I recently watched Unorthodox on Netflix and am fascinated by some of the Jewish traditions shown in it. As I’ve been reading up on a couple, I realized that Passover begins tonight – in the middle of the Christian Holy Week.
I’m not Jewish and I’ve not draped it correctly, but my heart is in the right place. I really love the idea of red on our entryway as a reminder that God delivered His people from destruction.
It seems like the perfect visual to accompany a verse I’ve been focused on recently, from Job 11 (Good News Translation): You will live secure and full of hope; God will protect you and give you rest.
My internal voice keeps saying it. My external voice keeps saying it. Over and over and over again in the last couple of weeks.
What is even happening right now?
Daily death tolls. People need medical care and can’t get it. Countries and states on lockdown. People stranded and they can’t get home. Grocery stores with limited or empty shelves, reminiscent of the market in Gilead.
How is this suddenly our life? No school. No office. No church. No gymnastics. No spring break plans. No roaming around TJ Maxx. No salon. No Skinny Dip. No teenagers packed in my car for basketball or football or lacrosse games.
Now, instead, it’s work-at-home and learn-at-home and church-at-home. Cooking and SkipBo and 1500 piece jigsaw puzzles.
How did we get here, and what is even happening right now?!
What are people doing with all the toilet paper? I bought some TP, and instead focused on caffeine, chocolate, OJ and carbs. I don’t know what the rest of you are eating, but it’s not normal to “go” so much you need 96 rolls of Charmin during your four weeks at home.
Then, Virginia schools are closed for the remainder of this academic year. Ohhhhhhhkay. I mean, that seems like jumping the gun a bit with only a handful of cases in our state but I can work from home so I think this will be OK.
Then, I start receiving emails about remote learning and instructions for guiding my children through the exercises. Wait, what? I’m not an educator. Someone trained to educate needs to be responsible for that. And most importantly someone patient and relaxed. And patient. And without a full-time job. Do these guys running all the school stuff and making these decisions realize how many classes were skipped by those of us now responsible for this distance learning of the next generation?
And then, I miss church. It’s funny how sometimes I struggle to get up on Sundays, but in the last couple of weeks when forbidden to go I am up and feeling like something big is amiss. I have watched so many sermons on Facebook recently and while the messages are good, there’s just something about being in a room full of people worshipping. With the exception of the four years I was in college when Sunday morning was primarily about recovery and the year or so after I had Audrey, I’ve said The Lord’s Prayer with a large group of people every Sunday my entire life – but I never knew how special community prayer was to me until I wasn’t able to do it in the last couple of weeks. It turns out it’s so special to me that I broke into tears during a Facebook live when I heard familiar voices saying it.
And then the longer I’m stuck at home the more snarky my internal voice becomes. I KNOW Jesus slept on the boat during a crisis, but Jesus didn’t have to shut out the noise of a child in roller skates on hard wood floors racing to catch a cat while also shouting because she discovered someone ate the last Krispy Kreme without us all talking about who should get it.
And then the Texas Lt. Governor said he and other grandparents are willing to risk their lives for the economy. And some people applauded him and agreed. I dare even one of those people to tell me they vote the way the do because they are pro-life. The tigress in me is ready for lunch.
And now the President of the United States is tweeting words like “lamestream media” and talking about the virus in relation to how it effects his re-election. It just makes me want to scream NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU! Can the President be presidential just this once? Pretty please.
What is even happening right now?
WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?!
Oh how I long for the What is even happening right nows of just three weeks ago, when Chipotle removed carne asada from its menu. Remember that? I do. And I’m *still* mad at you, Chipotle!
Everything is different, and yet everything is the same. The most important people are still the most important people. The most important things are still the most important things. And yet, everything seems different somehow.
I guess it’s not actually that things are different so much as that things have been even more revealed. What was there and true all along is simply no longer as hidden. How drug companies profit. How the poor have less access to health care and technology and education. How the selfish hoard, and are incapable of considering and unwilling to consider the community and the greater good. How little some people respect and value and care for our nation’s aging citizens and family members.
I guess it’s true that adversity brings out the best and worst of humanity, and I am just done with the coverage of and from the worst of humanity. I am done with the fear mongering and the finger-pointing and the projections.
Translate: I am now rationing my news intake. I want to know what’s closed and what steps the CDC says I need to take, but I am *done* with pictures of empty grocery shelves and listening to pundits say the president mishandled this virus situation (is that actually news?) or that kids should or should not be in school. I need to be informed, but I need to balance information with stories and news about the best of humanity. For my own sanity.
You know what hasn’t changed, ever? What was true 6 months ago and 6 years ago and 6 decades ago, and is still true today? People are mostly good. Most people are good. We tend to focus on the small percentage that is bad, and it’s gotten so out of hand that it can seem like the bad outweighs the good – and that’s just not truth.
I believe in science and I believe in God. It doesn’t have to be one or the other; it can be both. I can pray and I can take vitamins and vaccines. And I may even knock on wood. Because I can be a faith person who’s also a little superstitious and who believes that it’s my job to do what I can while letting God worry about the rest. And that’s not awful. I think it’s probably actually pretty normal. And people just won’t admit it because faith people want you to be all faith all the time and science people want you to be all science all the time, and the two are not supposed to mix. But I am faith and science both, and I’d like to say all the time but the truth is sometimes my faith in science and my faith in God can be shaken a little.
Such as when I watch too much news.
I am a person who prepares and also a person of faith. I have a stocked pantry and a stocked bible. I have my doctor and my pastor in my contacts. And this morning I balanced yesterday’s worry about a potential lack of things – the result of too much news intake – with communion, taken with a few dozen strangers, before the sun lit the sky.
And it felt awesome. Awesome to have quiet moments. Awesome to be part of a community of people focusing on the same thing. Awesome to focus on good things at the start of the day. Awesome to throw out old and unhealthy thoughts and fill those parts of my brain with goodness and quiet. Awesome to, for just a few moments, be the child instead of the parent. Awesome to worry about nothing. Awesome to be imperfect and loved anyway. Awesome to be a contradiction and loved anyway.
1 Corinthians 11:28 says, “Everyone should look into his own heart before he eats the bread and drinks the cup.” International Children’s Bible
We voted this morning. Taking our time, reading every name on the ballot with me whispering explanations about what I liked/disliked about each candidate and why who can win is sometimes just as important as who should win.
Our children need to see and hear us talk about real issues, and know that we think and we research – not just that we blindly support a party or a person. Most importantly, I want Audrey to see and know that I will always vote for candidates who support her and the thousands of kids who will eventually enter adulthood with some sort of pre-existing condition.
We talked about everything from socialism to racism to sexism, in littler words. She asked Are there people who won’t vote for a girl? Yes. And it made me sad to answer.
But in only the way she can, Audrey summed up voting on Super Tuesday with this question/statement: So basically, though, we really don’t care as long as it’s not Trump. Yes. And, again, it made me sad to answer. It makes me sad that we have a leader I wouldn’t leave my children alone with for even 30 minutes because he’s such a poor example of humanity. I have voted red, blue, and Ross Perot, and have never felt that way until now.
No candidate and no person is perfect, and yet I have always had this desire to really believe in the people I vote for. At the same time, it’s very often hard to find someone that doesn’t have skeletons and wasn’t at some point on the wrong side of an issue. But it’s never, ever been easier to vote for someone, anyone, as a comparison to what we have now.
When I was a young girl I heard my first real bit of advice about love, and it went something like this: if you read 1 Corinthians 13 and cannot replace the word love with a special someone’s name, then that’s not your person.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
The New Testament, An American Translation, by Edgar Goodspeed, Professor of Biblical and Patristic Greek at The University of Chicago, 1923
I dismissed that advice, and I’ve thought a lot about that in the last couple of years. And as the month of February approached, the month of love, I decided to actively focus my thoughts on what love really is. How it behaves. What it looks like.
We celebrate a day of love in the middle of the month and almost everything about how we celebrate that day is not really about love. Chocolates, flowers, dinner, and sometimes jewelry. One of my clever young pals pointed out those things all fall into one of three categories: (1) what’s expected, (2) what’s lazy, or (3) what’s safe and won’t send the wrong message. I thought he was being silly, but upon further reflection he’s actually quite right.
As February began, I made a decision to look each day for acts of love and to keep a list of my observations in my phone – and I was completely moved day after day with my findings. I found that focusing on love is not unlike focusing on your blessings in that the more you look for examples the more you will notice.
Fanning the back of a neck after noticing a spouse is warm and not feeling their best
Holds eye contact, even with phone buzzing
Spouse upset on phone – how can I help? (not tell me what you want me to do, which is another task, but an offer and a genuine understanding of all they do and that they are overwhelmed)
Proudly telling others about their spouse when they are not around – proud of who they are as an individual
Starting a car and cleaning off the windshield so that a spouse comes out to a warm vehicle
Voicemail: I know you’ve got a lot, just leave me a message so I can hear your voice and I’ll know that you’re ok.
Looks down at their phone to see spouse calling, and smiles – a display of love the recipient didn’t even see
Mutual reaching out to grasp the other during a prayer
Speaking a truth in safety: I’m exhausted
Receiving a truth in safety: I get you need space
I can’t help, but I can give you a hug.
Using a walker but holding hands
Good morning quote message, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.
What did I learn this month as I observed and as I experienced? Love is in the noticing. Love is not offering silence, or tacit approval, when we see someone we love behaving in ways that hurt themselves or others. Love is not needy; it’s giving. It works on equal partnership, instead of taking advantage of inequity. It’s in the celebration of another without jealousy. It involves effort. And respect. It honestly values the thoughts of the other. It sometimes sacrifices personal wants for the needs, or even just the wants, of another. Love sets boundaries. Love doesn’t need to sell itself. It’s not in a display. It doesn’t compete. It doesn’t race. Love embraces. It believes the best. It trusts. Love shares and confides.
When you Google the word genuinely you’ll see it means “in a truthful way” or “to the fullest degree; properly.” Love is and does a thousand things in addition to what I saw and recorded this month, but I think perhaps most importantly I learned this…
Brave, Anyway 