I started thinking, as I often do, about a ghost, how did it get there? Really it is more of a shadow. The only real substance is that which I gave it in my mind, but it is there, I put it there.
When I was a little boy, it followed me. I remember nights when it would touch my neck and speak to me and the hair on my neck would literally go up and I would shiver. I began to move a little faster and work a little harder in the hopes that time and space would work their magic increase the distance between us. It never did. The specter was huge and I knew it was bigger than me, and if it wanted to, it could overshadow me and I would be insignificant.
Don’t think for a moment I care if I am significant. That is really irrelevant. The issue is this, the ghost was significant. The shadow was looming over me. I put it there.
Day after day, it would be there, it wasn’t mean, or angry, it was there. It helped me it punished me, and it comforted me. Every memory included it. Every thought was possessed by it. It was there, I put there.
I worked hard, I struggled with the things around me. Sometimes I would do things and I would make choices and the shadow would be there, it would say things and instruct me. I would be angry and yell at it. I wanted it to go away, I thought “I can’t see past you, move, let me see!” and it would move but it was there, I put it there.
I knew, I really knew, that it was there for me, the shadow was there for me and wanted me to see, to really see. It would stand with me in my success and in my error. Not like so many others who stood with me in my success, shoulder to shoulder, and in my error or in my weakness they fled like cowards. But not the shadow, it never left me.
Later in life people began to say, ”Hey you’re like that shadow.” No, I would say, I am not like that. I am me, I could never be like the shadow. Have you really seen the shadow, have you really felt the shadow? I don’t think so. I have heard it speak for 46 years, I have taken instruction from it, it has fed me. You have no idea how big it is, you don’t understand that I could never be like that shadow.
I have three boys, they're so great. I love each one of them for different reason. They are huge, they have substance that was put there by someone greater than me, partly the by the shadow, partly by me, mostly by the Great King.
They have character. They don’t think so, but they have such character. To each of them, they are all still dressed in old hand-me-down overalls and sandals. They are small and when I speak the hair on the back of their necks stand up, and they shiver.
They can’t see past me, they need to know I’ve moved. I’m small, I can’t even cast a shadow in full sunlight, but I’m there, they put me there.
