Sometimes you go the extra mile expecting a reward at the end. Sometimes you go expecting to be flogged for lagging behind and not carrying the load you’ve been compelled to carry at all due speed. Sometimes you just go, expecting nothing.

Sometimes you wake up unemployed for the third week in a row and it’s 4:00 in the morning and you’re hurting from kidney stones and you get up because you can’t sleep and work on New Wineskins templates because you’re not happy with them and you take your 12-year-old son to school like usual at 7:30 and finally get some relief from the kidney stones about 2:00 p.m. long enough to take a nap which lasts ten minutes when the daughter of your wife’s beloved secretary calls to re-invite you to her mom’s surprise birthday party which has been moved up a week to tomorrow and you agree on your wife’s behalf to attend with the children at a ritzy-posh downtown luxury hotel because you can’t reach your wife while she’s preparing to lead a women’s retreat later in the day on the topic of forgiveness which will last until noon-thirty tomorrow then you pick up your kids from school an hour later and agree to let your 9-year-old daughter host her boisy-noisterous friend for an all-night sleepover and after you pick up a gift card at ToysRUs and feed all the kids at two different drive-throughs you drop off your son at an all-nighter birthday party at the church building while your wife is at her all-nighter retreat with 150 other women and your daughter hugs you tigher than you have ever been hugged before not knowing that your kidneys hurt like the very tortures of hell and she looks up at you with her huge brown eyes and grins “You’re the best daddy in the whole wide world!”

And you believe her because she’s right and you went the extra mile expecting nothing and you find yourself smiling sleepily-dreamily right back at her.

It doesn’t happen too often.

But sometimes.