God is always here

I woke up one morning last week to my car wrapped in toilet paper and with shaving cream all over it. The "nice" thing was that the shaving cream spelled out encouraging things like "Man of God, God loves you," and "Man among wolves." So I had to make a visit to the car wash thanks to the midnight visit from some of the men (wolves-not that I'm naming names ROCKY & PORTILLO) in our young adult community.

The cool thing is God gave me a cool experience at the car wash. I took my daughter with me and it was a little scary for her. Those gas station car washes have those machines that you drive into and it goes back and forth washing, rinsing, and drying, etc. They can be loud and for a little almost two-year old, they can be scary. She was in the back seat saying, "Hold you, Papa." (Her words for: Hold me!). Since I couldn't get out of the car and go back there I just reached my hand back, cupped her cheek, and said, "Papa's here, I'll protect you." And for the whole five minutes she rested her head in my hand. It was so perfectly sweet. Her eyes darted back and forth watching the water pound the windows while I reminded her of my love and presence and in that moment God reminded me that's exactly what he does with me, even when I don't see him. He's always here.