Toby Goodshank Original Art 2025

Life with Chicken and Broccoli

Tag: jesus

  • Before He Spoke His First Word

    Before He Spoke His First Word

    James gave his middle school graduation closing remarks last night. His topic was “Being the Change You Want to See.”

    I thought he was going to be the only student speaker, but there were two others, the president and vice president of the Student Council. The president is also the class valedictorian and has many other accolades. She gave a very good speech. The vice president followed with a speech about kindness, which was very similar to my son’s.

    Fortunately, there was some time between their speeches and James’s because my wife and I were poking and nudging each other every time we heard another similarity.

    To begin, I was proud of my son before he spoke his first word.

    He had to sit on the dais in front of the entire school, his classmates, and all the parents seated along the wings. It would have been daunting for anyone, and I felt every bit of it for him. It was as though I had to give the speech myself. My stomach was a jelly roll of chum being tossed around at high tide.

    He also had to wait until nearly the end of the ceremony to deliver his remarks. Our family sat in anxious anticipation, eagerly following each part of the program until we finally reached his speech.

    James stood up before he was even introduced and walked to the podium. His principal announced him and his topic. James stepped back for a moment, looked over toward us, and gave us a big smile. We gave him a loud round of applause before he had even spoken, and then quietly sank into our stadium seats.

    He began, and it was smooth and effortless.

    He did all the little things I remembered learning in my college public-speaking class. He took his time, spoke slowly, enunciated clearly, looked up and made eye contact, emphasized the key points, and delivered his speech with the confidence and poise of a true leader.

    As I watched him, I was overwhelmed with love and pride. It was overflowing out of me. I had to quickly turn my thoughts toward almost anything else just to control the flood of emotion and keep the tears from streaming down my face.

    It all felt surreal. For a moment, it no longer felt as though I was watching my son give an eighth-grade speech. It felt more like I was watching a statesman deliver a campaign address. I know that sounds like the rambling of a delusional father who is hopelessly lost in admiration for his own son, but I am sorry to report that I am not exaggerating. 😊

    The speech was only about two minutes and forty-five seconds long, but we hung on every word.

    When he finished, he left the stage to thunderous applause, especially from his family cheering section. I was relieved for him that it was over, but more than anything, I could not wait to hug and squeeze him afterward and tell him that he had exceeded every expectation we had and that we were beyond proud of him.

    His speech was about being the change you want to see. What he may not realize yet is that, by having the courage to stand in front of that crowd and speak from his heart, he was already living out his own message.

    I was proud of him before he ever spoke his first word. Last night, I was simply fortunate enough to hear the young man he has become speak them.

  • The Greek Experience, Danbury, CT

    The Greek Experience, Danbury, CT

    According to 23andMe, I am around 14 percent Greek. I’m from a small fishing village, like my cousin Balki. The number keeps changing as more and more people spit into tubes and send them away.

    Growing up, my father’s side was Greek. It was also the only side of the family that really made it over here, so we were Greek in a big way. Greek culture is family and food, and there is no real separation between the two. It was my inherited and adopted nationality, besides being first and always a proud American.

    Since my parents passed, I have been one giant bag of feelings, sentiment, emotion, and nostalgia.

    My father kindly accepted my mother’s Lutheran religion, and that was how their boys were brought up. To be fair, there wasn’t a Greek Orthodox church in the area when we were growing up. My parents were also always on the late side. We were lucky to make the Sunday service in Newtown. There is no way my mother would have handled the tour de force of Orthodox Christianity—hours of standing and prayer, a good deal of it in Greek.

    But after attending the funerals of my Yia Yia and my Aunt Mary, my mother became convinced that the Greek Orthodox Church was for her.

    She wanted to be known. She wanted her eulogy to be given by someone who knew her and cared about her. Father Peter was her man, whether he knew it or not.

    My father was very happy to be going back home.

    I can only imagine the questions and questions my mother asked Father Peter as she went through the catechumenate and was finally chrismated into the faith. He literally needed the patience of a saint.

    I think of 1 Corinthians 13:12:

    “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

    That verse has taken on a new meaning for me as a father, looking back while my daughter is graduating from high school and my son is graduating from middle school.

    The love that pours out of a father for his son and daughter is almost impossible to explain. Recently, I found myself thinking about how differently that love is experienced on each side. A parent carries the whole history—the years, the worry, the sacrifices, the ordinary days that somehow become sacred when you look back on them. A child is simply living inside it.

    For a moment, that realization made me melancholy. Not because the love was not returned, but because it could never be fully understood in the same way. They could not see it from where I was standing, just as I could not fully see the love of my own parents while they were still here.

    Then I thought again about the verse and realized that we are never going to be fully known down here. We can’t be. Maybe it is a mistake to expect another person to understand every part of the love we carry for them.

    But the desire itself is true. We want to be fully loved. We want to be known and loved in all the strange and particular ways that each individual person needs love.

    It became another lightbulb moment about God. Maybe the question is not simply whether we love God, but whether we will allow ourselves to be loved by Him. Jesus asks the crippled man if he wants to be healed. Love does not force itself upon us. It asks to be accepted.

    I am extremely grateful to Father Peter and Father Nikolas for their love and kindness when my parents passed. They took the time to know them, and that gave me peace. In those moments, the garments of the Christian faith began to mean something different to me. Worn honestly, they represented men trying to place their trust in love and allow it to guide them.

    All of this, and what about the Greek Experience?

    To understand the festival, I think you have to understand the Greek instinct to work together, feed everyone, support the church, and somehow enjoy the chaos of doing all four at the same time.

    And then there is the food.

    The food is pretty amazing. How could it not be when you have all the Greeks who run the diners and food businesses in the area working together.

    I know the McDonald brothers and Ray Kroc developed the modern quick-service restaurant model, but I have no doubt they were divinely inspired after watching Greeks run a church festival somewhere in California.

    That is what my father loved about it. Not just the gyros and all the great food, although he certainly loved the gyros. He loved the work, the organization, and the people stepping in wherever they were needed. To him, faith was not only something spoken about on Sunday morning. It was something built, cooked, served, cleaned up, and then done all over again the next year.

    For me, the festival is impossible to separate from my parents. It reminds me of my father being proud of his Greekness, my mother asking Father Peter enough questions to test the patience of heaven, and all the strange ways that funerals, faith, food, and laughter become tied together. It also reminds me of all the people we loved who are no longer standing beside us in line.

    So I sat there eating a gyro, looking at the icons, watching everyone work, and thinking about my father.

    For a little while, he did not feel very far away.

    That is a pretty amazing experience for someone who is 14 percent Greek.

  • The Miracles I Can Hold

    The Miracles I Can Hold

    Feeling pretty amazing the other day, I was reading my Bible outside in the setting sun. It was an amazing late spring day. The weather was practically perfect for reading, for being outside, for just sitting still for a little while. I lit my small propane fire pit and took breaks from reading to look around.

    I watched the trees sway in the wind and thought about how absolutely beautiful any place on earth can be. My backyard is not perfectly manicured. There are oddball trees with diseases and vines, survivors of so many little storms. Some are hunched over in different directions from strong winds and microbursts. Yet it was still all beautiful. It still filled me with reverence and awe.

    I looked up to the sky, and it was even more beautiful. The clouds were spread across the sky as the wind rolled them forward, almost like an old television toy where the screen moved by turning a knob in the back. The moon was already present, adding another layer of wonder.

    Then, like Icarus, I asked for more.

    Feeling good, feeling grateful, I wanted something more. I asked God for a miracle in the clouds. I wanted to be able to see heaven, to see something beyond what was already in front of me. I wanted to see my parents, to know for certain that they were waiting for me. Just a little something. Something that should not be there.

    I stared for a long time, hoping and waiting for a sign, for an angel gleaming in the clouds, for some clear answer from above.

    And for a moment, I was disappointed when nothing happened. It almost tilted my faith on the scale, like an added weight that pulled my soul downward. I took a long, deep breath and returned to my reading.

    Then the next day, I was reminded of something that is never far from my mind. I already have so many amazing miracles. The health of my body. The health of my mind. My beautiful wife, our love, and my family. My children, my daughter and my son, who have my whole heart.

    After all the meandering, all the what ifs, all the wondering about which way life could have gone, I look at them and remember that this was always the right path. Somehow, God blessed me with more than I deserved. He placed these amazing souls in my care, and that alone is more miracle than I can fully understand.

    Maybe that is the grace of Jesus, being handed a life so beautiful that you know you could never have earned it on your own.

    Later that day, I put on YouTube and watched a video about Padre Pio, a blessed saint who had constant miracles happening to him and around him. When I saw what he had to endure, and the depth of faith that was required of him, I felt something I did not expect.

    I felt relieved that I did not see anything in the clouds.

    I was relieved that my journey is not his journey. I am not ready for those kinds of miracles. I am not ready for that kind of burden. And maybe that was the answer. God, in His mercy, gave me exactly what I needed by not giving me what I asked for.

    I asked to see heaven in the clouds, but maybe heaven was already there in the quiet. In the trees. In the fire. In the breeze. In the moon hanging above me before night had fully arrived. In my wife. In my children. In the ordinary life I sometimes forget is overflowing with mercy and love.

    So I am thankful. Thankful for the miracles I can hold. Thankful for the ones I can live with. Thankful for the quiet answers God gives, even when I am still learning how to see them clearly.

  • The Phantom Limb of Love

    The Phantom Limb of Love

    We are coming up on the anniversary of my mom’s passing, two years ago. It is less about the day itself and more about the slow remembering of her life as the date approaches. The weight grows a little heavier each day. The gravity of it becomes more present.

    I still miss her every day. There are moments when I forget she is gone. I will think of something and instinctively reach for my phone to call her and share it, only to remember a second later that I cannot.

    It is a strange feeling, like the phantom limb phenomenon. Except the missing piece is a large part of my heart, and sometimes my brain forgets to tell the rest of me that it is gone.

    Today I cashed in my Barnes and Noble rewards. Buying books with my mom was something special we shared growing up. Early on I was a terrible reader because of a hearing issue that had been missed. Later, when that was resolved and I committed to getting better, I fell in love with reading.

    My mother, as all good mothers do, fueled that fire.

    We would go to bookstores and pick out fantasy novels together. A father might say, “Why are you reading that nonsense?” But a mother knows better. My son was reading. Whatever he was reading was wonderful. She was proud of me.

    Those trips were usually part of a larger kind of day. The kind where we would run errands together, grab lunch, and she would buy me a small gift somewhere along the way. Simple days. Nothing extraordinary on the surface. Yet those memories remain etched deeply in my mind. I hold them now with a deep sense of gratitude.

    In the end we are still little children at heart. I can buy almost anything now, any material object I want. But none of it fills this space. The tears come from the heart and from a beautiful love remembered.

    Sometimes I think about the movie AI. The robot who just wanted one last perfect day with his mother. One day of being loved unconditionally by the only person who could give him that love. The quiet perfection of peace in a mother’s arms. The way she would look down at you with that expression of pure love.

    That joy.

    I think of the words of Jesus: so that you may have joy, and that your joy may be complete.

    Jesus promised that we would not be left alone. He said that when he left, he would send the Holy Spirit, described as the Comforter, the Advocate, and the Spirit of truth. That presence has always felt a little like a mother to me.

    All is not lost. Even though I am fully here in this world, I can also feel the almost imperceptible release of weight being removed from the scale of life. And yet I trust that death is not the end.

    I look forward to seeing her again someday.

    And to that embrace.

  • Death of Charlie Kirk

    Death of Charlie Kirk

    In American History X, Edward Furlong’s character says, “It’s always good to end a paper with a quote. He says someone else has already said it best. So if you can’t top it, steal from them and go out strong.”

    That line led me to think of Michael Scott in The Office when he says, “Well, this is gonna hurt like a motherfucker.”

    The visceral feel of a deep hurt encapsulated my entire being. I wasn’t able to do much yesterday after I heard the initial news. I had to go to a meeting and when I returned home, I learned that he had succumbed to his injuries and died.

    I saw the actual shot, which a reporter described as something you would see if they had created a movie about an assassination—the textbook image of a kill shot.

    And just like the uncontrolled flow of blood from his neck, my body lost its ability to cope and I wept. Tears poured gently down my face.

    My family was understanding, but not completely. They couldn’t fully grasp why their father was so deeply hurt, affected, and cut by this tragedy.

    I’ve had to sit down and think about why this death has shaken me so greatly. I was a fan of Charlie Kirk. I appreciated his viewpoint, his faith, his fortitude, and his courage to debate. How many of us, when we hold a viewpoint, say nothing? How many of us cower in fear of the mob, of loss, of financial blowback that could threaten our livelihoods?

    He was a real-life Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties: the young upstart who believed in Ronald Reagan, freedom, capitalism, American greatness, and a great big beautiful tomorrow.

    When I went on social media, I saw another side: people who were happy, joyous, even celebrating. The chickens coming home to roost. The gleeful nods of those who felt that a cosmic wave of justice had delivered its just desserts.

    It reminded me of another quote from Goodfellas. Before Joe Pesci’s character shoots Spider, he’s mocked and someone asks, “What is the world coming to?” After shooting him dead, he answers chillingly, “That’s what the fuck the world is coming to.”

    That’s where we are now. We are not able to communicate. We are tribal. We are animals. We objectify, dehumanize, and then kill one another.

    Charlie knew how dangerous a lack of dialogue could be. He once said, “When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts. When marriages stop talking, divorce happens. When civilization stops talking, civil war ensues.”

    He made his life about speaking up and speaking out. Going to campuses and engaging the youth of America in dialogue and debate.

    He had a viewpoint and an opinion.

    It’s not just that he was killed—that cut deeply enough. It was the absolute joy people expressed in his death. The frenzied glee of those salivating at the demise of a human being, of a husband and father.

    Social media is filled with one-line justifications for any heinous act. The excuses for their jubilation were absurd: Didn’t he say this? Didn’t he support that? And the most damning, his statement:

    “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

    Yes, he did say that freedom has a cost—a cost that he ironically had to pay himself.

    But where is the humanity? Where is the empathy? Why can’t we accept that people can hold different opinions? Why not ask why they believe what they believe instead of screaming at them, hitting them, or murdering them?

    I am angry. Angry because I can’t fully articulate. I am tired of being reasonable and level-headed. Inside there is just a monster of pure emotion, rage searching for release. Take a breath, you know better.

    Justice? There is no justice. Not because someone won’t be caught, punished, or even executed. There is no justice because you cannot undo what has been done. You cannot bring this young man back. His wife and kids will never see their father or feel his embrace again. He cannot be replaced with like kind or quality. He was special, unique, one of a kind. President Trump called him “even Legendary, Charlie Kirk.” And we know that legends never die.

    When asked on a podcast how he wanted to be remembered, Charlie responded:

    “I wanna be remembered for courage, for my faith. That would be the most important thing. The most important thing is my faith in my life.”

    So now, as a new day begins, we still feel the loss. The tears still come. But I also feel the weight of his words. In the final scene of Spartacus, as the hero is silenced on the cross, his men stand and shout, “I’m Spartacus!” They refuse to let his mission die with him.

    Maybe the way forward is not just to grieve his death, but to take up that mission. If Charlie’s voice is silenced, then ours must grow louder.

    I am Charlie Kirk.