Good morning everyone,
In case you missed it, this past Monday I experimented with a community post where people chimed in with responses. I think you would be helped and encouraged by the interaction back on that post. Maybe we will do that again in August!
This week in our home feels like a lot of life; two people are getting settled in a new apartment, one person got his wisdom teeth out and went to college orientation, and another is studying for his learner’s permit test. We knew it was a lot to have little kids close together on the front end — one was teething, another was potty-training, while a third was working through night terrors. But we underestimated the other end of the equation: teens close together is just as busy (if not more so) than babies close together. And the stakes feel much, much higher. Please pray for us!
The Part Where There’s an Essay: Am I Doing This Right?
Last Friday I went for a run.
Strike that -- last Friday I went for a walk/jog. It was one of those training runs for beginners that counts out the time for you; one that tells you that at least you showed up, so you’re doing great. I wanted to be mad at the lady on the app for being so condescending, but I couldn’t. She was right -- at least I showed up. I wouldn’t have been able to do much more than she was asking me to do, either.
A few years ago, I ran regularly. 10Ks were my preferred distance for accountability and challenge; there’s one here in Charlotte that takes you through all the hills and nearly kills you. I finished it twice. I ran a half marathon with David. I found an intense post-run yoga routine that meant my knees never complained, and I rarely had pain on my day off.
Why do we fall off disciplines like this? In my case, it was a combination of my own season and one for my kids. People needed to be driven to more places, I had more to do in various places, and it just wasn’t a priority anymore. I was able to make it to the gym occasionally, and I liked lifting, too, so I did that for a while.
And then (this will be an entry in nearly every story I write now, I think) there was a pandemic. Remember that? Yeah, it is kind of still going on. It would have been a great time to get back to running outdoors, but as I’ve said before, my mind shut off for a while and I pretty much just wanted to make bread, work in my garden, and be mad at the world.
Then, a year ago, I had invasive surgery on one of my feet to relieve a bone spur on the top of my foot. So no running then. A good time to sit with my feet up and eat more homemade bread.1
Within the last six months, I experienced the death of a parent, some drastic changes with friends, the beginning of a new job, and (just in the last week) two kids have moved out, with a third on the way out within the month.
It seems like a terrible time to try to begin a new running program -- but also, it seemed like the perfect time.
It’s been a weird season recently; one where I am tempted to look in the mirror and go “am I doing this right?” There’s no playbook for a season like this one. A perfectionistic rule-follower like myself really wants more direction and assurance that I’m doing it “right.” But the assurance isn’t there.
So for now “doing it right” means putting one foot in front of the other and taking the next step. A lot of the time, “doing it right” means evaluating what is wise right now, today, and hoping that it still seems wise tomorrow, next month, or next year.
The same grace that has greeted me in the morning upon waking through an intense time of childrearing, homeschooling, health challenges, faith challenges, and the rest -- is still greeting me through the grief and confusion of this season. I do not know any more about the future now than I did then.
Grace for the ordinary everyday. Grace to show up, just like the lady on the running app told me to.
Give us this day our daily bread. - Mt. 6:11
For the Anglophiles
Did you know that every swan swimming in open water in the United Kingdom is the legal property of the sitting monarch? I loved this one bit of explanation from the Visit Thames website: “This specific legal expression implies that the right has been exercised for so long that it has never been challenged. In theory it stretches as far back as 'legal memory' itself, fixed by statute as starting from the accession of Richard I in 1189.”
Last week was the week for Swan Upping, so they were out counting and checking in on the swans and the new cygnets. This takes place on the Thames River between Sunbury and Abingdon (Oxfordshire).
Reads & Listens of the Week
Stories Pitched by Our Parents: This American Life rounded up the stories that their families always bug them about, and gave them a shot. Then they voted on their favorite.
My very favorite thing this week: Alan Noble on Reasons Why I Haven’t Said Anything on Twitter (about that event that happened or might happen or we thought was going to happen). Character assassination related to what a person does or doesn’t post about on social media is rampant recently, isn’t it?
The C.S. Lewis podcast wrapped up season six with “On Living in an Atomic Age.” This is one you might have seen circulating when Covid first started. It contains the quote:
If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
This week I saw a trailer for See How They Run, which looks perfectly delightful. It seems like Hollywood got the message from the success of Knives Out that moviegoers might enjoy a good madcap murder mystery.
The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
Just because I’ve tried to start running again doesn’t mean I’m giving up on breadmaking, just FYI.