I need to go see my granddaughter.

Yes, I know. You wonder, “How can such a young man already be a grandfather?!”

It is indeed a great mystery.

But I assure you, I am a grandfather. True to the breed, I affirm that, of any accolade or degree I’ve ever received, any title I’ve ever worn or expect to wear,  “grandfather” is hands down the one of which I am most proud.

I’ve been at this grandfather business for a little over a year now—long enough to know that grandchildren are like drugs. Grandparents can never get enough of them. No matter how often we get to keep little Brylan or be around her, no matter how many “fixes” I get, I just want more.

Amy called yesterday to say that our little prodigy has bumped on up into three-syllable words. Are you ready for this? That little beauty actually said, at the ripe old age of 14 months, “banana.” That seems appropriate, since the little girl has already caused four grandparents, some great-grandparents, and numerous uncles and an aunt, to go ape over her.

The news, too, is that Grandpa Randy has been christened “Poppee.” (We’ll have to wait for Brylan to start spelling in a couple of days before we’ll know exactly the spelling she has in mind.)

All of this indicates that I need to go see my granddaughter. This is a critical time. Brylan has no idea of her power. Now that she is on the verge, yea, verily, has already begun, the grandparent naming process, she will likely set the terms in concrete for many grandchildren to come. If I don’t get up there and kinda nudge things a bit, I could end up being “BoomPaw” or some such for the next several decades.

Ah, well. Whatever she chooses will be okay with me because that little lass is far better than okay with me. And we’ve recently learned that the little one Son #1 and Shayla, my favorite brunette daughter-in-law (Amy is my favorite blonde daughter-in-law), will bring into the world in July will be another little girl. Wow!

In his fine book The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis did not intend to disparage grandfathers when he wrote, “We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in Heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, ‘liked to see the young people enjoying themselves,’ and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, ‘a good time was had by all.’”

Lewis was saying that we all think we’d like to live in a universe “governed on such lines” where no one ever hurts. Clearly, that is not where we live.

But our Father, truly the wisest as well as the most loving of all, loves his children completely right now, right here, in this world in which we live, with a love that is deep and fierce and unfailing. Neither senile nor doting, our God absolutely loves and understands even ditzy grandfathers.