In the first week of January pretty much everyone I know came down with COVID. My parents had it. Aunts, uncles, cousins. My daughters’ friends had it (they texted and FaceTimed from bedrooms, bound and bored). Our friends in Texas had it. Our mates in England had it. Ireland, too.
So many airline workers had it our flights got cancelled. Lots of flights were cancelled. I called one night to see if I could get a reservation at a restaurant (the website said “reservations only” which was strange for a chicken wings joint). The manager said all his employees were sick, and he didn’t know when he’d be open again.
Maybe you had COVID this month. Odds are you did. I’m sorry.
Many of you also had the joy of snow—which is a real joy and also a real burden, especially if you live in a place where it doesn’t snow often and no one knows how to react and schools close and roads close and church closes and you can’t get groceries. Lots of people recovered from COVID just in time to be snowbound with their children.
You must be exhausted. And it’s still somehow only January.
I’ve always thought January was a terrible spot to begin a year. It’s too cold and dreary. It’s flu season. It’s the month Girl Scout cookies and Christmas credit card bills arrive. For people who’re trying to begin again, it’s rife with reasons to revert to bad habits.
The year should start at Easter. Sign my petition.
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I woke up this morning in a new city. Light streamed in through the windows. Dawn comes early down here in the southern hemisphere. It’s summer. Butterflies flit in the trees. Sunshine turns the whole world electric, saturated, right.
I rolled over, picked up my phone and read a text from my mom sent at 4am: Your Nana passed tonight. I did the time change math. 9pm. At 8:15 Nana had sent me birthday money.
Nana was sick at Christmas, in and out of the hospital, Hospice, assisted living. We found out she had bone cancer in the middle of December. It’s been a month, and now she’s gone.
My spirit is settled. We had beautiful moments together over the holidays. She told stories. I prayed. We read. Nana lived a long life. She was a good grandmother.
But still.
My body is tiring of hardship. Are you tired of hurting yet?
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I spent some time yesterday thinking of ways to help exhausted people. What can I say to lighten the load? What words could work like sleep or silence? I took a shower and a walk. I stared out the window. I sat in front of a blank journal (all my best thinking expedients).
Nothing.
Drowning people don’t want swimming lessons; they want to be saved from drowning.
When you’re tired, you don’t want advice on things to do to be less tired. Please, Jennifer, don’t hand me another thing to do.
I know. I just want to help. I am trying to find saving words that aren’t so hard to hold.
Consider these few vignettes, my two fish and five loaves. Maybe God will multiply their effect. Maybe one will feel like a life raft. Or a cup of coffee. Or like hope.
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My daughter wrote an essay for school the other day. She wrote about Covid and selling our house and travel delays and being alone. She said, “It’s weird that something hurts less when someone’s hurting with you.”
Do you have someone to hurt with? What would it look like to hurt together?
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There’s this moment in the life of the prophet Elijah when he feels like he’s too tired to keep going. He tells God he’s done. He says, I’m alone and I’m tired and I want to stop. An angel shows up and feeds Elijah a snack. He takes a nap after the snack. He eats another snack. And then he’s better, better enough to walk for forty days to meet God.
Maybe you need a nap and snack before your next desert hike.
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When I’m tired I often open up my Bible to Hebrews 12:1-3. The Hebrews writer says,
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Considering Jesus is a good place to start. My gaze could bear fixing.
What if we read Mark today?
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Dostoevsky wrote a book called The Idiot; the idiot character is modeled off Christ. It’s a compliment; you’ll have to read it to see. Anyway, this idiot character is a prince, and he’s the one who says these now famous words: “Beauty will save the world.”
I’m reading Sarah Clarkson’s book, The Beauty of Things, and she asks this question, “What if, in the bent and twisted darkness of our broken world, beauty is God’s theodicy?” What if beauty proves God’s existence and goodness? What if beauty is the things that gets us through?
Have you seen something beautiful today? Where might you look?
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The nap and the snack helped Elijah make the 40 day trek, but they weren’t enough to change his mood for good. When Elijah arrives at the mountain of the Lord (Mt Horeb also known as Mt Sinai), he tells God again that he’s alone and done—no one else serves you, Jezebel’s going to kill me, I want to die. He’s actually not alone (we find out in the next few chapters that several prophets are still living and working in Samaria). But God doesn’t contradict Elijah’s assessment. He accepts it. He says, essentially, You can be done. Let’s make a plan for your retirement, and then I’ll come get you. And that’s what happens. Elijah gives the prophet mantle to Elisha, and God sends a chariot of fire to pick him up and bring him home.
Maybe it’s okay if you quit. Maybe you’ve done enough.
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I’m sitting in this house full of sunlight, and Eve is playing guitar. She’s learning a new song about falling in love in Northern Italy. It sounds like mountains and vespas and high heels on cobblestone streets. London sits at the desk finishing the last delicious pages of a book she’s savored. Justin’s writing, writing about Gideon, about how God saved Israel with a little.
Might I be saved by a little?
A song, sunlight, a glance at my happy family, a 17th century Dutch tableau.
I think I might.
A little glory is sometimes glory enough.
-JL
We made it (eventually).
Well friends, we finally made it to Cape Town (after missing our first flight and waiting for two days in New Jersey with no luggage). We are very, very happy to be in one place for the next three months or so. (We also sold the house quickly. All the praise hands.)
Here’s me celebrating my birthday on a boat. I do love a boat.
Your words came at a perfect time for me today. I've learned when we are disappointed or things not going our way (health) that it is often difficult to see the light. My morning devotional helped me see this and then your writing, "The Goodness," turned my thinking back to positive. Thank you for your words of inspiration! <3
Thank you for the refresher!