cheryl’s world-famous lasagna, there’s really no big plan that goes into those Sunday nights. No theme, no dress code, no script. There might be a ball game on TV, Lou might be watching an old Western, Cheryl and Joan might be comparing notes on what their vegetable gardens are producing, or we might be gathered around the fireplace on the back patio on a cool fall evening.

The kids and their spouses and their kids come over. It’s a four-generation celebration. Depending on how you read the calendar, it’s the greatest way either to end or to start the week. It’s always a tangible recognition of how blessed we are to have that group gathered around that table on that night, with every dinner preceded by a shared blessing. One at a time we take a moment to say what we’re thankful for, and we close with the refrain “Because God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.” And oh yeah, there’s Michael’s period on that sentence: “Amen. Eat now.”

Sometimes blackberries come when there is nobody around. They come in what seem to be those all-too-rare moments of solitude when you’re able to wander at least fifteen feet away from your phone without suffering text withdrawal. That probably isn’t an actual condition, but it wouldn’t surprise me if one of these nights we hear on the 6:00 news that it indeed is. And then, of course, there will be a drug for it and a sixty-second commercial used to sell it, with a frightening list of side effects that range from hair loss to unsightly rashes to night terrors. And, of course, there will be a warning that if you feel a need to read emails for four hours, see a doctor.

For me, that place of solitude can be as close as the backyard or as remote as a deserted beach at sunrise. In those moments, it’s just me and my camera. We have half a dozen bird feeders scattered around the backyard, a couple of those for hummingbirds, and there are birdhouses where every year we can watch wrens and eastern bluebirds build their nests and have their babies, and we’ve watched those young’uns try out their wings for the first time. I’ve taken thousands of pictures of baby birds screaming their heads off, craning their necks to get some food from Mom. I’ve captured that brilliant, indescribable shade of blue that marks the eastern bluebird and the vivid yellow of the goldfinch.

I’ve also sat patiently a few yards from a feeder filled with sugar water just waiting for a hummingbird to flash into view, hover for a second or two, and then vanish as quickly as it appeared. If you’ve ever been close enough not just to see but also to hear a hummingbird in flight, you know it’s pretty amazing. In times like that, I always find myself marveling at creation, and when I start going down that path, I’m often overcome with a deep feeling of gratitude. Granted, my family and I are a very small and very ordinary part of this huge, sprawling, limitless, and extraordinary creation, but hey, we’re a part of it! And membership brings the opportunity to sit and soak and rest in the knowledge that I’ve been blessed beyond recognition.

Speaking of being blessed, you know what I’ll always remember about the Hawaiian island of Kauai? They used to play the PGA Grand Slam of Golf there, and the company actually paid me to go and call the action. Two days of work in a weeklong stay. Grueling. From year to year, the season’s four major champions would make the trip and play thirty-six holes. So the likes of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III, and Ernie Els were regulars. That in itself made the event special, but what I’ll never forget is the sunrise.

There’s a cliff that juts out into Poipu Bay on Kauai. During the day, the more adventurous vacationers jump from it and make the long swim to shore. But I loved to visit that cliff before the sun came up. Again, just me and my camera. I would change lenses and angles as the sun slowly and elegantly made its daily appearance, and I swear I was looking at shades and hues that I don’t think actually have names. It was breathtaking, and it ushered me into that nebulous and wonderful space of gratitude again, where all I could manage was an “Alleluia.”

The show went on. I made the trek back down from the cliff to the beach and heard something I’d never heard before. As the tide leisurely made its way to shore, it washed over thousands of small rocks (nearly the size of a golf ball, I’d say). They were black or charcoal gray, not uniform in any way, with indentations and holes of various shapes. As the waters receded, these rocks moved in unison ever so slightly, clicking against each other, creating the most unique sound—low, rumbling, rich, and almost hypnotic. I later learned from a local that these were lava rocks and that perhaps one of the reasons for the unique sound was that some were more hollowed out than others. For a half hour I sat there mesmerized by this unscripted symphony. I still have one of those lava rocks sitting on my dresser as a reminder of that day, that sound, that Creator.

In April 2015, I was asked to speak at the YMCA of Atlanta Good Friday breakfast, a nondenominational event that had been held every year for the last fifty. I was invited to tell my “faith story” to a room of several hundred people. My schedule was tight that day. I needed to leave afterward and get to the airport for a flight to Indianapolis and the NCAA Final Four.

I called my speech “The Unscripted Life” and used a series of photographs: the Little League team where the original blackberry story took root, me and my dad, Cheryl in the Romanian orphanage with Michael, me hairless after chemo, Michael on Phil Bollier’s basketball team, a group shot of our six kids. I talked about “trusting God . . . period” and living in awe of how God orchestrates life and connects the dots in remarkable ways. And I told them about the marvelous gift Cheryl gave me one December day several years earlier. To mark my spiritual birthday one year, she gave me a compass, which was beautiful. But what made it so special was the handwritten note attached to it that simply said, “Remembering the day you found your direction.” I’ve told that story many times to many groups, and the moment when I show the compass and talk about that note—well, it’s always hard to get through, because the gesture just meant so much.

As the audience was dismissed, some hustled off to work, others stayed and mingled, and still others came toward my table. I had about thirty minutes before I needed to leave for the airport and spent that time meeting folks, taking pictures, and signing programs. I heard stories similar to mine from cancer survivors and adoptive parents, and I checked my watch to make sure I was still on schedule.

When I looked up, the man in front of me asked if I recognized him. I told him he’d have to help me, and he identified himself. For the purposes of this story, I’m just going to call him MD. When he said his name, I felt sick. We had not seen each other since seventh or eighth grade—about forty-five years. I had bullied MD back then—made fun of him, tried to goad him into a fight that he wanted no part of, and then punched him anyway. When I became a parent and lectured my kids about treating classmates the right way and never being the bully, I always knew I was a world-class hypocrite because of what I had done to MD. For years, it stuck in my mind, but I’d try to rationalize it with the age-old “boys will be boys” argument.

As we made small talk about our families and our jobs and where we lived, I felt an intense prompting to bring up that painful story from the past and to say I was sorry.

I tried to convince myself that MD probably didn’t even remember it, so there was no reason to go there, but as we were shaking hands and about to end this unscripted meeting, I couldn’t fight it any longer.

“MD, I need to be as absolutely transparent here as I can. A long time ago I treated you the wrong way. I was a bully, and it’s bothered me ever since. I don’t even know if you remember, but I had to say it.”

“No chance. So all I can do at this point, forty-five years later, is say I’m sorry and to ask if after all this time you can forgive me.”

It was the most amazing snapshot of God’s grace I could possibly imagine. There were still people waiting to speak with me, but now they stood watching these two men who hadn’t seen each other in ages hugging, tears in their eyes. On a day when I had told people to be on the lookout for blackberry moments, those times when you’re blown away by how God orchestrates life, here I was being absolutely floored by that very thing.

Can I leave you with something that I hope doesn’t sound too simplistic? I am fully aware that it probably will, but here goes.

It’s easy for me to say that when I consider I grew up with loving parents who were married longer than I’ve been alive and I have a beautiful wife of thirty-four years, great kids, a granddaughter, Katie, and a grandson, Ernest Everett, who love to be held by their grandfather, whom they call Poppy, which is what their parents called their grandfather. And hey, there are millions of guys out there who would trade jobs with me in a heartbeat. I mean, what’s not to love?

That includes facing every day the fact that Michael has a fatal disease, enduring those times when the thought of cancer coming back barges into my mind, having a question that only my dad can answer but having no way to ask him, and feeling like I’ve lost my touch as a parent because my words aren’t getting through and my patience is running on E.

Yep, even in those times when it’s depressing, scary, or frustrating, I wouldn’t change a thing.

I may be naïve but not naïve enough to believe in such a thing as a trouble-free life. We all have “stuff” to deal with, and the stuff our family has is different from the stuff yours has. And so your stories are going to have different twists and turns, and you’re going to have moments on mountaintops, and you’re going to spend what seems like an eternity in the valley. But for the most part, you’re going to be doing life somewhere in the middle, where if you’re not overly preoccupied with the goal of simply making it from this day to the next, you might notice for the first time blackberries ripe for the picking.

And you may notice that love and loss and hope and desperation and courage and understanding and sorrow and exhilaration and forgiveness all live there. And you may just find that they all seem to make more sense when you trust God . . . period.