Upside Down and Backwards

Five months post-storm on Flat Creek Road, Black Mountain, NC

Supplies still available to hand out at Black Mountain Presbyterian Church

 It's October 3rd - the weather in Marietta, GA, is cooling off - well, sort of - I'm pretending it's really fall wearing a poncho and turning down the air conditioner to complete the imaginary reality. I turned in the last of my ordination exams online yesterday and now wait for the results. Lydia is celebrating the end of her swim bootcamp tonight and is taking queso and chips to share at their party. She's taking the SAT on Saturday. Henry just got a new job in Bozeman and continues to lean into his becoming. This weekend is homecoming at his school. Philip is working on contracts for projects in FL, AZ, OR and other places I don't always remember. I ran the dishwasher and washing machine yesterday and need to remember to fold laundry this afternoon. We went out to dinner because I was just too tired to cook last night.

Two hours away my nephews are still out of school, my parents got power back on Monday after a four-day stint without, my sister and brother-in-law are driving back from NC after checking on his family's mountain cabin. They're cobbling their way back home around washed-out streets and non-functioning traffic lights.

Four hours away, in one of my personal holy places, friends and framily are rejoicing at spotty cell service, cheering for U-Haul trucks promising to have water, and being lulled to sleep by helicopters because absolutely none of their reality is "normal" like my own. Mules are hiking supplies up crumbled mountain roads, meals are being prepared in church parking lots, calls are going out for folks certified in recovery missions. Water won't run through faucets for months we're told, electricity is coming back very slowly and unpredictably, grief is raw as people come face to face with death - of people they love and of strangers. 

And yet - my faith in humanity has been restored. Those nighttime helicopter sounds signal supplies making their way to people, babies are getting formula for the first time in days, drinkable water is being delivered to distribution sites so it can be handed out to whomever needs it. The boundary between stranger and friend is being blurred and neighbor has taken on its biblical meaning - we really are all neighbors.

I'm having this weird feeling being an outsider looking in at the destruction that people and places who mean the world to me are waking up to every morning as their new normal. I want so badly to go there but I know emergency responders need the roads and the gas far more than I. I feel helpless. I've donated money but my heart longs to be in that space while also being terrified to see what I've known for more than half my life ripped to pieces. I haven't cried yet, that feels kind of weird - but I think I haven't really absorbed the situation because I have the luxury of turning down my air conditioner to pretend it's really fall in the south. Surely, I can't live so close to this chaos and my life still be this regular.

Today I'm more aware than perhaps I ever have been about how privileged I am to have been born into my reality - it's nothing I did of my own volition;

I'm just one of the ones who drew a long straw. My children have never gone to bed hungry, when we see things exploding in the sky, we oooh and ahhh because we're watching fireworks, we've never encountered dead people on our streets or seen water wash away our home. It's a heavy thing to look straight into the face of what I enjoy just because of where I was born or because the storm jogged east and spared my neck of the woods. Today, though, I'm choosing to acknowledge my privilege and allow it to make me do better. I'm still learning what that means - it's not the first time I've wrestled with my own privilege and how I'm called to respond. But today, there are a lot of people who had a very similar pot of privilege as mine a week ago who've had it ripped away by a storm. I'm reminded that it's fleeting so using it for the good of others is imperative. Those who were born with shorter straws, they've had it harder their whole life than me, and it's gotten even harder, their straw has gotten even shorter. 

Today, I'm going to do what I can to help even the playing field - even if just barely. And if I'm being completely honest - it's not that I'm being noble and benevolent. It's that I am trying to internalize why I got the good luck and absolve some of my own guilt by trying to share it with other people. I wish I could say I'm 100% intrinsically motivated to care for others - I like to think I am, but there have been a lot of days where I was aware of the inequities in the world and didn't feel compelled to act. Maybe those days were preparation for today? But what I do know now on a visceral level is that Maya Angelou's words, "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better," ring true in a new way. I'm committing to doing better today. And I'll commit to do that again tomorrow. And next month. And next year. I don't want to forget what I've learned this week, and I don't want to be desensitized to these lessons. May it be so.

 

Every New Beginning...

 ...comes from some other beginning's end (thanks, Green Day & Semisonic).

Henry in front of his dorm

This has been a year of honouring endings and being brave about beginnings. This time last year, we had a newly minted high school graduate, then a college freshman, then a daughter who decided to step away from cheer, stick with swim and then try golf. I've become more and more aware of how important ending well can be in processing all that life throws our way. My fall semester in Clinical Pastoral Education in a hospital taught me this lesson in amplified ways. I sat with families who chose to donate their loved ones' organs after brain death was confirmed. I sat with parents of a baby born at 22 weeks as they said their goodbyes to the little one whose heart just wasn't developed enough to support life, but whose life made the hearts they impacted tangibly grow and grieve. I sat with families who gathered to bear witness to the lives of matriarchs and patriarchs whose baptisms were coming to completion. Ending well is a gift. And so, I look upon the reality that I've come to the end of my four years of seminary, that we've come to the end of Henry's freshman year in college, with deep, abiding gratitude and some grief. They are healthy bedfellows, after all, grief and gratitude. There's something about acknowledging endings that deserves whatever accompanying sadness because it somehow magnifies the gratitude that grows alongside. I think this is what makes us truly human.

I'm in Montana helping Henry sort his dorm room contents into two categories: storage unit & home. I've gotten to meet some of his friends in person for the first time and witness the life he's building here. It's a life I hear about but don't live with him and it's a beautiful life he's creating. Somehow, putting these pieces in storage for the summer seems holy - it embodies a promise to return, a celebration of growing into his own person, and the reality that our family home still nourishes his roots (likewise, it signifies how much hotter and humid GA is than MT and I'm a little jealous of that). 

The process has helped me better understand how I'm putting my own full-time student identity in storage for a bit - I will miss the conversations and wrestling that happened with and among my professors and peers in classes. I will miss seeing friends I've made in seminary regularly. Also, I am excited to practice what these classes and people have taught me along the way and have the freedom to focus fully on my call to ministry. Slowly but surely, I'm learning to leave my laptop alone after dinner - there's no more homework, no more double-checking syllabi (at least for me). I didn't know I needed this trip to MT to help me transition from four years of break-neck pace, a means sorting of my own storage unit vs. home belongings, a reminder to take time to see what's unfolding in front of me and internalize all that comes with it.

It snowed yesterday - the forecast had been for less than one inch of accumulation. I'd guess we got about 5-6 inches of snow, and it was glorious (at least for me - the locals in front of me getting coffee yesterday were visibly irritated by the snow's return). I found it magical - it made me slow down, it calmed my spirit, it fell with a quiet reverence. I took time to be grateful for the foundation that sustained me through this entire journey - my faith and my family. What a privilege it is for me to help Henry end this semester well. What a humbling honor it is to thank Philip, Lydia and Henry for helping me end this chapter well. What a gift it is to have had good company along the way.

Waking up to a winter wonderland outside my window

Left 90 degree humidity to enjoy this gorgeous respite!

Never thought I'd be a Jeep girl - and am grateful for those tires in this weather!

Snow is the very best thing weather ever did.

Graduation is 9 days away. There will be a new robe and hood, two diplomas, a funny hat. There will also be the people I love most in the world, laughter, celebration and gratitude. The latter is what sustains us all into whatever new beginning happens next. My prayer is to end this season well so I may walk into the next beginning with humility, grace, imagination, energy and love. For this is a life-giving ending, one that has been 25+ years in the making and I wouldn't change a thing. Thanks be to God!

Easter People

 It's Thursday after Easter Sunday, Philip and I are practicing empty nesters with Lydia exploring colleges with a buddy and Henry in Montana studying dutifully (please, Lord Jesus, hear our prayer). This was the first Easter the four of us haven't been together for Easter - a trend which is less and less jarring each time it happens. Years with lots of firsts are always complicated - they defy my conviction that I like change and remind me that I, too, am a creature of habit. What stopped me in my tracks this year was the conversation with Henry after Easter lunch with friends - I've always associated Easter with flowers (and pollen) and greening grass (and pollen) and bright, colourful outfits (and pollen). When we spoke with Henry on Easter Sunday, however, he was with friends on the side of Little Sacajawea Mountain hiking...in the snow!?! Easter Sunday and snow don't match in my mind - they don't even cozy up as friends. But here are the pictures to prove it (thanks to Henry's text):

There are no crocus peeking through, no azaleas in bloom - how do you pluck flowers to take to church to flower the cross when the earth is still sleeping under a blanket of snow? Even when we lived in Canada there were signs of Spring and rebirth when Easter arrived. This was mind blowing.

After I sat with this incongruent reality for a while, I was grateful for the way it expanded my thoughts. There's a reason why Easter is a season in the church, why we spend weeks leading up to Easter practicing penitence and reflection. We prepare annually for the nonsensical love that Easter celebrates - a love that means our days on earth are not the end of our stories for those who claim Christian as part of our identity. Each year we hear from the pulpit some version of "live as Easter people - full of hope, in response to the love and grace that God Incarnate gifted us - a love and grace we will not fully understand until we find ourselves face to face with our Maker in the afterlife".

I get why people may think Christianity doesn't make sense! The world doesn't make sense, that's for sure - radical love and grace and hospitality have no room in our day to day unless we choose them. I wonder if we Christians (me included) get ourselves all wound around the axle of human depravity 364 days a year and allow the hope of Easter to break through only one day a year when we dress up and order Easter lilies and hide eggs? I think we sometimes live as people blanketed by snow because really internalizing what Easter means and living as Easter people is just far too overwhelming to embrace? I'm finishing seminary and this sort of hope and glory is STILL hard to fathom - I've been studying this Jesus my whole life and very intensely for the last four years and He's still clouded in mystery! 

I guess the endgame for me is this - being Easter people doesn't always feel like freshly springing flowers, sundresses when it's just a tad too cold, bonnets, eggs and chocolate. Being Easter people means we have to live fully as we are in the moment - faithful to our reality and honest about who we are and where we are despite what the Sunday calendar tells us to do. I'd be lying if I said life as a lifelong Christian has always been easy and flowery. I'd be lying if I said I'd never been angry with God or with the Church or with people I love. And that's OK. God is big enough and loving enough to let us feel all the feels and still hold us in the palm of God's hand. So if this past Sunday felt like a snowy mountainside instead of a flower popping party, that's OK too. 

We are Easter people - that means God's love for us in unbreakable and un-quantifiable - even when we can't feel it. Just know that when you and I get glimpses of the joy, shock and redemption of Easter morning that it's a gift. And maybe, just maybe, we can be part of someone else's glimpse of the Divine when we try to love extravagantly, practice radical hospitality and lean into gratitude for the ways we experience new life over and over and over.

Transitional Parenting

Jan 2, 2024 - it's a new year, and while this entire season has certainly felt different, I don't know if I actually like its "new"ness. We're on a maiden voyage in this parenting adventure - having a kid (let's be honest - he's well on his way to adulthood) in their freshman year of college is virgin territory. We practiced during Thanksgiving week and my mom-ing that week wasn't top form. I hadn't anticipated how independence and living life would grow my boy so dramatically and it was jarring to anticipate my high school son coming home only to meet my college son who's knee deep in the process of his becoming. What I learned during that week at Thanksgiving was how both he and I needed to lean into this transition and trust each other as we figured it out. We had a heart to heart at the end of his Thanksgiving time at home and it finished with both of us having lots to think about.

Our man-boy came home on December 15th for Christmas. I had a new plan - all four of our family sat down and talked about hopes and expectations for our time together over Christmas. We landed on having dinner together every Sunday and at least 3 other times during the week. Henry and Lydia talked about how they'd share the car they both consider 'theirs'. Philip and I shared that we really enjoy having all 4 of us under one roof and wanted to have some fun together. Henry reiterated how important his time at the gym is for his sanity. I wrote our plans down on a calendar and posted it for everyone to see. On paper, we nailed it.

And yet - I found myself struggling with how woven together grief and gratitude are - especially in the midst of transition. No matter how many conversations defining our expectations, no matter the accuracy of the calendar, no matter the fact that Christmas comes every December 25th, this year was different. And while I love having everyone home, I miss the wonder that came with anticipating Santa's arrival, I miss the joy of Christmas parades, I miss that late bedtime on December 24th, I miss having children. And also - I delight in who my children have become and are becoming, I'm so proud of their character and independence, Philip and I celebrate they're growing into exactly the kind of people we prayed they'd become. But that delight, pride, celebration and gratitude is tempered by how quickly they've grown. People say time is a thief and it's so very true. I want to go back and slow it down because I'm afraid I missed some of the wonder and joy of parenting littles in the midst of trying to get it all done. 

Yet here I am. I am the mama of delightfully funny, smart, independent young adults who still need and want my guidance (at least sometimes). Being in a 'new year' is bittersweet. It brings fresh hope for all that is to come, but it also confirms another chapter has closed and I feel that more tangibly this year than ever. So this year, I'm leaning into the reality that grief and gratitude are siblings who live to balance each other and I'm trying to do the same. My ultimate goal is to honour the grief and focus on the gratitude, knowing that life marches on and there's so much more living to do. I pray I do this life, and my family, proud.