It's Going To Be OK

​My great grandfather's name was Evans Elliott. He may be the coolest guy with the coolest name I ever got to meet. And not only meet, I was blessed to grow up with him right across the rural Ohio highway from the house I grew up in.

When I teach or do presentations on the developing brain, and talk about how much of the brain we have as adults was wired and built when we were kids, I always say I have a lot of wiring in me that sees the world as "everything's going to be okay."

For much of my life, I don't think I saw that as a God thing nearly as often as I saw it as an Evans Elliott thing.

I suppose a lot of that is because my great grandmother was a compulsive worrier; all Evans Elliott had to do was sit next to her and, relatively speaking, he'd be the calm in the storm.

But he is also a man who survived the great depression. In my eyes, though, he always seemed to have thrived it - not survived it.

This is a man who could reach deep inside a ewe and pull a lamb out like he was calmly pulling a candy bar out of a vending machine - me nearby wanting NOTHING to do with that candy bar - and moments later he'd sit there in the afterbirth covered straw feeding that lamb a bottle. Kind of like that's just how life goes.

I remember a couple of times vividly when the man, his cheek full of chewing tobacco, told me everything is going to be OK. And walked off as if he'd just revealed nothing more meaningful than the obvious.

I think more, though, I remember the feeling of everything's going to be OK that came with his presence.

The day he died, I leaned on an old steel gate that opened into the pasture where I often watched him feed sheep or drive a tractor off to tend to the nearby fields. In that moment, I knew if I ever had a boy, I'd name him Elliott.

14 years ago today, Elliott was born with - as the doctors put it - little more than a heartbeat. The doctor worked furiously to save him - collapsing his lung in the process.

In that moment - I remember saying the first prayer of my life. Oh, I'd said plenty of "our fathers" and "hail marys" and "the salvation prayer" and tons of scripted conversations with God we're taught or coerced into having over the years.

But this was a different kind of conversation. This was me and God and my own free will in the hall of a hospital that smelled too much like death to me. Without a script, the only words I could come up with were, "God, I have no idea what you're up to here. But I trust you. I trust that everything is going to be OK."

Looking back, I don't know if I was having a conversation with God or Evans Elliott or even if it matters. In the end I felt God saying I know you trust that. And it will be OK.

This past year I've had to lean on that conversation a lot. I've had to lean on that reminder a lot. That it's going to be OK.

I don't suppose there's a greater reminder on earth than looking at my 14 year old son - a deep thinker, compassionate, a crazy New York Giants fan - and a kid who doesn't seem to worry too much. A kid who always seems to walk around looking like it's all going to be OK.

Some days I watch him play ball and lament his lack of aggression - then I recall the gentle old man feeding that lamb.

I think along with a name, maybe Elliott inherited some wiring.

There are many days lately when I bow my head, just me and God and my own freewill, and I say, "God, I have no idea what you're up to here. But I trust you. I trust that everything is going to be OK."

And today, I add, "and I thank you God - for the kid who once had little more than a heartbeat - for the kid who many days keeps this heart of mine beating - beating with more belief than I've ever had - that everything is going to be OK."