I ran into the house with tears rolling down my face, and my mom yelled to ask what was wrong.
“A bee stung me,” I said as I sat at our round oak kitchen table, my arm laying there and my
feet wanting to touch the floor. I watched her mix up the baking soda and water in a little
glass bowl. As she rubbed the paste on the bee sting, she said, “Give it some time
and it will stop hurting.” I asked, “How much time?” She kindly replied, “Only God knows
how much time.” I asked her why it stung me, and she told me, “The bee was just doing his job.”
I asked, “What’s my job?” She smiled and said, “To be a kid.”

When I recall that day, my world back then was black and white. There was not much color in
my life, I was born onto a clean white canvas. There was no physical or emotional pain, just a
kid in a world surrounded by trees. I followed in the footsteps of my father, trying to fill his steel
toed work boots. I internalized the gentle hands of my mother as she kissed the physical
superficial wounds I would endure. The bee sting was just life being life, and it never touched
my canvas.

I continued on with my job of being a kid. There were talks from the man with steel toed
work boots and the gentle hands of that woman about a “thing” called evil. I never saw that
thing called evil from our small, modest farm, but I understood it was out there. As I grew, I
traveled down the creek from our farm and found new trees to climb. My dog stayed by my side
as we explored the surrounding properties.

By the time I was twenty-one my canvas was still pretty clean. There were a few droplets from a
relationship that did not work out at the time, and my dog buried in our front yard. I put on my
father’s old backpack and left that modest farm, driving past the concrete statue that marks the
hole I dug for my loyal dog. I traveled far and wide, and entered into a world that was stained with evil.Those talks from the man with steel toed work boots and the woman with gentle hands did their best to protect my canvas, but I could feel my soul slipping away.

A few days before my twenty fourth birthday, I sat at a kitchen table in the center of evil. I had done nothing wrong, but somehow evil found cracks in my soul and painted away the memories of my innocence. I sat at that table and poured my soul onto paper as if I were writing to God or anyone that would listen. I could feel the beast in me. After four hours of writing, I concluded that I was not the beast. I sorted through the layers of darkness like the times I would dig through the leaves to find the earth. I knelt there with the soil at my fingertips as if I was going to find hope. I looked for my dog, but she was gone. As the words poured from my soul, I realized I had to confront the beast in order to have peace. I stood up from that kitchen table and the baking soda paste was gone, but I could feel that memory trying to grab the paint brush and cleanse my canvas of the stains. I could hear the gentle words, “Only God knows how much time.” That was the first time I recall confronting the beast.

I sat at a kitchen table with a mom and two teenage boys who tragically lost their husband/dad in
front of their eyes. I have been sitting at their table for two years now. I’ve never pushed or asked for any details about that night. I look across the table at the oldest son who is fifteen and say,
“Whatever you are doing, it’s not working. You have to confront the beast.” He responds
with watery eyes, “What if you have more than one beast?” I tell him, “Son, I’m fifty-five years old and I have lost count of how many beasts I have had to confront.” Then, the earth opened in front of us, and we all talked about that night and the beasts in us.

I just walked past the grave I dug many years ago, and I can still feel the
droplet of blood landing on my clean canvas. I climb this tree and sit on my perch
in the hope of finding peace and the smell of fresh earth. The man with the steel toed work boots is
gone, but I keep a pair of his boots to remind me of my innocence. The woman with the
baking soda paste still has gentle hands, but now she has even more faith in God’s time.
It’s important to understand that the beast will find its way into the cracks of our soul. We
attempt to fill those cracks with anything to stop the beast from entering. But in reality, our best
choice is to confront the beast. We need to understand that part of life is getting a few droplets on
our clean canvas, but a soaked canvas is nothing more than a playground for the beast.
I sit here this early morning, once again my world is black and white, and I’m doing my job of being
a kid.

It’s hard to internalize why some of us are introduced to a life of color sooner than others. Why
some of us enter the clean canvas of life with a flood of pain etching across our canvas. Those of us
that are spared just stand there, not knowing what to say or do to help them clean their canvas.
Our job as humans is to help others find the soil they need to grow. That growth occurs when we
climb from the world of color back to the world of black and white. When we confront the
beast, we can go back to the job of being a kid. There are times we need help returning
to that world of black and white. It’s those times we need steel toed work boots and gentle
hands to show us the way.

That 15-year-old boy is now seeing the world in black and white, even on a soccer field with neon
colors. As the ball rolls across the ground, he is back to his job of being a kid with a clean
canvas. While he moves across the field, there is no score on the board. And as for time, only
God knows that.