Daily Devotion - April 21
I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara
The other night, we (my daughter) realized (complained) that even though we are all four stuck here in the same house together, other than dinner, we are not really ever all together. (The curse of four introverts stuck at home!) After a Sunday afternoon spent playing a verbal Apples to Apples game across the fence with the neighbor kids, and watching their family (all four extroverts) play badminton and hang out picnicking in their yard, my daughter requested that we play together more.
For our family, (unlike the neighbors), home is where we get time and space alone. Out there is where we connect - with friends, work, etc, but also, it turns out, with each other. At home, various combinations of us hang out, work on a project, go for a walk, have a conversation... But all of us together? Dinner.
This works fine if we can go places and do things, and - especially central and valuable to our family - travel together. That's how we feed the needs for play and fun and connection together. But right now we can't go places and do things; we can only stay home. So...what? We don't hang out at all?
My 12 year old beat me to this understanding of our family dynamics, and found her way all the way to a request while it was all still dawning on me.
During this pandemic, realizations seem to drop like a brick on the chest, and in that moment it occurred to me that I have been treating this as temporary.
Just get through today. Just get through this week.
Even though I know we don't know when it will end or what will come after, I keep forgetting that we don't know when it will end or what will come after. And, like the school secretary's colorful poster said, "Life is what happens while you're waiting for life to happen."
So, how can we claim and truly live the life we are in, even when it's not a life we would, or do, choose? (And how do we do that when it actually is not permanent, or even sustainable??) How do we let ourselves relax into something we resent?
How do we adjust to this and not just endure it?
Other than some routines, chores and walks that are helping us endure this life, we haven't really adjusted. We haven't settled our souls into this life. I have't. I have been holding back, biding time, waiting for the good to resume. But that's no way to live the only life we really get - this one we have today.
Adjusting is accepting. Even typing that sentence feels hard. I don't want to accept that the trips and plans we've been looking forward to all year are gone. I don't want to accept that summer might be a wasteland of emptiness (or some other, less dire way of saying that which I will come to after more acceptance). But I want to live as fully and joyfully present as possible in the actual life that is happening right now.
I've decided to adjust.
Tonight is the kick-off of our coronavirus quarantine twice weekly "Family Fun Night."
Each Family Fun Night will have an Entertainment Director (tonight: me). The activity will be a surprise. Ok, I'll tell you: Tonight I plan to give everyone 60 seconds to select an object in the house, and then we'll film commercials for the items featuring how they can be uniquely useful during Quarantine.
Here's hoping it meets our needs for fun, play and connection.
How are you living in your life right now?
What realizations have hit you during in this?
What have you had to adjust to?
How have you resisted adjusting?
How has adjusting or accepting freed you?
CONNECTING RITUAL:
When I was four years old, standing with my dad in the church narthex, a man came over and showed my dad his one year sobriety chip. When he walked away my dad explained to me what the chip meant, and then he taught me the Serenity Prayer. I was charmed. I had never heard of a pre-written prayer before. And I found the prayer itself very clever and insightful. I recited it to myself all the way home until I had it memorized.
The Serenity Prayer was written in 1932 by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous in 1941. It goes:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Perhaps, tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might pray in this way, and so join our hearts:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
like...
grant me the courage to change the things I can,
like...
and grant me the wisdom to know the difference.
Amen.
For our family, (unlike the neighbors), home is where we get time and space alone. Out there is where we connect - with friends, work, etc, but also, it turns out, with each other. At home, various combinations of us hang out, work on a project, go for a walk, have a conversation... But all of us together? Dinner.
This works fine if we can go places and do things, and - especially central and valuable to our family - travel together. That's how we feed the needs for play and fun and connection together. But right now we can't go places and do things; we can only stay home. So...what? We don't hang out at all?
My 12 year old beat me to this understanding of our family dynamics, and found her way all the way to a request while it was all still dawning on me.
During this pandemic, realizations seem to drop like a brick on the chest, and in that moment it occurred to me that I have been treating this as temporary.
Just get through today. Just get through this week.
Even though I know we don't know when it will end or what will come after, I keep forgetting that we don't know when it will end or what will come after. And, like the school secretary's colorful poster said, "Life is what happens while you're waiting for life to happen."
So, how can we claim and truly live the life we are in, even when it's not a life we would, or do, choose? (And how do we do that when it actually is not permanent, or even sustainable??) How do we let ourselves relax into something we resent?
How do we adjust to this and not just endure it?
Other than some routines, chores and walks that are helping us endure this life, we haven't really adjusted. We haven't settled our souls into this life. I have't. I have been holding back, biding time, waiting for the good to resume. But that's no way to live the only life we really get - this one we have today.
Adjusting is accepting. Even typing that sentence feels hard. I don't want to accept that the trips and plans we've been looking forward to all year are gone. I don't want to accept that summer might be a wasteland of emptiness (or some other, less dire way of saying that which I will come to after more acceptance). But I want to live as fully and joyfully present as possible in the actual life that is happening right now.
I've decided to adjust.
Tonight is the kick-off of our coronavirus quarantine twice weekly "Family Fun Night."
Each Family Fun Night will have an Entertainment Director (tonight: me). The activity will be a surprise. Ok, I'll tell you: Tonight I plan to give everyone 60 seconds to select an object in the house, and then we'll film commercials for the items featuring how they can be uniquely useful during Quarantine.
Here's hoping it meets our needs for fun, play and connection.
How are you living in your life right now?
What realizations have hit you during in this?
What have you had to adjust to?
How have you resisted adjusting?
How has adjusting or accepting freed you?
CONNECTING RITUAL:
When I was four years old, standing with my dad in the church narthex, a man came over and showed my dad his one year sobriety chip. When he walked away my dad explained to me what the chip meant, and then he taught me the Serenity Prayer. I was charmed. I had never heard of a pre-written prayer before. And I found the prayer itself very clever and insightful. I recited it to myself all the way home until I had it memorized.
The Serenity Prayer was written in 1932 by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous in 1941. It goes:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Perhaps, tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might pray in this way, and so join our hearts:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
like...
grant me the courage to change the things I can,
like...
and grant me the wisdom to know the difference.
Amen.
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