Throughout my entire life Jesus has been my friend. I cannot recall one solitary day in my childhood of thinking Jesus was not for me, not loving me, or not compassionate towards me. Combine that faith in Jesus with a giant creative heap of imagination and you have a version of little Rebecca who was absolutely brokenhearted by passion plays and Good Friday services. Little Rebecca grew into adult Rebecca, but my spirit was just as crushed at such services. I still haven’t seen the Passion of the Christ movie for the same reason I choose not to watch movies with excessive violence towards enslaved Black Americans. I don’t need that in my noggin. My heart is wrenched by such scenes.
I struggle every single year with what we Christians call Holy Week. I don’t like to be forced into imagining the torture of my friend and Savior Jesus. Every year I have an internal–sometimes external–argument where I tell my pretend audience that “you can’t make me repeat all of this again.” You. cannot. make. me. And just to be real clear: we’re all pretending! I mean, this already happened and now we live with a Risen Savior at the right hand of God the Father. I’ve skipped Good Friday services in order to not give in to the deeply sad feelings. Sometimes I simply do not want to cry anymore.
This year we attended a Tenebrae Service and while I did indeed cry, I also felt grateful for the physicality of the memories of Christ’s death. We used our senses to experience dark and light, to listen to mournful music, to witness the Light of Life exiting the building. And I felt camaraderie with my Savior in the depths of despair that life holds. This deep sadness? He knew it. These heartbreaking betrayals? He was there, too. My friend Jesus, the perfect man, knew the same suffering that I know, that my friends know.
Of course the story doesn’t end there. Praise God, THE STORY DOES NOT END THERE. With freedom and perfect abandon we Christians worship a Jesus who did NOT stay dead. He was the Messiah–is the Messiah, the great deliverer–and death couldn’t hold him down. He is the perfect sacrifice and scripture says he died and rose again with our names on his heart and with our sins on his shoulders. His perfect and sinless self for my broken and sinful self. Amen.
All of this believing and remembering (and even present-day pretending during Holy Week) takes faith; I will not say otherwise. I couldn’t buy into it without that leap of faith. I’m here, existing with a faith that ebbs and flows but is always present nonetheless. I’m here, with outstretched hands, receiving daily mercies and grace that come from a Father in heaven who loves me and knows me. I’m here, rejoicing in what I don’t see but what I know deep in my heart until I see our Triune God face to face in glory.
On Sunday, September 17, we said our final goodbyes to our much-beloved baby-old-man dog Shiloh. He was 14 years and 7 months old.
Every year that we marked with him was a year I felt really blessed that he was still around. The dogs in my childhood all came to early and tragic deaths and I had sworn I’d never get a dog again because it was so painful to lose them. I remember crying into my pillow yeeeeeears after these dogs had crossed the rainbow bridge. Tears have never been hard for me to find. Alas, I grew up, got married, and then had a little girl who very badly wanted a puppy. She got one just before her 5th birthday and that was it. I was head over heels for a dog again.
Shiloh’s doggie life paired well with family life, and even now as I go back into my blog archives I can see that he was exactly the same dog through all the years. He always loved to shred tissues. He always wanted to be nearby us, a part of our pack. He loved eating all human food—including veggies, with the exception of undressed lettuce—and was never a snuggly dog. Livia marveled at a few photos of him cuddling with her on the floor of our first home and I assured her that I was very good at snapping photos quickly. He loved his kennel. He loved routine. He understood the pecking order in the house which gave him something of a respectful worship for Jeremy, a loving protective nature toward me, and a sibling relationship to Livia. With me he was equal parts sassy and adorable, and it didn’t help that I found much of his sassiness to be hilarious. I am a far cry from an efficient dog trainer. But with Jeremy’s affinity for structure our Shi was potty trained quickly and was an all-around terrific dog. His enthusiasm for greeting people at the front door was only tempered by hearing loss as he aged. He still surprised us with a few zoomies in these last years. Oh, and he loved to lick. He was a licker. Himself. Others. Obsessed. Kissed the back of Judy Schlarb’s teeth after bible study one day, and one time enjoyed slurping my mouth out when I was laughing so hard I accidentally shut my eyes. That’s not a mistake I made twice.
This week has been the strangest week as we begin to adjust to life without our furry buddy. The tap-tap from his claws has gone silent. No little face appears in my doorway after the guys come over for D&D or Magic. There’s no heavy breathing coming around my side of the bed to see what crumbs have been dropped by the type 1 diabetic mom. No snuffling through the piles in Liv’s room, no nesting on her bed, no staring with rapt attention at the gecko. The morning shift of potty-treat-meds has been traded in for a quiet cup of coffee and time to sit. The evening shift of potty-kennel-treats is no longer necessary. The expenses of an old pup—medicines, dry and wet food, extra vet visits—have been replaced with grief take-out and grief coffees this week. The doorbell draws no barks and no front door scramble. It is quiet uptown… in a canine type of way.
Shiloh ultimately succumbed to congestive heart failure. He lived about 15 months after the condition was diagnosed, which is fairly average I believe. I opted to medicate his little body for all of that time, but his coughing grew worse at the end of last week and his rapid and shallow breathing Sunday morning was not sustainable. I could not ask for more time with him. He had lived so well and so lovingly for so many days. There was truly nothing more to do and enjoy with Shi—we enjoyed each other so fully every day that choosing euthanasia was our final act of kindness for this furry boy who had shared his entire life with us. The emergency vet office here in Lincoln was extremely professional from my explorative phone call around noon to the moment we walked out of their clinic around three hours later. I have been afraid of having to put a pet down for my entire 45 years and in the oddest way possible it felt like a relief to have survived the weight of that event. The vet was incredible. Our boy was so very tired. He very gently and quietly experienced a final rest.
He was the best and I loved him more than words can express.
Shiloh, we love you, bud. I will miss your perfect furry face forever.
Thank you, God, for giving us this precious bit of fluff that brought so much joy and rhythm, hilarity and light to our days. We are grateful. We are sad, but we are grateful, too.
I’m actively posting graduation pictures of my one and only beloved (begotten?) daughter and I have near-constant flashes of school drop-offs in my head. The most challenging ones were in middle school.
So here is my gratitude list for those who helped us through every era and every episode of childrearing.
To those who heard me at my absolute worst, ie, when my middle schooler refused to get out of the car and go to school. Or when she refused to stand up (on E Street, at amusement parks, at the zoo–look, it happened a lot) I was HOT. I said things. Unpretty, ungracious things. You heard me and responded with love and guess what? WE DID IT. We survived. No, scratch that… WE THRIVED.
To those who came and took my kid to school on some mornings. Okay, that was Dad. Thank you, Dad. You and mom and grandma and grandpa deserve so much more than mere words but that’s all I’ve got at present.
To those who literally put my kid in a bathtub and bathed her. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. May your mansions in heaven be filled with every kind of delicious baked good and coffee that never runs out.
To those who hugged my kid and loved her. To those who hugged me and loved me.
To those who took my credit and insurance cards, those who scheduled appointments, those who dealt with canceled appointments and the rare completely-forgot–about-it appointments. Bless you. But even more to those who walked into counseling offices and counseled us, to those who walked into medical offices and gave high fives and cheered her on. You deserve all the stars in the sky for your care for us.
To those who taught. Oh, our dear teachers. Some of you were only okay but some of you were the most stellar people on planet earth. To those who gave tough love. To those who bandaged knees and gave tylenol and provided kotex. To those who listened and reasoned and still persevered and taught new things. I see you and I am you and we needed you at every single turn for the past however many years it took to earn a high school diploma. Some of you have been around that IEP table with us for years and I thank you for your longevity and ability to really see my girl.
To those who simply received this fabulous kid and believed in her from day one. To those who saw her light and didn’t demand she become someone else. To those who encouraged her writing and sculpting and drawing and horseback riding and love of every single animal on God’s green earth. Thank you for the opportunities you’ve given her to grow.
To the aunts and uncles who cheered her on. Biological, adopted, and honorary.
Memories are drifting in and out of my mind while I get ready to host a party to celebrate this moment. You are all a part of our journey and I’m grateful times a thousand for you.
Yesterday had some rough moments for sure. Rough moments in my classrooms turned into rough patches in my heart, which then turned into rough mom and wife vibes in my home, which flowed right into rough self-talk and feelings of inevitable future doom.
That rolling stone certainly gathered moss of a terrible kind. I’m still dealing with the effects of it in the daylight today, trying hard to separate truth from fears, reality from pessimism.
Despite the weight of some ick, I had four bright shiny points in my day that a little voice keeps telling me to write down. So here I go.
One. I find myself in a work position where I get to rub shoulders with someone I love very much but haven’t seen a lot in recent years. The girls who lived next door to me on South 8th—the Grand girls—are family. We did a lot of life together in those years! So yesterday when Joie and I got down to our deepest selves in a 30 Second Dance Party? Well, it connected a lot of dots and brought a lot of joy. The memory of it will always make me deeply happy. (I highly recommend teacher dancing before school to remind yourself you’re not just who these young kids think you are.)
Two. A student brought me my favorite candy and my heart exploded. In that moment I had zero idea how he knew that I loved Neccos (turns out his teacher mama told him) and all the heart emojis were floating around me in joy. Suffice to say that zero of my students had ever tasted a Necco, so later, when I broke them out and shared them it was a sweet moment. Mega warm fuzzies still.
Three. I love Lynn Locklear more than I even like most people. We’ve got a rapport that comes with years of working alongside each other in the Zion Church office, and yes, perhaps I’m using the word “working” a little loosely. Lynn says her productivity massively increased after I left, but I’d like to believe the positivity we generated in that space made all our conversations and laughter completely worth it. So while I was emailing Lynn—something that doesn’t happen that often anymore—I actually ran into her at the checkout counter of a bookstore. Total goodness.
And four. Word games are my jam. I love books. I love words. I could study etymology the rest of my life and be a happy camper. So last night as I was telling my family about an urgent GI situation mid school commute that day, we laughed ourselves silly about how I bought snacks at a gas station in order to justify my run to their restroom. “Post doo-doo Dew dues” was what we came up with and it is still making me giggle. So absurd, but how worth it to have a moment of laughing hard with my favorite people.
Laughter scares the blues away. Joy scatters the ugliness and lets the sunshine through. Counting our blessings just makes good sense.
God filled in the hole a teeny bit today, with a request that didn’t come from me. I felt like I had been holding my breath for two years now and today was a slight exhale.
Sometimes love looks like friends who feel like family, a warm fireplace, an orange cat, and the willingness to physically and emotionally be laid bare in front of one another.
Jeremy and I aren’t really resolution people. And we’re also not really New Year’s Eve party-ers. I was reflecting on that second truth as I got warm and cozy and drowsy under our down comforter around 10:00pm last night.
I felt strangely guilty, like I couldn’t really rest because I was going to bed before the New Year was officially rung in. It was odd. I’ve worked tremendously hard to push off others’ expectations of life—when those expectations are not my own—and yet this one lingered. I do love celebrations and I love communal events, so maybe that’s why I felt the urge to participate at midnight. And truthfully, I semi-participated from my slumbering state. Lincolnites love any reason to set off fireworks, so as the clock hit midnight some very excited people in my neighborhood made sure we all knew what time it was. All I could do was roll over, shrug off the scary memories of my dog running off in fear a few years ago when those fireworks went off, remind myself we were all safe and sound indoors, and try to fall asleep once more. I did. The end.
Or rather, the beginning.
Today begins a new year. We resolve to serve God more wholeheartedly in 2022, to be better spouses and parents, to deeply examine our choices and behaviors to glory God more clearly. Aside from that, we have desires of course. We both want to eat healthier options, we both want to move our bodies more, we both want to be more diligent employees and more faithful friends. We are resolved, without specifically setting resolutions.
So today the snow flies and the temperatures outdoors are dangerously low. We stay inside, warmed, contented, and while we wonder what the next 12 months hold, we’re not grandiose in our plans nor overly concerned with what’s next. I suppose we’ll just carry on, one step after another, learning to love better and enjoy this world. God holds us tight, today and always.
Right before I got body slammed by a virus or two (but hey, not Covid!) I took this little sweetie shopping for some winter clothes. It was a blast.
If you’ve been reading along for years then you know that infertility is a huge, and hugely unwelcomed, part of our story. We’ve tried all manner of ways to have more kids and yet at some point had to offer a simple “thank you” to God for our beautiful only child. But as I look at Kezzie’s precious face in the image above, I rejoice that the hard reality of infertility didn’t win the day. Babies continue to be born, fostered, and adopted. I find myself wandering the aisles of Super Target delighting in picking out teeny items for them. I praise God that Alicia knew I’d love to take her daughter out shopping for some winter gear. Kids legs? I mean, they just keep stretching, don’t they? In the face of huge life changes, I’m grateful this growing kid and I got to take a little shopping trip together. She delighted in picking out hoodies in colors she loved and I delighted in watching her.
Our stories aren’t over as long as we have breath in our lungs. Medical diagnoses and setbacks don’t mean your life is forever crushed. Academic and occupational failures don’t meet you won’t ever see light again in your future. Mistakes and sins of epic proportions don’t mean redemption isn’t coming in days ahead. Buckets of negative pregnancy tests don’t get to have the final word. Each day I spend loving on my friends’ kids, and each time I kiss a boo-boo at school or help a first grader learn to sound out words, I feel the joy of grace flood over me.
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.
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.
