“You can’t do it without Jesus.”

You can’t do it without Jesus. That’s what the book said, or something like it, the small red one that my father had given me and the other members of my family of origin many years before, and which I was now huddled over beneath that tree in the “Garden of Eden” outside the Bank of Tampa.

“You can’t do it without Jesus.” Oh, how little they knew.

It was true, I found. The short man with the baseball cap with Christ’s name on the front proved it. He would have proved very handy, indeed. I could have climbed up and sat upon his shoulders to reach that branch, rather than shimmying my way up the trunk. Or, more hopefully, maybe he would have talked me out of it, or been so exasperated that someone was approaching him with this request that I, myself, would have been shocked into lucidity. But it was true, one way or another. You can’t do it without Jesus.

Nonetheless, I did climb that tree, perceived admonitions from the little red book be damned. I shimmied my way up, tied one end of my belt… Well, I will spare you the rest. For now.

But My Daily Life by Anthony J. Paone, S. J. was right. You can’t. And I didn’t. The “short man” with the Jesus cap entering the hospital as I left following my denied admittance wasn’t the reason why. Other things were. Many other things. But Jesus wasn’t one of them. Or isn’t.

But that’s the only way now. Maybe. We’ll see.

Or maybe not.

The only way is the way I took. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Maybe there is no other way. It is all pre-determined. But probably not.

I didn’t NEED to climb that tree, and wish I hadn’t. I wish I hadn’t been there in the first place, had completed my degree, and was somewhere else completely different right now. But I’m not. So, now, there is ONLY one way…

Forward.

But not on Jesus’s shoulders. I will find my own way. And then, maybe, I will find Him. Or, at least, myself, which is, really, the only thing that matters, anyway…

In the end. But at least it’s not beneath that tree outside the Bank of Tampa.

“Debts paid.”

You can’t do it without Jesus, indeed. And then some. Thank you.