So far, 2020 has been a difficult road to travel for us all.  I’m deeply thankful that Karl and I have just had the ability to unplug, disengage, and step back for a while. We hooked on to the trailer, added our four-wheelers to the ‘train’, and took off for a couple of weeks.  First stop: Encampment, where we met with dear friends we hadn’t seen in about twelve years. I’ll admit, I’d wondered if after so long we’d be able to renew our bond, but it didn’t take long to realize that some friendships, some connections, are timeless and enduring. Laughs, memories, and making new treasured moments became the focus. We spent nearly five days together, and as I waved when they pulled out of camp, I couldn’t help but feel grateful for Ken and Lynn, the joy of seeing them, treasuring their company, and the mutual resolve to get together again SOON.  I also couldn’t help but feel as if something inside me, some part of who I am that had been lying ignored and withered in the bottom of my soul had just been carried into the light and given a healthy dose of life.

Our next stop on our ‘unplugged tour’ was a camping spot we’d visited about three years ago. Though it was windy and temperatures got a little chilly at night (28 degrees!), we explored with hikes and four-wheelers the beauty of the forest, climbed steep hills, drank icy water from a spring bubbling straight out of the ground. Again, as I studied the details of wild flowers, or watched a hawk playing in the wind, and listened to the rush of mountain creeks over rocks, I got the sense that something within me was trying for my attention.  Something I’d allowed to be stifled and subdued by the ugliness and uncertainty that I had been obsessing about was aching to be freed. 

One night, I crept out alone and stood under the velvet night sky.  In the dark, with stars so alive and vivid I could almost reach them, I watched a falling star skim the blackness above my head. It moved slowly, leaving a path of sparkles. In the dark silence after the lights faded, I felt God’s presence.  He came as a wordless reminder that while nature is infinite in scope and majesty, and the din of evil and the tyranny of the world’s urgent demands engage me, I am God’s precious creation, His loved child.  Nothing.  Not one thing the world can try to demand is more True or important that knowing and owning this one fact.   

Editing a novel to get it ready to publish is a daunting task – in many ways harder than writing the story in the first place. Before I ask anyone else to read my work, I’ve scoured it for any verbal nonsense I can find.  When I reach the ‘have-someone-else-edit-this’ stage of writing, though, it never fails that I am humbled.  After I got Mountain Time back from my editor, I learned that for my whole life I have misunderstood the word describing the bolt of electricity that jabs down from the sky during a storm.  I always called it ‘lightening’.  Hmmm.  Really, it’s lightning.  One less syllable.  When I received Changing Skies back from my editor, I was shown the error of my ways with two other words.  Did you know that complement and compliment are both words, aren’t caught by spell-check, and mean two different things?  Apparently I didn’t. Same goes for assent and ascent.  Huh! Be assured as you read Changing Skies that I’ve spelled them and used them correctly, through no fault of my own!

I have a feeling that even if I spell lightning wrong, or use the wrong form of complement, you would be able and willing to understand what I was trying to say. You might shake your head at my mistake, but you’d get my point.  Why is it then, that Americans are currently having such trouble communicating?  It seems as if it has become fashionable to aggressively misunderstand another person’s intent, especially when there’s a chance you don’t agree with them.  Creating controversy by deliberately misinterpreting another’s words is so derisive and divisive. It’s mean, and it damages us all.  That’s a kind of verbal nonsense that I wish we could edit out of the story we are living.

April showers bring May flowers. April winds bring tornadoes and wrecked lives.  April viruses bring sickness, death, cabin fever, money worries, and concerns about the growing infringement on our Constitutional rights.  It makes me think about other storms. My thoughts keep going to how the disciples felt as they rocked along in their little boat watching a ‘furious squall’ bear down on them as an exhausted Jesus slept on a cushion in the bow.  I imagine there were showers, winds, and fear.  Lots of fear. They knew Jesus was with them, but he was asleep, not seeming to care about the amount of water in the boat.  They were scared.  

I understand them.  I know Jesus is with me.  I know He’s got this.  I know my eternity is secure, but the rest of this month worries me.  The disciples reacted by going to Jesus with their fear.  They woke Him up, telling Him, “Hey, a little help here—we’re going to drown!” I like to picture what happened next.  Jesus: groggy, sleepy eyed, His hair sticking out with divine bedhead. He sits up and looks around.  He sighs.  He puts a hand up and tells the storm, “Enough!” Winds die, the sea flattens out. Then He looks at His friends and says, “Why are you afraid, oh you of little faith?”  I don’t hear in His voice anger or disappointment as much as a kind of loving accountability. So. Here we are.  April badness is buffeting us.  It occurs to me that while others are standing at the railing focusing on the onslaught, letting their fear grow while they lose faith, the safest place in this boat right now is snuggled up on the cushion in the bow next to Jesus. 

Yesterday was Palm Sunday.  It’s a day in history that I often struggle to understand.  How could a crowd wave palms and shout Hosanna on Sunday then shake their fists and demand Jesus’ crucifixion just a few days later?  The key is to understand their disappointment.  They were expecting this Jesus to enter Jerusalem like Rambo and kick ass – defeat the Romans and usher in a new era of prestige and independence. Jesus didn’t ‘live up’ to those expectations. He allowed Himself to be arrested, He refused to defend himself to Herod or Pilate. He didn’t resist. It looked like weakness.  It wasn’t what the people expected.  They were disappointed.  

Right now, life is pretty hard.  We have a list of ‘needs’ and wants.  We have another list of who is responsible to provide those things for us: the government, our employers, our doctors, our spouses, God.  As I read and listen to news reports, I am bombarded with talking heads telling me, with breathless and urgent voices, who the Disappointer of the Day is, who deserves blame.  We are conditioned to be caught up in the mob mentality that demands immediate satisfaction of our desires and condones disrespect and hate when those demands aren’t met. 

I want to be clear:  I don’t consider myself highly insightful or wise in the heat of the moment, and I’ll confess that I could have gone from palm waving to fist lifting within those few days had I been there.  But I hope I’ve learned a few things in studying the events of Holy Week, and so I want to be clear:  I am rejecting disappointment in others and I refuse to toss blame like it’s confetti at some macabre pity party. I am going to pray for our leaders, count my blessings, and take responsibility for my own choices.  And , I’m going to trust a risen Savior who kicked death’s ass in His own way, and promises good for us.

Like you, I had plans.  I had a hair appointment for this Wednesday.  We were excited about a trip the first of May to Michigan to celebrate with Kody, our grandson as he graduates from college.  I’m supposed to be going to Malta in June with Amanda.  I had plans, darn it! Not anymore.  Plans, not just for the next couple of weeks, but much more long term plans, are cancelled, postponed, changed.  It’s not like I’m miserable at home.  I’m loving it.  I love being home with my best friend, doing crafts, writing, reading.  But.  I had plans.

As you know, I have a quarantine list.  I’ve been pretty successful at crossing ‘to dos’ off that compilation.  Last week, I spent a lot of time in the basement sewing and I’m happy to report that I’ve finished a ton of quilt blocks.  Interestingly, the final quilt blocks didn’t turn out as I’d originally planned.  At first, I was going to make blocks called nine patches. They look sort of like a tic-tak-toe board with nine small squares of fabric arranged in three rows of three.  Pretty.  I’ve already made a nine-patch quilt, though, and after I’d sewn several, I decided that they were a little boring.  So I visited Pinterest and discovered a twist on nine patches.  Back downstairs, I took my already finished blocks and cut them into quarters.  Destructive and scary. I flipped two of the quarters 180 degrees and sewed the whole shebang back together.  Whoa!  My change of plan resulted in a very interesting and intricate looking design.  Hmmm.

Okay, Lord.  I see the parable here.  I had plans.  Life and the world and a virus have cut those plans up into small pieces.  I can cry.  I can worry.  Or, I can make something beautiful and much more interesting with what I’m left with.  Okay, Lord.  You know best!