It has been ten weeks since I last posted. I was in a rhythm of writing, Bible study, small groups, and daily responsibilities. Then one of the kids was home sick most of one week, the other kid the next week, and the first kid again the following week. I got Covid and the girls were promptly and unceremoniously sent home from school. Two days later I received a voicemail saying they could come back to school wearing masks.

Ten days after I tested positive, Michael and the girls followed suit, so the kids were home for an entire week. I cleared my schedule. I felt good about the increased flexibility I noticed in myself, which allowed me to be available to the kids. At the same time though, I’d been distant with Michael all month, and wondered why he hadn’t complained. Should I accept this lack of stress in our relationship with gratitude, or worry that something is brewing?

It has been a long two months, unexpected in so many ways—in my heart, my schedule, my relationships. I feel fragile. I feel courageous. I wonder if I am growing up. I wonder at the beautiful people God has placed around me.

I missed (both meanings of the word) prayer group and Bible study because I was sick; then again because the kids were sick; and now we’ve adjourned for summer. Why is it that the loveliness of spring is often painted in the uncomfortable hues of transition and farewell?

Amongst the sickness and schedule upheaval, I took a wild ride in regard to my identity in Christ, shedding some things, feeling in turn brave, naked, empowered, confused. I wondered how all those feelings fit in gospel freedom. I went into a state of near panic trying to receive freedom in Christ. Then I realized in all the trying I had forgotten to sit down, to enjoy the presence of Jesus in me.

One morning I cried tears of gratitude for a deep sense of hope. A lot of mornings I slept in. Am I struggling with depression? Why did I suddenly stop writing? I noticed I didn’t feel the need to plan anything big for my birthday this year. I wasn’t sure if this apparently casual attitude was a sign of grace or depression. Do grace and depression sometimes look the same?

I have sung, cried, read, prayed, hoped, been held up by friends, and gone on a lot of coffee dates. I enjoyed hours of tender care from Nurse Nature while I had Covid, lying in bed listening to the rain and wind, Mother’s Day weekend. When I ventured out of bed I enjoyed the window shelf full of cards and flowers and treats I received for my birthday and Mother’s Day. Evidence that I married up, and also that I friended up.

If the illness and emotions weren’t enough turmoil for me—ever the avoider of change—I also fasted and prayed for three days, and we stepped down from home-church leadership after six years. That was emotional and difficult, but good. Does change cause discomfort, or discomfort cause change? I suspect it’s both.

As I flounder, I reach for certainty, forgetting that it has been a life-threatening taskmistress. But my body and my soul have not forgotten, and they recoil. They panic; I hold on tighter. Until I become acutely aware of this: the apparent safety of certainty is available only if I am willing to hold still and breathe shallow. About the time I get lightheaded, I decide I’d rather breathe deep, even if it requires that I consider alternatives to certainty—curiosity, rest and unrest, a sojourn in the wilderness.

When I become aware that comfort and discomfort are both acceptable experiences—when I allow myself to receive the wilderness—perhaps then belonging finds me. Fixating on comfort has estranged me from belonging. But there was a time I belonged, a time I remember in feelings rather than facts, before I knew that life is hard and before I reached for control to make it better. Today I cannot pretend any longer that control is serving me well, and I allow myself to remember that long-ago place of belonging, the set-your-bags-down feeling of arriving home.

It’s an unusual homecoming; an arrival initially unapparent to anyone, even me. But I remember as a child the feeling of coming home; remember where the spare key was hidden, in the garage, in the glass jar filled with nuts and bolts and little metal pieces that someone found and didn’t want to throw away in case they belonged to something important. I remember the smell of the garage—cardboard boxes and tires. Funny how even the memory of that smell takes me back to what it felt like to belong. To be a child.

I’d like to return there now, find the jar of metal bits and pieces, and carefully extricate the house key. I would let myself in, grateful the house is empty. When no one is home the feeling of belonging is unmarred by expectations. The emptiness is a quiet invitation to sit in whichever room I choose, or to stare out the window for an unacceptably long time. Being alone in a place of belonging is better than any company in a place of performance.

If I unexpectedly slipped from belonging to performance those many years ago as a child, could I unexpectedly slip back now? Could I close the door on all the houses filled with people and noise and endless expectations? I have been accepted in those houses, but so tired. My childhood house of quiet, softened by the hum of the refrigerator, invites me to return. Yet while I relish this memory of belonging, I know I cannot slip back to it.

I will never again be a little child, unconcerned for my safety and unashamed of who I am. But if my childhood won the award for simplicity, my adulthood wins for being brave enough to grow from a seed to a sapling, to risk sun and rain and wind, when they are gentle and when they are terrifying. God’s Spirit was my soil as a child, and it remains my soil. I am okay; I am never alone; I always belong. I belong in comfort and discomfort, known and unknown, well-worn pews or wilderness.

Photo by César Coni from Pexels