We Are All Near Misses

When I hold our newborn son, Griffin, I tell him, “I’m glad you’re here.”

I don’t know what else to say—it just comes out. Like a reflex, like an exhale, just from being close to him. And every time I say it, I start to cry. Sometimes the tears make it all the way to my eyes, but sometimes they just wiggle in my throat, staying caught there for a moment.

It’s such a beautiful and difficult thing to say.

It’s beautiful because it means something like, “Your mere presence with me is enough to bring me joy. You don’t need to be anything or do anything—you are here, and that alone brings me comfort and happiness. I love you exactly as you are.”

But it’s also difficult. Difficult because it reveals something raw in us. Because it also means, “I was, and can often feel, lonely. I was whole before you, but I was missing something. And now that you’re here, I am better than I was.”

The beauty and the difficulty of “I’m glad you’re here” both come from a place of longing.

It chokes me up every time. When I say it to my kids, or my wife. Even to our dog, or to my plants as I sing and talk to them while in our vegetable garden.

If I say it, I mean it. And when I mean it, it hits something deep and tender.

I understand why this phrase opens, but also rattles, my soul better now. Because when I say “I’m glad you’re here” to Griffin, I know in the sinews of my muscle that he may not have been.

We were lucky. When he was born accidentally at home because of Robyn’s disorientingly fast labor, there were no complications. No umbilical cord tied around his neck. No fluid in his lungs needing to be pumped out.

Had anything gone wrong, I would’ve been trying to save his life with a spatula and a pair of kitchen shears until the ambulance arrived. I thank God regularly that I didn’t have to try.

Griffin, truly, was a near miss. God rushed the process, but He cut us a break. Griffin is here. And every day, when I tell him, “I’m glad you’re here,” I feel the weight of that truth—he very easily might not have been.

And I feel it, too, when I look at my wife, Robyn. When I remember that she, too, had a near miss. She could have bled out delivering Griffin, right there on our family room floor. Instead, she was holding him in front of the fireplace, both of us the beneficiaries of a not-so-small mercy.

Near misses.

And as I traced this thought further, I realized—we are all near misses.

Some are dramatic, life-or-death moments. Others, like mine, are quieter, only revealing themselves in hindsight.

The week before COVID really broke open, I would’ve attended a community event with my old colleagues at the Detroit Police Department, but I had to travel out of town for a wedding. Turns out, it was a super spreader event, before we even had that term in our lexicon. I may not have died, but who knows what it would’ve been like to contract COVID before we knew how serious it was, with a three-month-old baby at home. Near miss.

A friend of mine was born two months early, in a town with only basic medical facilities. Even her family elders doubted she’d survive. But she’s here. Another near miss.

Almost all of us have been close to these moments, whether it was the car that almost swiped us on the freeway, the stairs we almost fell down, or the hard candy we almost choked on. And those are just the near misses we know about.

And that’s when it hit me: every single person I encounter—every stranger, every friend, every difficult person—was a near miss, too.

At some point, they almost weren’t here.

There was a homily at Mass once that sticks with me. I don’t remember what the Gospel reading was that day, but the point stuck—try to see someone as God sees them.

And maybe one way to do that is to remember: no matter who they are, no matter how annoying or rude the person in front of me is, there was some moment in time when they almost didn’t make it.

It’s easy to offer grace to someone who just survived a life-threatening event. We instinctively soften, give them space, recognize the weight of what they just went through.

But what I realized today—when I was trying to understand why a four-word sentence brings me to tears—is that everyone has brushed past death at some point.

Everyone has almost not been here.

Which means I can have a little more grace than I do sometimes.

So today, I’m trying, even for the random guy at the grocery store who tried to punk me by swiping a box of tea out of my cart while his friend very inconspicuously filmed it.

Because even though I may need a nudge to remember it sometimes—

I’m glad they’re here.

And maybe, just maybe, they’re glad I’m here, too.