In Which I Bike Nine Miles and I Do Not Die

 This is the last weekend of Kittygirl's Spring Break. Kittygirl and Mr. Engineer spent most of the week in the Boston area, where Mr. Engineer's brother lives. Squirrelboy and I did not go because he's taking dual credit classes at the local community college and had their spring break two weeks ago. However, he does not have any Friday classes, so we headed up to visit my parents in Michigan for the weekend. 

Squirrelboy always brings his mountain bike to Michigan because there are some really great trails here. I have a bike I can use here because my parents got bikes to keep here for my family a few years ago. My brother and sister in law are here too. They live just a few hours north, and have been taking some time here to relax after camping in Florida for a month in the converted van.

My brother and sister in law decided to bike to the nearest town this afternoon and invited Squirrelboy to go with them. Then they invited me to go with them. I internally debated it for a few minutes. I tried to think of reasons not to go. I told them I didn't have a helmet here, but then Squirrelboy pointed out that Mr. Engineer keeps an extra helmet here and it would probably fit me. It did. I had a zoom call from 1-3 this afternoon, and I told them not to wait for me, but that I would go if they hadn't left yet when my call was done.

As you likely guessed given the title of this post, they had not left. I went on the bike ride. It's 4.5 miles each way on a bike trail into town, so 9 miles total. Everyone else was faster than me. My brother is older than I am, but in better shape. My sister in law is younger than I am and in better shape. Squirrelboy, of course, is much younger than I am and in much better shape. 

But I made it. I did not turn around and go back to the house after the second difficult hill, though I was sorely tempted to do so. I did have to walk my bike about 1/3 of the way home, every time there was anything resembling an uphill climb. But I made it. I didn't die. I didn't even hate it. I would not actually recommend a fitness plan that consists in occasional 30 minute walks on the treadmill followed up with a 9 mile bike ride. But I'm proud of myself for not backing down.

There are some lessons for life in this. Life is hard. It often feels like a constant uphill battle. This has been especially true the past two years, I think. But persevering through the hard things is worth it. 

Also, life isn't a race. There are going to be people who get through things faster than you. Parenting is not a race, and parenting kids with special needs is definitely not a race. There are some things our kids will do more slowly. There are some things our kids will never be able to do at all. Especially for kids with disabilities that are much more life limiting than the ones my kids have, that can feel super sucky and unfair. And it is.

But if you get stuck in feeling the unfairness you never get anywhere. You need to move forward, in whatever way works for you. Some people can just put their bike in a low gear and fly up the hills. Others will ride up more slowly. Some will get off halfway and walk their bike. Some, like I did a few times today, will start the hill walking their bike and still have to pause for a breather halfway up the hill.

Guess what? All of those ways get you to the top of the hill, and that's what matters. Life isn't a race. Parenting isn't a race. Sometimes all you can do is survive each day, and that's okay. And sometimes you can survive a nine mile bike ride, even though you're middle aged, out of shape, and overweight.

In Which I Share a Valentine Reflection: Love in the Time of Covid

Just in case someone happens across this who has never read one of my previous Valentine homilies, here's a quick recap. A long time ago and a few states away (really more than half my lifetime ago now, boy I'm getting old) I was a woefully single college student planning to celebrate Valentine's Day as "Black [insert day of the week here]". At the eleventh hour I did an about face in my attitude and decided to use the day as an excuse to celebrate the love of family, the love of friends, and the love of God. This was decades before "Galentine's Day" or "Palentine's Day" were trending, so clearly I'm a genius innovator :) (also, how did I get so old ?). I sent an email to some friends encouraging them to do the same. Then I sent a similar email the next year and a tradition was born. The tradition has since evolved into an annual reflection on my faith and life, with some kind of tie in to Valentine's Day. As always, feel free to share if you're so inclined. And on to the message.....

Last year at this time I was typing my Valentine Homily on my phone with one finger. Fourteen days earlier I had broken my wrist at Kittygirl's skating birthday party. The lesson it taught me was to rely on others in ways I don't usually like to do. I naively thought at the time that breaking a bone at my daughter's birthday part would be the most notable party of my year. Little did I know what 2020 had in store for the world. 

We're now 11 months and one day past the first of the stay at home orders here in Kentucky. The last time my kids attended school in person was March 13th of last year. The last time I ate at a restaurant was March 5th of last year. I don't even remember the last time I watched a movie in a theater. My purse now always has several cloth masks in it at all times, with spares in my car. I obsessively tell Kittygirl not to touch things on the rare occasions I bring her with me to the store. We lost spring and summer plans in 2020, and spring break travel this year isn't looking wise either. Even summer plans are very lightly penciled in. We really have no idea from day to day what's going to happen, it seems. Oh, and just for fun, our nation went through some pretty serious political turmoil too. You know, because 2021 had to show up 2020 or something :).

Even with all of that, though, this year has been filled with a lot of good. I fell back in love with writing middle grade fiction and started taking it seriously. I finished two manuscripts and learned how to query agents. I found a community of writers in a similar place on the journey and also began to interact with writers on social media and learned that even the famous ones are more often than not completely normal and really nice people. 

I've enjoyed our Covid-enforced reduced and/or virtualized schedule. Many of the meetings I used to have to drive kids to are now on Zoom. There's no more "Let's make sure to get dinner on the table in time for the guys to leave for Boys Scouts!" There's "Hey, it's 6:59, better log onto to Boy Scout zoom". School starts later, and there's no commute to that either. Mr. Engineer has started to go work in the lab for at least a few hours most weeks, but there are still many days when no one has to leave the house and it's pretty great after having spent years feeling like we were constantly going from one thing to the next.

At the same time, I haven't always enjoyed our Covid-enforced togetherness. My introverted soul is thirsting for more time alone. I survive by taking walks alone most weekdays and grabbing some alone time when the kids are otherwise engaged or after they've gone to bed (Which is often way too late. Did I mention remote school starts later than in person school?).

Loving your family during forced togetherness isn't always easy. Who am I kidding? It isn't usually easy. If I have to tell the kids not to touch each other's couch cushions during online worship one more time my head just might explode. Yet I guarantee I'll do it again next week. And then again. Maybe at some point they'll learn to respect each others' space, but I'm not counting on it. What I AM counting on is that the kids will come out of this pandemic not having hated the time. We've done our best to make this ridiculously unprecedented season not horrible and, dare I say, sometimes actually really good. Our big plans got cancelled, but we did little fun things instead. We played more games. We had more movie nights. And we'll continue doing our best to make this time as good as we can until it's over (because, as much as I hate to say it, it'll be awhile).

Back in another life, when I was a graduate student in Hispanic literature, one of the many books by the master Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez that I was required to read was Love in the Time of Cholera. It really has almost no relevance to what I'm writing about today, but every once in awhile I need to pull out the degrees I don't use and dust them off. The one comparison I can draw is that the protagonist has an awful lot of patience. He literally waits decades after the love of his life marries someone else so that he can declare his love again after her husband dies. Now that's dedication for you. Love in the Time of Covid also requires a lot of patience. You may be patiently waiting for a vaccine appointment so that you can be one step closer to being able to see the loved ones you've had to be apart from during the pandemic. You may be patiently (or not so patiently some days) helping your kids engage with online school even though they're totally over it. You may be patiently donning that mask you're really sick of to go into your job that can't be done remotely.

After all the turmoil of this past year, pandemic-related, politically related, or personal, what I've always come back to is that more than anything else we need to give our fellow human beings love and grace. That doesn't mean people who wrong your or wrong society shouldn't be held accountable. What it does mean is that you're only hurting yourself if you focus your energy on hating them. Grieve the wrongs that are done to you or others. Take action when appropriate. But also look for the good. Look for the love. Look for the joy. It's there, sometimes in the most unexpected places.

In Which My Christmas Tree Becomes a Metaphor for My Life

First of all, happy St. Lucia Day! If you don't happen to  have ever lived in Sweden or be of Swedish origin, you've probably never heard of this day. St. Lucia was a young woman from Sicily in (I think) the 4th century. She was ultimately martyred for her refusal to marry a powerful Roman who was a pagan. She has become the patron saint of the blind (because her eyes were reportedly poked out before she was killed) and of Sweden. She's probably patron of a few other things I as a protestant don't know about.

Sweden adopted Lucia, I think, in large part because her names means light. St. Lucia Day takes place on what (before the calendar was changed) used to be the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year. Her arrival (in the form of girls and young women dressed in white and wearing a evergreen crown with candles) heralds the return of the light and the fact that the days will gradually begin to get lighter and Spring will eventually come. Given that in parts of Sweden it is dark all day long at this point, that's an important reminder.

Facebook posts from my Swedish friends indicate that the commercialized Christmas season has crept further back in the year there just as it has here, but, when I was an exchange student in Sweden in the mid 1990's, the arrival of Lucia heralded the beginning of the Christmas season. Advent had already begun of course, but Christmas decorating, baking, etc., began in earnest after the 13th.

Years ago, before Squirrelboy was born, I was taking my writing more seriously and I had a story published in Spider magazine about a little Swedish girl celebrating St. Lucia Day after her family moved to Peru. When it was first published I didn't have kids', but I offered to come read the story to the classes of my friends who were teachers. Once Squirrelboy started preschool I read it to his class. That continued until 3rd grade. I've now read the story to Kittygirl's class every year since kindergarten, and today was the day. Since I most often come in to read about diabetes, I really enjoy reading something entirely different.

The story was always well liked by Squirrelboy's classmates, but it polls especially well at Kittygirl's Spanish Immersion school. There are both teachers and students at the school who were themselves born in Peru or whose parents immigrated from Peru. It's also particularly gratifying when I read the author's name and the students realized that I, Kittygirl's mother, wrote a story that appeared in a real magazine. I think writers are these far-off mythical people in their minds. Inevitably someone asks if I want to write a book. I was happy this year to report that I've written a book and am researching the best route to get it published.

I've been immensely gratified by the way my kids have reacted to my intention to start taking my writing more seriously, even if it means that there may come a time when I have less time to devote to them. Kittygirl, in fact, social butterfly that she is, would be over the moon if I a) spent enough time writing and b) made enough money to send her to the afterschool program. However, I'm not counting on that since she only has 2 1/2 years left of elementary school. The kids are super excited that I'm working on a book, and both of them have asked to read it when I'm done. Kittygirl even told her gymnastics teacher that her mom is writing a book.

This season has reminded me that my life is a work in progress. I think that's really true of all of our lives, even if special needs of any kind don't figure into them. It feels especially true if you're in the season of actively parenting small (or even taller than you but under 18) humans, but I don't think it ends when your kids leave the house, and I think it applies even if you  never had kids to begin with.

Our Christmas tree this year served as a metaphor for this. Mr. Engineer and Kittygirl left to get a tree at about 2pm Sunday. The idea was that they'd be back no later than 3:30, the tree would be up a little before 4, and all the decorating would be accomplished by the time the kids went to bed.

That's not what happened, however. It was almost 4 by the time the tree-procurers returned, but that wasn't the main obstacle. They had chosen the biggest tree we've ever had. Somehow it didn't occur to Mr. Engineer that our small tree stand might not support a larger tree.

It took him a long time to get the tree balanced in the tree stand. By the time it happened, in fact, we were sitting down to dinner. Five minutes into dinner there was a crash from the living room we all rushed in to see the tree tipped over onto an end table. Thankfully, there were no highly breakable decorations in the path of the tree.

Mr. Engineer made a detour to Meijer after dropping off Squirrelboy at youth group.  He came home with the most expensive tree stand, reasoning that a heavy metal stand would be more likely to help the tree balance. After a lot of work, we realized that stand was also a failure. Mr. Engineer made a trip back to Meijer for a third stand. This time he get one intended for a tree measuring up to 10 feet even though our tree is only 8 feet high. The good news is the new stand was plastic and only half the cost of the metal one he returned. The even better news is that it finally worked.

By the time this was all done, it was time for the kids to get ready for bed. I convinced Mr. Engineer to work together to string lights on the tree. This is an activity that's impossible (or nearly so) for one person to do alone in the position in which we put our tree (up against the picture window in the living room).

It wasn't until Wednesday that I actually finished the tree. Given that I'd expressed late last week that I was going to start taking my writing more seriously I had to actually spend some time editing my long-neglected novel. I also had to grocery shop on Monday and do a handful of other errands. In the end, though, the tree really was the most beautiful one we've ever had and I think it was worth the trouble.

We didn't realize when we set out to get a Christmas tree on Sunday afternoon that it would turn into a multi-day ordeal involving three tree stands, two trips to the store, and a tree crashing down in the living room. If we had known what this tree would bring, Kittygirl and Mr. Engineer might have chosen a smaller tree. I'm sure this hypothetical smaller tree would have been nice, but it wouldn't be the thing of incredibly beauty that our current tree is.

I think life works like that more often than not. We often set out with a particular plan for the way our lives are going to go. More often than not, that beautifully crafted plan crashes around us just as our tree crashed down in the living room.. We could have conceded defeat, tossed the Christmas tree in the backyard, and bought a smaller, easy to decorate artificial tree. It would have looked fine, and I imagine there are families out there for whom this could have been the best choice because of a variety of other stressors operating on their lives.

Most of the time, though, it makes the most sense to persevere and figure out how to reconstruct our plan in a way that fits our current circumstances. That might look like accepting our child's or own diagnosis and figuring out how to fit it into our lives. It might look like realizing our original dream (having healthy kids, or kids who are brilliant in school, etc.) isn't going to happen but learning to find the hidden blessings in what we do have.

As I discussed more in depth in a post back in September, my theology doesn't teach me that "everything happens for a reason" or that God purposely orchestrates every single aspect of every single person's life. What I do believe wholeheartedly, however, is that, at the end of time, everything will be redeemed and that, while we live in time, God can use our circumstances (as horrible or simply annoying as they may be) to teach us and to bless us even though He did not directly cause them and He grieves over the tragic things in our lives as much as we do.

God desires to shape our lives into something beautiful. However, this takes time. In fact, I think we may actually be reshaped into different beautiful things at different stages of our lives. Right now, though, some of us are caught in the messy middle. Maybe we realize we are being shaped. Maybe we even firmly trust that God is shaping our lives into something breathtaking. However, right at this moment, we feel like an undecorated Christmas tree tipped over in the living room. We're afraid we might just be tossed away to make way for something simpler and easier to put up.

In the end, though, God will lift us up, balance us, and decorate us appropriately if we allow Him to do so.