hello out there.

There’s just the one topic right now – right?

With all the places and all the things cancelled and postponed, I keep thinking I should end up with time on my hands.

My calendar is completely full of white out and yet – I haven’t caught up on any of the things.

Not really.

It’s been a scramble instead. A scramble to shift classes to some version of online. A scramble to adjust work demands. A scramble to cancel and postpone and rearrange our upcoming literature field trip. To contact all of the locations and lodgings and I still have this feeling that I’m missing something or someone that I was supposed to contact.

That’s okay – I know that’s a piece of the seismic shift the entire world is feeling right now.

It’s the storm. But I’m hoping for the calm.

I know we are all in limbo.

I know the internet is full of words and advice and caution and fear and hope and chaos and constant updates with news and with nothing.

As I tuck my kids into bed each night, we quietly talk about the day. What we’ve read. What we’ve thought. Fears that are new. Fears that are old. How our days have looked similar this week and also looked quite different. How we feel both fine and concerned. How the dog still needs to be let outside and laundry still needs to be done and how we pray for the health and well being of those we love and how we’re disappointed in hopes deferred and plans cancelled.

We play games at the kitchen table and I soothe wounds inflicted by a sibling. We make breakfast and we clean up from breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Snacks. We walk up and down our street and we bake cookies and kids complain about chores and school work and why no one remembers to put their shoes away.

Inside this house, at this moment, life feels rather similar today as it has felt on other days. Days less fraught with wild upheaval in our community.

And so this is how it goes, isn’t it?

The normal. The bizarre. The mundane. The daily rituals. And the cloud over all of our heads collectively. Will my job sustain this global crisis? What will remain? What will shift on its axis this week and never return to what we once knew? And for how long?

The answer to those questions is actually the same as it has always been.

We just don’t know.

It’s just – we’re extra aware of how little we know. Extra reminded of our position in this world.

And extra reminded that we need a Jesus who is the hope of all of our hurting hearts. Of all of our “do the next right thing” answers. Of all of our regular Thursday activities and of all our Thursday fears.

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