View from the Prairie Box

I believe in God and love him with my whole heart.

That may be a weird thing to say because God is pretty mysterious and also he’s pretty big and so what does it mean to be one small person in this universe and declare that I love the One who made it?

I’ve been mindful of the seasons, of the church calendar to be specific, as I teach my 4th-8th graders a bible lesson each week. Connecting new material to old material is the way we learn, so I refer back to concepts we’ve already learned or holidays that are already in their lives, and lately we’ve been looking forward a little bit. Jesus was born into a people, born for a specific task, born to continue the story God began with humanity, and born to redeem. We’re now beyond the Easter story and working through WHAT IT ALL MEANS.

Working through WHAT IT ALL MEANS is the work of a lifetime. Truly, I’m working through WHAT IT ALL MEANS at age 44 and I’ll continue working through WHAT IT ALL MEANS until I meet Jesus face to face.

I believe the bible is true.

I believe God really does love me and I learn more about how He does that all the time.

I believe Jesus was God—is God—and that he died in order to redeem us from our sins. He balances the scales of justice cosmically and ultimately.

And I believe that the Spirit of God dwells in me now. He dwells in those who believe in him, giving us insight and correction, hope and purpose to live out our days. 

This week has been a doozy. May brings with it wonderful occasions that leave me breathless on a normal year, but this year it’s all I can do to doggie paddle in order to keep my head above water. It’s the end of the school year—for me as a teacher and my kid as a junior. (JUNIOR. Lord have mercy.) It’s Livia’s EIGHTEENTH birthday tomorrow and, no, I have not absorbed what that signifies. It encompasses everything from “how did these years go so fast?” to “in Nebraska you’re a minor until age 19” to “what should she wear for her senior pictures” to “I’m so incredibly proud of her” and everything in between. It’s Mother’s Day. And maybe it’s still Infertility Awareness Week? And it’s Birthmother’s Day and boy oh boy do we miss and think of Livia’s first family with the biggest love in our hearts right now. Lots. of. feelings. It’s also graduation week for dear ones who have worked hard for their advance degrees and we are so proud of them. It’s Teacher Appreciation Week and we had an IEP meeting and, wow, do I love these people who love my kid day in and day out. I also love my students in ways that keeps my mind and heart both tremendously busy and tremendously full.

And in the middle of all the celebrations, there is hardship. 

Long-loved friends are dying and that seems impossible. There’s pain and suffering and being too far away to physically help those you love. There are loved ones ailing. In hospitals fighting for their lives and awaiting surgeries with fear and trepidation. The country is torn over women’s rights and women’s health issues and the ever-pressing question of whose life is worth more? Why do we even have to decide whose life is worth more? They are ALL worthy of love and attention and good care and respect. But who wins? Truly, no one wins. Not before Roe v Wade and not after. Not if abortion is a federal issue or a state issue. Women have always been on the crap end of healthcare and that game continues on. No winners, just a lot of losing.

Lord God, what do we make of all of this? How can May usher in so much joy and so much heartache all at once?

From one small person in the expanse of an entire universe I do not know. But God, you are huge and you are great. You created every creature, you know the number of hairs on my head, you clothe the lilies in the field, you know the number of stars in the sky. The pain is not too much for you to handle, too great for you to understand. The celebrations are not so small as to escape your notice. You see it all and you care for us in the midst of it all.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
    Or where shall I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
    If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

If I take the wings of the morning
    and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
    and the light about me be night,”

even the darkness is not dark to you;
    the night is bright as the day,
    for darkness is as light with you.

A few years ago a life coach observed that I was beating my head against a brick wall. She knew I wanted to fly.

Up until that point I hadn’t considered it really, but I came to acknowledge that I felt like I was living in a straitjacket, that all my options were wrapped up and, boy, did I really want to stretch. What would it feel like to be set free? What would it feel like to exercise my abilities and to move beyond the boundaries that felt stifling?

Around the time I met with this wonderful life coach I wrote the following in my journal about what the word “thrive” meant to me:

• to be excited, somewhere to channel the excitement
• to blossom, to flower, to spread arms wide and run toward the light
• to be uniquely used
• to feel alive, vibrant, meant to be, purposeful
• to be DELIGHTED & DELIGHTFUL & DELIGHTED IN

For years my prayers had begged God for some pretty specific things. I suffered greatly in spirit, going over my giftings with a fine toothed comb, reviewing my resume to see if I was falsely understanding who God had made me to be. My girlfriends, bless their hearts, heard my woes for many years and I am certain I exhausted them. My husband supported my pursuits, heard all the hardness and sadness in my heart, and in turns affirmed me, held me while I cried, challenged my thinking, and then set me back on my feet. And through it all, I turned the the One who made me and we talked. We talked a lot.

In this instance, my internal struggles made it very easy to say yes when an opportunity finally came my way. The yes was so immediate that I forced myself to take a breath and then consult with both my 17-year-old daughter and my husband. And then a whole bunch of other circumstances came into play—and I haven’t wrapped my head around all of that yet. Being in one position—a life-giving position—yielded to another position and now I find myself at the end of a school year preparing to say goodbye, for a season, to my students.

I graduated in 2001 with a Bachelors of Science in Education and a teaching degree in Missouri and here I am in 2022 planning out my final weeks of academia for my middle school students. To say I did not see this coming is an understatement, but all I can do for the moment is to turn back to that concept of thriving and how utterly freeing it is to abandon that straitjacket that hindered me.

I am trusted in my position in the classroom. Appointed to it, seen worthy of it, entrusted with it.

I am released to be my very best self. In this space I’m encouraged to be creative, to teach, to shepherd, to encourage, to raise up these precious young people into their futures.

I have autonomy here. There is always accountability and structure, which is so important, but also autonomy.

I work within a team of godly and wise people to bring excellence to all we do.

I’m compensated fairly for my hard work and for my resume.

I still find it tremendously sad that the place where I felt most restricted and bound against being fully myself was in the church. I don’t think it has to be that way by any means, but it’s the reality for many women with leadership skills.

For now I praise God for the good gift of work, for my incredible co-teachers, and for the students I spend time with each week. They engage my mind and spirit, they challenge me, and in our classroom I am free to exercise my gifts in a thousand fulfilling ways.

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.

A 5:00am wakeup time—becoming more common in the past few years—had me picking wallpaper images for my phone. This shot captures SO MUCH JOY for me. You know I’m serious because I wrote that in caps. Livia and I… mmm… invited ourselves along on my parents’ 50th anniversary trip to Sanibel Island last October and the location was absolutely dreamy. The water was just cool enough and the views were incredible. I found myself feeling more centered and at peace than I had been in a long time. My dad is walking in the background there, I’m admiring the world around me, and Liv, always the first to the sensory table in preschool, is shelling. Of course. We still bear loads of shells from the Gulf, months later, in frozen Nebraska.

I love my home. And I love to get away, especially to the ocean, and then I love to come home again.

This pic is giving me life today.

A few weeks ago I got sick with Influenza A. Apparently I haven’t had the real flu since middle school. How’s that for staying healthy? I get the flu shot every year as recommended for diabetics and I’ve been able to avoid great illness… until 2021… which saw my return to a classroom size larger than one. Let’s just say that I witnessed a LOT of snotty noses at school. I’d often ask a 2nd grader if they’d like to go blow their nose and the answer was usually, “Nah.” I’d sit pretty close to 1st graders as they practiced reading and, despite my mask, I knew whatever was virally floating around their own homes was also floating around my office. Towards the end of the semester I got lax with masking. And then… hello, flu.

I have a wonderful team of people around me urging me to rest and push fluids while sick. So grateful for them. But I had forgotten what it’s like to be sick when you have diabetes.

KETONES.

Damn those ketones. I’m no scientist, but I do know that illness can stress a body with Type 1 diabetes, which then produces ketones. You ended up with too many ketones in your blood and you can go into ketoacidosis—your blood is literally too acidic.  

So to review: when a person with diabetes gets sick they can’t simply sleep and wake up and drowsily drink Gatorade until they pass out again. That’d be too easy. There’s a lot of monitoring that needs to happen to avoid diabetic keto acidosis (DKA). 

I feel like Influenza A was a timely reminder for me that I cannot mess around with not masking right now. Much of our population can get sick and tough it out at home. Meanwhile I’ve got that little thing called ketones that can swoop in and kill me if not handled immediately. 

Our hospitals are full. They’re so full that people who need quick care may not receive it. On a good day when I visit a hospital it will involve entrusting my care—my very specific and detailed diabetes regimen—to a team of doctors and nurses who know far less about my situation than I do. Let’s just say that I do everything possible to avoid visiting hospitals. 

At this point in the pandemic, with omicron knocking down people left and right, I have to stay vigilant. 

(You can see how easy it is to be anxious! Working hard on that, too.)

I know it’s okay to cry.

And still I don’t want to.

I miss my community.

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. 

I keep feeling the urge to cling to what is good.

1. Friends and their fireplace

2. A pan of cinnamon rolls

3. My dog on a luggage tag

Cling to what is good.

How many people are ever ready for a pandemic? Very few, I’d guess. We’re now looking at Year 3 of living with the coronavirus and psychologically it’s really… really something.

I’m still trying to figure out my own reactions to events in the past few weeks. All I can surmise so far is that I had expectations for the holiday season and then I was very surprised by some big changes, namely the mask mandate for my city. I care far less about the mandate for the city (thanks to pickup grocery orders) than I do about the ramifications it has on my weekly plans with church where we **sing**. Let’s just say that I was planning on attending our Christmas Eve candlelight service, and then the mask requirement was dropped completely—by the city and by my church—and bam, I could not in good conscience attend a service where people right next to me would be singing maskless.

I was hurt.

Do I like to admit my hurt in public? 

No, I do not.

For the sake of reflection I’m going to include a few of my social media posts here. My first post was from a mind-boggled state, my second was written with great frustration, and the third came after several days of consideration.

From December 26:

Longtime church goers and church leaders, 

Are you okay with immunocompromised individuals simply not attending your churches in person any longer?

Would your church consider hosting a “masks-required” service so that people at risk could more safely engage in communal worship?

Real questions asked by a real human. Not up for a fight. If you know me then you know that I won’t tolerate disrespect in the comments here. I’m truly interested in your thoughts. 

From December 27:

When I see high school choir kids—singing AND dancing—100% masked and then see Christians in church choirs **not** masked at all during a pandemic… well, my head explodes. Just straight up explodes.

The high schoolers are making the rest of y’all look bad. 

For shame.

From December 28:

Important.

You and I may wildly and vehemently disagree, on a number of topics, and yet we can and should still love one another.

I hold to the exclusivity of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I believe this means that the Church should hold wide open her doors to allow everyone to hear that good news. We need that life-giving good news on a daily basis.

In the past week I have felt like some of you are wearing your nicely working autoimmune systems like armor. You aren’t aware how delightful it is that your body works well, but you’re able to go where you want to go freely and you don’t have to consider others’ welfare very often. I’m so glad your body works. But I will not remain silent about how exclusive the Church becomes when you close your doors to the infirm, to the weak, to the elderly, to the disabled. If I can speak with a bullhorn I will call out the ugliness of such a thing.

I have seen the Church do beautiful things in my lifetime. Beautiful, creative, life-giving, wonderful things.

I tasted my first bit of Covid communion from a car in a parking lot on Father’s Day. A creative pastor (or pastors more likely) decided to hold services outdoors for a season or two and it allowed me to safely take the bread and the cup again. Praise God.

I have seen deacons scroll through church directories to hand out turkeys and cranberries and gift cards to families that needed a boost at Thanksgiving time.

I’ve witnessed elders and their wives coming to tiny apartments to shepherd lonely couples, making an impact for a lifetime. And I’ve seen the same caring individuals pack up and move the umpteenth seminary couple even though it meant personal loss and sadness.

I’ve witnessed parish nurses entering homes and praying over elderly patients stuck in their four walls for far too long.

I’ve read about nurses in hospitals continually being the last faces to cry with, pray over, and witness Covid patients’ final breaths.

I’ve known of churches who sent “We Miss You” postcards to a family who only came through their doors once simply because they know that this viral pandemic has created a pandemic of loneliness.

I’ve seen church members, week after week, giving rides to license-less folks who live in group homes. They’re hungry for community and those simple acts enable them to hear the gospel over and over.

And now I’ve heard of churches still requiring masks so that a few, with chinks in their armor, may still walk safely into their pews.

I’ve heard of spaces where scientists’ opinions are valued and people care about the quality of the air.

I’ve heard story after story of CHRISTIANS WHO CARED. They’ve followed in Jesus’ very footsteps, denying their own comfort for the sake of another. This happens so often and I consider it an enormous privilege to witness and rejoice in it. 

I sometimes speak strongly for the truth, and in this moment I can see how easy it is to leave those like me, with autoimmune disorders, behind. We have a lot to lose if we’ve loved belonging to the body of Christ. We miss communion. We miss congregational singing. We miss hearing your kids in the pews behind us and seeing your family walk up the aisle for the Lord’s Supper. We don’t want to stay home because we need you, church family. We love you. Please creatively love us back.

[Locals and PCA people, please note that I don’t speak as a representative for my particular church,  Redeemer PCA. I resigned from the diaconate last May. My opinions are my own and no one else’s.]

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.

Photo credit: Jen Hinrichs

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.

Embarking on something new in our home—well, not really IN our home—and it’s so cool. I’m inspired by women who know their fields well and welcome others into their spheres. The horses, the people, the horse-sized Great Dane, the barn cat who took her prize back to a quiet corner for a secret lunch, the view of the sun an hour before sunset… all of it charmed me and filled up my girl’s bucket.

As I said yesterday, I do love animals, but the way my kid loves them is a different level.