"I am guiding you on the way of wisdom and I am leading you on the right path." Proverbs 4:11

Category: little house on 9th

covid-19 journal: spring snow

I grieve the losses small business in my town are taking

The life altering changes college students are facing

The doctors and nurses and grocery workers and the sacrifices they are daily making

Yet

When the spring snow comes

And 2 boys make plans, calculating their school assignments and class requirements.  Fill me in on the way the timing will work, the supplies they need, the adjustment to meals they’d prefer (we want to work till dark, then we’ll come in and eat dinner, we’ll start first thing in the morning and work on school at noon)

And they go out and build an igloo in this perfectly packable 8” of snow?

Oh the joy!

Had we been operating according to our regularly scheduled programming, today would have looked more like a conversation in the car wondering if the snow will still be there when the school day ended.

In Colorado, it hits like a train wreck, but clears away much faster.

but we have been forced home, paving the way for today’s igloo building by 2 brothers soon to be leaving the nest.  All the words about all the plans, the engineering decisions, the explanations; “wow zeke that’s brilliant!”, instead of mere imaginations of what could be if the sun could hide some of her strength, are actual reality!

And I wonder

After this is all over

Will we all return to the way things were?  Will we have learned and grown more balanced?  Will we value relationships over productivity?  Will we understand the lifelong benefits of bonding experiences? Will we be open to them when they come, willing to flex and disappoint the powers that be for what really matters in the right now? 

These are the questions I ask myself. I lean towards duty bound, loyalty, integrity and strong work ethic.  These things are valuable-essentials.  Yesterday morning was a duty morning of boys shoveling when they’d rather be warm and still in bed.  It’s not an abandoning of that I’m questioning.  It’s walking in the nuanced balance of the Holy Spirit who gives strength for the drudgery hard work, and courage for the invited play. 

This virus has stretched us all, but when the rubber band snaps back, will we take on our former form, or will our shape have changed from the stretching? 

will I remember this day, and have the courage to cancel school myself and allow these boys to stay home and play?  The consequences would be steep-for one at the community college and the other well into his high school NHS career. 

Would a teacher at the high school have freedom to take the students outside and have a lesson in igloo building because the materials have fallen at his door and won’t last till tomorrow? Would that courageous decision bear more impact than anything he does all year?  Would those students remember that day and the lessons they learned for the rest of their lives? 

Could that be the new normal we aspire to?  A new flexibility. Permission to be human?  Valuing the immense learning, bonding, health in perceived play? 

It’s hard to say, and is yet another thing out of my control. 

But what is in my control is today-to observe, to receive the joy in what has been given to us in the midst of the hard. to write it all down. 

A spring snow in the time of corona

unexpected

the swat team camped outside our house yesterday along with all that went with them; ems, fire, bomb squad, and multiple police cars.  they rolled in around 8, and finally rolled out around 5.  it didn’t end well for the person who’d barricaded themselves with a rifle in their apartment.

the first to arrive were the fire trucks.  when they pulled up in front of my house my first thought was concern for my next door neighbor.  thoughts of how long it’d been since we’d had a conversation over the fence.  why hadn’t i shared my latest homemade jam or invited him over for some iced tea?  partly it’s because i haven’t made jam in a while, the freezer is still holding last years crop.  partly it’s the demands of life in the current season we are in.  mostly because i’m not spending the time in the yard i used to in the spring/summers.  this makes me sad.

once we realized the fire trucks weren’t for a neighbor who was ill, as police car after police car rolled in, and men got out and put on helmets and vests and grabbed their big guns.  when the swat truck rolled by and then all the others.  we knew it was going to be an interesting morning.  i decided to wait at home till it all cleared up, expecting it’d be a couple of hours or so.  the last time the person ran around thru the neighborhood-i don’t recall how that turned out but do remember it didn’t take too long.  this time was different, it took all day.  after the first round of tear gas shots, a couple cops pulled up with pizza, water, and snacks.  we realized it might be a while.

the point of all this isn’t so much about the event, but about the thinking after.

i love living here.

i love knowing the grocery checkers by name.  knowing my neighbors by name.  i love the old houses and quirky landscapes.  walking to the library or downtown-tho we don’t do that near enough these days.

this sort of thing could happen in any neighborhood really.  this doesn’t make me feel unsafe, but it does remind me of what matters and emboldens me to be a bit more diligent to make the most of the opportunities given to connect with the people around me.  the police tried hard for a different outcome, for hours and hours we were inconvenienced to save a mans life.  i’m sad that it didn’t end well.

as we move along back to ‘regularly scheduled programming’ may we continue to grow in flexing and rolling with what each day holds in spite of the plans and agendas we seek to honor.

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