These are the moments when a parent's heart melts just a little. Between normal conflicts children have over toy ownership, using crayons on someone else's homework, songs being sung too many times, and a dozen other issues we occasionally have little moments where we catch a glimpse of parental heaven. Whenever your children find displaying the love of friendship (filia) for the fate of their siblings, you know something you are doing worked to get God's message through to your charges for at least a moment.

If our parental hearts melt in joy with a moment like this, I can only imagine the joy in heaven when one of us reaches sainthood to go beyond the gates into heaven. Angels of all types singing, saints of old grinning and reaching for our hand, and a parental smile on Christ after passing the test of our final judgement might be amongst the sights and sounds we'd see. Oh the glories of such thought!

Well for five minutes I saw my parental heaven walking before me again...I hope we all get to enjoy it in heaven as well!

-ehw