View from the Prairie Box

“Play is the work of the child.”

Maria Montessori, Fred Rogers, and Sigmund Freud have all been credited with saying that statement. I’m going to agree with those three and go a little further: play is the work of everyone.

We need to play. Children need to play most of all.

I have a kid who is playing with… give me a sec… paint… still need another deep breath… on our dining room table. Without a safety net. This kid is almost a full grown adult and as such she disagrees with her mother quite frequently. It’s all very developmentally appropriate and yet. And yet she is painting on the table without any table protection.

I don’t know when I turned into such a Type A person. No wait, I know. It’s when I became responsible for all of the messes!

“Play is the work of the child.”

“And the adult.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go do something to distract the inevitable paint-filled mess that is my kitchen.

I am inspired by women around me.

I watch my friends–in every stage of life–and see them thriving in the various places God has allowed them to be in. From academia, to the workforce, to living rooms and beyond, I see them flourishing and bringing light to their corners of this world.

My 2021 is dedicated to them. May these women continue to shine brightly, to enrich, to plant and to toil, to redeem the spaces around them. I see you and I honor you this year!

In the very next breath I will admit that 2020 taught me how to rest in a new, deeper, life-giving way.

So while I tackle this year’s December Photo Project, I do it with my own limitations and needs in mind. I will be shooting every day and posting the images when I can. I am not holding myself to the strict standards I’ve enjoyed so greatly in the past because I choose not to this year. I choose rest at night when my brain has gone still and my eyelids are heavy and doing one more thing is no longer a good thing. I choose my family on weekends where we get rejuvenated by staying in our comfy clothes all day long, by staying close to home, by staying quieter and perhaps reading a book.

Photography is precious to me, so I will press on! But I press on with my own welfare in mind. Blessings to you all this Christmas season. May you find joy in your work and in your rest.

At the start of one of his songs Rich Mullins says, “I am barely ready for this.” I figure I’m in good company if I’m quoting Rich Mullins.

I am barely ready for this.

But let’s do it anyway. You can find instructions to signup here. DPP 2021!

My soapy hands dip into the giant sink, reaching for the bloated raspberries now gathered in the drain. Not my raspberries. They’re intermingling with rice and globs of who-knows-what in our school kitchen, remnants of someone’s lunch leftovers, perhaps accidentally dropped in this sink with no disposal. The movements are so familiar, this cleaning of a mess that I didn’t make but I’m responsible for. Some things require a grit and determination to not be ridiculous. Just grab it, chuck it, and keep wiping down surfaces.

I grew up on stories of my dad and his siblings cleaning Covenant College while being students. I always think of my Aunt Ruthie, 70’s skirt folded a little higher than it should be at a Christian college, mixing bleach with ammonia and having to jump out a window to escape the fumes. Don’t tell me if that story isn’t accurate—it’s my favorite and I like every detail of it. I was a second-generation Lawton cleaning at Covenant College. Part of my work-study responsibilities included cleaning the campus diner (The Blink), as well as the bathroom next to it. My parents raised us kids to do chores, so its not like I was unfamiliar with getting up close and personal to the nastiness of humanity, but this was my first real experience of cleaning up other people’s grossness and it’s where I learned that you just have to separate your mind from your body and get it done. Another trick is learning to breath through your mouth. I’m an exceptional mouth-breather when it comes to anything that might possibly stink. This includes—but is not limited to—cutting toenails, applying a bandaid, dealing with dirty hair, and picking up dog poop. Mouth-breathing, a genius move taught to me by my nurse parents. 

At Covenant College I remember being annoyed by my fellow students who couldn’t figure out how to clean up the Blink microwave after splashing food all over the inside. (A self-righteous indignation if ever there was one as I don’t remember ever cleaning out the microwave in my house growing up.) I was in charge of making sure other students did their own work-study hours, which perhaps set me up as a manager as a tender age. It was good training for what was to come next. I got married to my love and moved to Covenant Seminary, still working on campus, but also attending college down the street at MoBap. At seminary the real work began. I quickly stepped into my role as Guest Services Director and marveled at how red my pale face became and  how frizzy my brown hair grew as I joined my Japanese and Filipino seminary wife-students-friends in cleaning all the guest rooms on campus. We accomplished some hard work during our turnover hours, and cleaned up after many many guests. My least favorite cleaning jobs involved the Doctorate of Ministry students who came to campus for about a week at a time. The “Dmins” were just that in my opinion and I lumped them in as a bunch of men who were used to their wives cleaning up after them, not considering the guest services crew who had to do the final clean up. It was hard work, but it was a genuine testing ground for learning, being humbled, and figuring out service roles that were indeed absolutely essential to kingdom work. I also memorized the Christian talk radio schedule and found a lot of spiritual encouragement while washing loads of laundry and folding those vexing fitted sheets. 

I learned that when you’re in charge all messes are your messes.

I still think of my dad in this realm, especially after he finished his PhD work and willingly took at job at the brand new Chick-fil-A in town. Eventually he wore a name tag that said “Mayor” because the restaurant dining room became his pride and joy. He still speaks of his service there in glowing terms. The babies, the tired mamas, the little ones wetting their pants running from the play area to the restroom, the older gentleman, all the young homeschool kids he worked with, his boss… he cared about them all. He cared about their experiences, their joy, their lunches in this space.

That’s the example of work that I’ve followed, and it’s one I encourage others to follow. If THIS space is YOUR space then it’s your job to make it as great as possible. Is there a tissue on the floor? Pick it up and go wash your hands. Is the trashcan overflowing or does it need to go out because there’s food in it? Your job. Is the toilet or sink broken? Fix it or find someone who can. Pencils out of place? A chair still needs to be stacked? A picture frame on the wall is crooked? Set it straight.

Years and years of church work, including four years as a deaconess, has led me to this conclusion: take ownership of your space. And now I apply the same philosophy to my work as a teacher. There are bloated lunch raspberries in that deep sink, and it’s my job to fish them out. This is the work of adulthood. It’s an ongoing lesson in service and pride really, and I expect I’ll be learning those lessons up until the day I die.

I went digging in my phone’s photo albums for a picture of a tree changing colors. My shots from this morning didn’t turn out well as the sun is hiding behind a Nebraska-sized sheet of gloomy clouds. Quickly my thoughts veered from a very new, still nebulous consideration of Winter as Necessary Rest–a new thought because I am stubbornly settled in the Seasonal Affective Disorder camp—to what happened last year. The images on my phone flashed before me… Livia with reading glasses on. Liv studying in my office. Liv studying on the back deck. New Covid masks. Liv studying in the basement. Homemade meals from Livia. So on and so forth. 

So what happened last year?

Homeschool.

I TAUGHT MY HIGH SCHOOLER AT HOME.

That wasn’t in the game plan, folks. It wasn’t in the game plan due to our personal dynamics and our desire to preserve a loving mother-daughter relationship rather than attempt the teacher-student one. And yet! And yet we. freaking. did. it. We homeschooled for Livia’s entire sophomore year. Yeah yeah, we didn’t learn as much that fourth quarter as I wanted us too, and yet that was the reality of the 2020-2021 school year. WE HOMESCHOOLED.

What in the world?!

We are now back to our regularly scheduled programming, the kind where Livia is taught by other educators and I am delighted to find myself within a  classroom setting, teaching my own little pupils at Lincoln Homeschool Academy. The turf is now familiar and our year of homeschooling plus dealing with a worldwide pandemic has passed. Oh yes, we’re still in that pandemic, but the heightened fear I breathlessly held is no longer present. The political turmoil has returned to a murmur. We’ve gotten more comfortable—somehow—with a ridiculous death rate due to this virus. We mask much more easily, and I’ve learned to value grocery pickups, Covid swabs, and daily emails home from our public school with illness notices. 

Today Livia is home. I can hear her writing in the room next door to mine, my heart busting with mama pride to know that she is a writer much like myself. Sometimes the words just have to come out. My girl can’t smell today and she has a headache that a bunch of medicine didn’t touch. She’d rather stay home for the next 10 days than get the nose swab I’ve scheduled for her this afternoon. Ha, nice try, mija. I know other friends whose children are home with Covid, home with sniffles, and home with every symptom in between the two extremes. This is 2021. The virus continues, but now we fight with booster shots and masks and social distancing and frequent handwashing. And lots of missed school. The “and yet” here is that school continues. And yet, life continues. I’m impressed with my little homeschooling school and with our bigger public school system. Despite the radical changes and difficulties faced last year, so many educators and school nurses keep showing up, determined to teach in this crazy time. 

I taught my kid at home last year. 

Huh. 

I’m teaching new little ones at a different school this year. And Livia’s days in high school are dwindling rapidly. Soon she’ll move to a different life stage and we’ll look back at this time with what? Will it be grief for all the changes and losses? Will it be joy for that fast-and-slow year of togetherness at Prairie Box High? Will it be surprise that we weathered this better than expected? One day at a time. That’s it. Grace for one day at a time.

Update: She does not have Covid. Whew.

Any discussion of Covid-19 must begin with this: in the United States over 600,000 individuals have died due to this coronavirus outbreak. By any stretch of the imagination, even with faulty numbers and misattributed deaths, the devastation of this virus is far-reaching and heart-breaking. For many people this conversation involves great loss and grief. My heart goes out to these people.

My life, while looking like a game of Fruit Basket Upset, was less touched by death than I had imagined in March 2020. I remember telling Livia that people we loved would die from this pandemic, and largely this was not accurate, thank goodness. Still, we were a hairsbreadth away from tragedies. A grandpa of our nephew succumbed to Covid, and we certainly experienced our share of heartache throughout the 15 months of pandemic distancing. We grieved the deaths of a husband and church brother, the wife of a pastor friend, a groomsman from our wedding, and most of all our cousin Paula who is vibrantly alive in our hearts still. 

How long will it take to process what happened between March 2020 and the days we declared ourselves fully vaccinated and thus emerged from our cocoon of relative safety? I don’t know. There are the pat answers we give to others we greet in the pews at church and in chatting on our front sidewalks, and then there are the deeper explorations of the heart that I fear will be lost amongst the busy-ness of life unless I record them here. This is my attempt to start working through the pandemic—the good, the bad, and the confusing of it all—and today I’ll start with The Good as I’m beginning to process it.

THE GOOD

It’s only in hindsight that I’m starting to recognize the good that came from a 15-month hiatus from life as we knew it. 

I like life. I like productivity. I like people a lot. I like to leave my house, experience things, then come back to home base. And ALL of that changed due to Covid. When I write about the Bad of it all, I’ll cover my initial shock at the loss of status quo. For now I’ll state that it was a fast and hard departure to life as I knew it and I was extremely uncomfortable at first. What does that kind of disruption do to an extrovert? Well, 15 months later I can tell you that it was a gift. And I believe it’s a once-in-a-lifetime gift. It’s certainly a gift I never would have sought or taken on my own. Seriously, 15 months at home? No traveling. No gatherings in our home. No opportunities for me to go sit in others’ living rooms. No church! Church has been the center of our weekly existences throughout our adult lives (and mine as a child) and then… nada. Nothing. No greetings in foyers and shared worship, study, meals with friends. It all came to a halt. And it was absolutely a gift in terms of the bigger picture.

The bigger picture is that Covid-19 allowed me to detach from familiarity and then sink into the four walls of our home with my man, my girl, and my dog. That was it. 

I took a year long sabbatical from my deaconess position at church.

Livia detached from Lincoln Public Schools for a year of being homeschooled by her mama.

Jeremy detached from meeting in person and conducted all group activities by Zoom. (He has long worked from home, so his Covid experience was not drastically different from normal life.)

We settled in. I settled down.

I learned to be quieter, to think my own thoughts, to read perspectives outside my usual circles, to seek counsel from previously untapped resources, and to delight in nurturing only the souls in this home. Around 4pm everyday I would have a simple decision to make: do I want to read a book or start something creative for dinner? I wasn’t entangled more than that. I lived. I slept to deal with stress and I didn’t scold myself for it. I made massive amounts of coffee and realized how superior it is to Diet Mountain Dew. I stood over the hot stovetop and stirred onions and carrots in olive oil while listening to whatever podcast sounded good in the moment. Beyond educating my kid, I had few tethers for the first time in my life. I was forced to untether.

Untethering felt terrifying at first and then it was the deep breath that I didn’t know I needed. If you were on the receiving end of more RT silence, this might explain it. Amidst the swirling news of a world gone mad—global illness, economic ruin, continued and rampant racism, political insanity, online cruelty, formally responsible people becoming conspiracy theorists—I had room to silence the voices when they got too loud, and then turn them on again when my soul could bear it once more. I found space to study the book of Luke with my 16 year old, a real rarity for any mom of a teen. Jeremy and I figured out how to still claim our evening date times where we’d get some time to watch tv and eat snacks together. We surprised ourselves that, despite being home all the time together, there was still quite a lot to talk about and even times where we’d forget to discuss something of note. We fell more deeply in love and were forced to breathe deeply and exude kindness even when the walls closed in a bit too much. 

One of the biggest gifts of the past 15 months was the opportunity to embrace who God made me. And the trickle-down effect was that I began to embrace my daughter as well. Being *specific* humans has always been a little hard for me. I can admit that I would like to be everything to everyone. As an enneagram 2 and ESFJ (I promise I won’t dive too deeply into these descriptions!), I really like people. Along with all that liking comes a desire to try to make “them” like me back, and after 43 years it was incredibly healthy to silence “them” for awhile. I’ve written and spoken quite a bit about identity. I’ve studied it and wrestled with it, and right now I’m thanking God for the insights he’s granted me over the past year—and even in the past week. He delights in me. The God of the universe, who created rainbows and the Grand Canyon and the craziest little insects that thrive in the Amazon rainforest delights in me, too. And Jeremy. And Livia. And I’m learning to delight in us as well. I was made with limited abilities. Limited superpowers and limited sins, too, and I’m beginning to embrace that! Even better, I’m beginning to embrace who God has made my daughter to be. Our story is big and winding—much like everyone else’s I imagine. But at the end of the day, we are each one person with one person’s gifting and limitations—and that’s a beautiful thing. We are creatures, created by a really creative Father God. And if I miss that reality then I will always be longing to be someone else. Our Covid break has given me room to value myself and my daughter, with all the beauty God purposefully placed inside us.

Just as there was good in taking a huge breather from life as we knew it, there is also good in re-joining community on this side of [beautiful, life-giving, life-altering] vaccinations. (THANK YOU, SCIENTISTS. I can’t say that thank-you enough.) Our church takes communion each week and we were not involved in that AT ALL during our time at home. It was really hard to not have that physical reminder of the body and blood of Christ each week. I could write at length about the ways I’ve experienced communion, but now is not the time. Suffice to say we felt very cut-off even though we worshipped weekly from our basement couches. The past two weeks that we’ve worshipped in community again have been fascinating. It’s been entirely overwhelming, but there’s one piece that consistently has been the best kind of overwhelming and it is hearing voices sing behind me in congregational worship. There’s nothing like it. Absolutely nothing like it. I let the voices wash over me and it reminds me that when we sing praise, laments, songs of worship, we join with an eternal throng of worshippers. The angels in heaven, the saints of the past and the church of the future, all join in this worship of God. Our little congregation at 9th & Charleston is a small bit of the glory we’ll experience in heaven one day and I. have. missed. it. I don’t want to ever miss it again. I hope to soak it up every Sunday that I am able to!

The good of re-entry also comes in the form of food and drink in restaurants. A margarita and a plate of tacos has never tasted so good. A few weeks ago I had the chance to escape to Nebraska City for the weekend and I ordered room service by myself, an extravagance for sure. And you know what wasn’t special? Eating the amazing food on my hotel room bed while watching a (not very good) HGTV program. It was all the proof I needed that magic lives in dining areas that are perfectly lit, with sangria poured into a glass by a waiter’s hand, with food piping hot from the chef’s kitchen, with the murmur of other happy patrons around you. That’s extravagance. I’ve eaten all the take-out I wanted to during Covid. Now is the time for dining with friends again. Again, thank you, scientists, for this vaccine! Now let’s eat. 

In high school I helped a classmate perform a monologue about a mother grieving her infant at the child’s gravesite. I can’t remember whether I was a teacher’s assistant for this class or if I was taking it for credit myself, but what I do recall is that instinctively I knew what that mother would feel like. I confidently coached my friend in ways she could improve her monologue because I *felt* the mother’s pain. Was I was a mother who had lost her baby? No! Far from it. But there’s always been this nugget inside me that intuits what others are feelings and feels deeply with them.

I’m going to blame this level of empathy on why I dislike visiting the the ObGyn’s office. 

I am now a grown up with health insurance, a mortgage, a favorite Valvoline, and a much better understanding of what it feels like to lose a little one. And at this point of my life I am well aware of this empathetic soul that I lug around that sometimes makes being around people in pain almost excruciating. I have a hard time turning it off. Empathy is a gift that I cannot wait to hand back to the Lord someday in glory, saying, “Thank you. I’m done with this. It was the weightiest of gifts.”

Walking in the door of the ObGyn’s office is never a simple task for someone who has dealt with infertility and miscarriage. Nope, a thousand different memories flood my senses when I enter the doors and wait for the receptionist to ask for my insurance card. My practitioner has switched offices—and while I’m thankful to never be trapped in that 1970’s era waiting room without windows again, the muscle memory is enough to overwhelm me. I remember every ultrasound, every blood draw, every visit filled with hope, fear, grief, and even mundane moments. It’s all there, but not only is it a space for my memories, it’s a space where other women are walking through their own tales. And I find that mix of stories both compelling and challenging.

I wish there were separate buildings for pregnant and non-pregnant women. Separate waiting rooms perhaps. But I know that wouldn’t solve the problem because some women are pregnant happily while plenty of others are not. There’s the gal who just received a trisomy 13 diagnosis and she looks around marveling that anyone else could be joyfully pregnant right now. There’s the other woman who has no idea how she is going to pay for diapers for this latest “blessing.” There’s the client lying that she has insurance but just forgot the card, who is desperately trying to figure out how she will make ends meet next month, but that’s next month’s problem. And surely there are a thousand different women between utterly joyful and in the worst of spots, many of whom are just running in for a quick checkup on their baby—which truly never is quick—before carrying out other tasks in their days. 

Aside from the obviously pregnant women, the waiting room is filled with everyone else, from 16 year olds who are dealing with pain to octogenarians who are paying someone to check out parts they not only cannot see but also cannot diagnose as healthy or unhealthy. Women. We come in all stripes and all colors and while getting a gynecological exam is the farthest thing from “fun” it is quite necessary to stay well. Mingled in with the baby bumps are women experiencing hot flashes (note: they’re probably carrying their coats), women who’ve found a lump, women who feel 100% fine but aren’t, and women who feel 100% sure they’re not fine but they actually are. 

All stories are found in this cold sterile space.

The nervous laughter while getting a blood draw meets up with stony silence in the hallway where another walks in nervously for a breast exam.

The mother relieved to see her little one via ultrasound lays on the table where another mother was just informed that no heartbeat can be found.

Within these walls there is death and there is life, and there is every shade of existence in between. 

A run into the ObGyn’s office is never ever a clearcut thing for someone like me, someone with the heavy gift of empathy.

This morning I was thinking about mercy meals. For those of you unfamiliar with that terminology, it just means meals provided by someone else while you’re mourning or ill or recovering from having a baby. It’s merciful to give them and a mercy to receive them when you’ve got a lot going on—and our church tradition is pretty consistently wonderful at caring for one another with mercy meals.

After life changed some eleven months ago due to Covid 19 showing up in the United States, I couldn’t see how mercy meals would continue. And that was hard as we had loved ones in our church body welcoming new babies, mourning deaths, and dealing with cancer. They needed to be fed, but we were in a position of not knowing how this coronavirus was being transmitted. I think about the several emails I shot off to a doctor friend (and fellow church member) in order to establish good mercy ministry policies in this new era. 

It wasn’t just the church struggling to figure things out. Schools closed completely. Our public library shut their doors and allowed patrons to hang onto their checked out books for months. Videos came out about how to wipe down your groceries. We were leaving packages untouched for three days to let the viral load lessen in case it was on the cardboard boxes. I wasn’t comfortable with dropping off a mercy meal with a side of coronavirus. I remember asking for church members to donate money for a grocery gift card thereby skipping the exchange of viruses along with lasagnas and burritos. But even then it was a poor substitute for showing up at a church member’s door and handing over a 9×13 pan that spoke of love and concern, that spoke of mercy.

It was a really weird, harrowing, uncertain time. 

We all adjusted when we learned that we could exchange items without great fear of virus transfer.

We quit wiping down groceries (thank goodness because that was an extensive process). The library opened up—though they still quarantine books for three days—and yesterday I learned I could stay in the library for up to two hours. We now take our delivered boxes into the house immediately, though I am mindful to wash my hands after handling mail. And we deliver mercy meals to church members’ houses again.

The act of feeding someone is the most basic and helpful act of all, I believe, as everyone needs to eat. When we’ve been through a rough time, delegating the task of finding food to a friend or family member has kept us afloat. I’m so so glad that, in this still very strange time, we can now walk up to someone’s door and hand over a bunch of hamburgers or a rotisserie chicken to keep them going for another day. A face is a wonderful thing to see, however briefly, when you’re going through a hardship. Being loved, knowing others are willing to sustain your family, is priceless.

I’d say that Covid has robbed many of us of many things. But one thing the darkness brings with it? The contrasting gorgeousness of light. Even a teeny tiny bit of goodness shines in the darkest of days. For that I am grateful.