Thankful.

Today was kind of a chaotic day, and by chaotic, mostly I mean busy.

Our HVAC install began at last (Merry Christmas to us!), so by tomorrow we should have a heated house once again. They arrived as I was getting Danny’s lunch together (pick up hangry toddler so he can’t create chaos elsewhere, answer door, hear intro talk from HVAC folks, direct them to HVAC stuff, go back to lunch making, new HVAC person arrives, repeat…), and they really started making all the noise right as Danny went down for his nap (miraculously, he managed an hour of sleep!). The folks finished for the day as we were sitting down to supper, and then I helped them jump their truck battery as Micah started Danny’s bath. Nothing about today was bad, it was just a constant juggle, and that wears me out.

Grief season has worn me out, too, as has the constant swirl of hard news from Gaza, and the tough stuff in the lives of the ones I love most. I have no solutions, no easy answers but to somehow love and keep on loving. It seems that’s how the Prince of Peace would manage.

And tonight I’m also throwing in gratitude to help my own little insides find some rest. There is something about naming the things/people/realities I’m thankful for that literally allows me to exhale, to release the breath I’ve been holding while I worry about all the hard things. My body-mind-spirit self needs that exhale to keep going, so tonight I’m taking a few minutes to write down those bright spots. We need the light in this coming week—the darkest of the year before Winter Solstice and the coming Light.

I’m thankful for all of you. We’re meant to do this life and the one to come together, I think. There is no other way worth imagining. May we be people who pause to say thank you and then, people who keep on loving.

The Stories

I’ve spent the year reading romance novels.

They’ve never featured prominently on my book lists for the year (click over to Bookshelf for the annual lists), and I think part of that is my English major training…most professors didn’t say it outright, but there was always a little bit of disdain for '“popular fiction” in those hallowed English Building halls. I found myself reading a few in 2022, in those early days of breastfeeding my brand new baby all day long. I was stuck in the rocking chair, exhausted, and with an audible subscription and a Libby app loaded with holds from the local library. The modern romances I read were entertaining. The writing was good, the characters book-ish and delightful. The stories reliably ended happy.

In 2023, I found my way back to those happy stories, almost without realizing what I was doing. I’ve had plenty of thoughtful literary fiction on my shelf, tons of nonfiction full of ideas I’d like to explore, but I found myself returning again and again to those cheerful covers with heroines doing their self-discovery work and falling for the friend/enemy/boy next door in the process. And here we are beginning December, and I’d venture a guess that this new-to-me genre was probably my most-read of 2023.

I think it was because of Claire. The year began with losing her, and for me it has been a year of finding her in all kinds of small, regular moments. I’ll hear her voice in my head while I’m cutting up veggies for salad (she preferred TINY chunks of celery and carrots). I’ll feel her chuckle when Danny does something particularly funny. I’ve even found her in the pages of these books. Romance was her favorite genre. I never understood it before, but I think I do more now than ever: sometimes we read for comfort. We need an old reliable story to remind us that things can and do end well, albeit with some bumps along the way. There are plenty of hardships and horrors to face (she knew it better than anyone), but a brief step into a happy tale can give us the strength to get up and do the work again the next day and the next.

It matters what stories we’re telling.

That’s what I’m thinking about, as we get ready to start the advent season: What story am I reading? Which one am I living? Is there ample others-oriented love? Does my heart need to believe again in a God who loves endlessly, who moves into the neighborhood to make friends with a stranger? Will there be peace in the end, even though it seems so opposite to what I hear and see?

May we be motivated by Love, through and through, until it makes all things new.

Five Years in Memphis

You were 23 when you moved to a foreign place. You were on an adventure. You were full of dreams and sunny expectations. You had such a brave face, afraid to let the ones you loved worry. You were so lonely that spring.

Do you remember that day at your secretary desk? You were making a call to follow up on an order you placed with Gopher Sports, a sporting goods company in Minnesota. You called the customer service line, and a cheerful northern voice answered on the other end, a voice from a place that sounded like home. You nearly cried for the joy of something familiar. The order issue was quickly resolved, and you actually told the lady on the other end that her northern accent made your day. Bless your heart. You were so sad, but you didn’t have words for the way you felt. You were caught between the beauty of a well-loved place, and the making of a new one. Those were the hardest days of forging a new home, the days when every morning, joy felt like a new battle to fight.

Those were also the days of you deciding: you deciding home was worth the effort. Those were the days you bought a lawn mower to take care of the front yard, a lawn mower without an engine, because it just felt right to handle it in your own strength. Those were the days of wearing yourself out gardening until the sun went down, of eating big salads for dinner, because lettuce was cheap, and of welcoming friends and travelers almost every summer weekend. Those were the days of learning the freedom of giving what you have honestly, no facades or play-acting. Those were the days of loving and of being loved in the stickiest, messiest places.

That was the beginning.