Certificate of Authenticity

Yesterday I was scooting out of the boys' room, determined to get Camille in bed by 8:30.

I rounded the corner, turned back for the wet towel on the floor, hung it on the doorknob and only halfway listened as Jack went on about the Hank Aaron ball he basically cuddles at night. Didn't he understand I was in operation mode for Mission: Bedtime?

His question snapped me out of my hurry. "What does imperfect mean?"

It's not a word he knows to associate with a condition of life he's been increasingly learning since birth-- we all learn.

He undoubtedly knows imperfection, he just doesn't know to call it that.

That I turned back in the middle of my mission to help connect word with concept is truly a testament to how desperate I am to learn a little something myself. The little girl duckling follows me back to the foot of Jack's bed.

"Isn't it in-perfect. Like 'i' 'n' ?"

"No, it's 'i' 'm.' Im-perfect."

"Well, what is it?"

I see him pointing to his baseball's certificate of authenticity. "It means it isn't perfect. It has flaws."

"But it's real," he defends.

"Well of course it is, or you wouldn't have that certificate."

I surprise myself with the next bit and how deeply it resonates-- how I'm even making any sense because we're into baseball collectables territory and I'm very ignorant about most things sports and appraisal- related (here I make a note to pay less attention to the laundry and do more focusing on Pawn Stars during our nightly routine). Back to the thought that rested heavy.

"Don't fret over the label, though. Its imperfections give it its value."

We both think for a few seconds about the implications of that statement and the duckling chides, "Saaaadie."

It's bedtime, you might recall.

"Oh. Like these dents right here? And this scratch? Those are imperfections?"

"Yeah, those are from the ball getting hit-- without the hit it wouldn't be worth as much."

He completes the thought before I have the chance. "And perfect balls don't have any value because they haven't been played with." He's not using his interrogative inflection anymore because give a nine year old a bit of information to guide him in his ignorance and all of the sudden he's the expert and you're dismissed.

And if that dismissal wasn't sobering enough, then the quaint bedtime story with Camille about alligator-eating pythons surely did the trick.

I tucked them all in and tip-toed down the wooden stairs, thankful for 3 beating hearts in 3 cozy beds and the stillness of 9 p.m. on a school night. I perched myself on the couch to watch the Ranger game and got back to thinking of imperfect baseballs finding value and new life as prized possessions.

It's not fun to admit to flaws or enjoyable to take hits.

It's frustrating to think that even the best performance of the night-- the walk off grand slam in the bottom of the 11th-- will yield, in the end, a technically imperfect baseball.

Humbling, most of all, to accept that "perfect" has no value.

"On hearing this, Jesus said to them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'" (Mark 2:17)

To the bruised (yes, even those struck from impossibly good performance)-- those willing to live with faults exposed in shadowbox, with admitted lack of face value, with the technical label of imperfect-- He stands ready with certificate of authenticity, with the worth of redemption, and with love enough to transform scuffed leather into prized possession.

Thank you, Lord.