Category Archives: faith

Last year in April I had a cough that wouldn’t quit. Like most people who coughed in 2020, I wondered whether I had COVID-19, so I called my primary doctor and she suggested I come in to get tested. This was early in the days of testing before our community became proficient at drive-through testing. I drove up to the clinic door where I was met by a kind nurse who explained which door I would walk into. I parked my car and took with me only my mask and car fob to avoid the potential of contaminating my phone or purse. This might sound silly now, but April was a time of great unknown and we interpreted what we did not know about COVID-19 with heightened suspicion.

After following the kind nurse in the door and down an empty hallway, she deposited me in an exam room where I waited. After a brief wait, one of my favorite LPN’s checked me out and I waited alone in that room for the results of the strep test before going home to wait a few days for the results of the COVID-19 test. In the exam room, I waited about 20 minutes. Twenty minutes alone in a room in a wing of the clinic that was hauntingly empty with no phone therefore no Kindle book. It was me in a shroud of silence. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting is art, perhaps, in that it becomes what you make of it. It can be perturbing or relaxing. You are given time to stew or to notice. I chose to notice. I noticed what it was like to be utterly alone in a time when we were exceptionally careful of each other. So worried about ourselves and one another. I noticed the courage of the medical professionals doing their own waiting between tests. Each test moving them further into a global pandemic, something they had prepped but never experienced. We were all new to this waiting.

No, I did not have COVID-19. My cough stuck with me another couple of months, and nearly a year later, so has my experience waiting.

Much of the time we are waiting. Waiting for someone to come home. Waiting for water to boil. Waiting for kids to go to bed. Waiting for husbands to surprise us with coffee. Waiting for tulips to push out of the soil. Waiting for the bus. Waiting for the internet to speed up. The next time you find yourself waiting, you might embrace it as a time of noticing.

Lent is six weeks of waiting for Easter Sunday. We notice in the waiting how human and fragile we are and Jesus was. We are absolutely vulnerable to everything in these bodies God blew out of the dust and then climbed into in Bethlehem. We are vulnerable to broken bones and a broken heart. To insidious coughs and scary diagnoses. Notice in this last stretch of waiting during Lent that you are fragile and so is this life. Look around, notice and take inventory of what matters. Moments matter, relationships matter, Christ’s forgiveness matters, each season of your life matters, you matter.

Thank you, Jesus, for periods of waiting, and for showing up so we never wait alone.

A question for littles

Do you think Jesus ever has to wait for anything?

A question for former littles

What is the next big thing you are waiting for?

A spiritual practice

The next time you are waiting in line, resist the urge to go to your phone. Notice what is around you. Can you pray silently for someone you see? Or for the person who will later clean the floor you are standing on? What do you notice as you wait?

“Let’s play Graveyard!” shouted the day campers. And no, this was not Vampire Camp, it was Bible Camp.

Growing up, day campers like me loved the game Graveyard. We spread out and lay down in any position we chose. Whoever could be silent and the absolute stillest (dare I say corpse-like) the longest was the winner. Counselors walked around and removed from the game anyone not acting like they belonged in a graveyard.

Only when I became a counselor years later did I recognize the genius of this game. Graveyard interrupted the cacophony of camper noise and bought the staff several minutes of complete and utter silence. In fact, I think as a camper we played this game after lunch and I wonder now if when the counselors were “inspecting the graveyard” they were actually napping.

For most moms of littles, silence only comes in the beloved moments of naptime, if it comes at all. In later decades of life, the silence can be unbearable. Perhaps life is lived in seasons of longing for and dreading silence. Last year I spent four days on a silent retreat at Pacem in Terris hermitage in Northern Minnesota, where silence felt like a cold cup of water on a steamy hot day. I left so refreshed after listening to silence day after day. Of course, the silence was not completely without sound. There were rustling leaves, singing birds, tiptoeing deer and raindrops. And silence itself has its own words for you. When you find yourself with silence, it will have so much to say whether you are together four days or four minutes or even four seconds.

Yet we hardly ever find ourselves alone with silence because we cover the mouth of silence with music, podcasts, tv shows, and video games. If we really want to hear what silence has to say, we can brush our teeth with the bathroom door closed and possibly ignore the wiggling fingers at the door. We can keep the radio off in the car, walk without headphones, or make dinner without turning on a device. What might the silence say to you?

We are halfway through Lent, only a few weeks from the day we are awaiting. These weeks of reflection require some silence to be ready for the silence that awaits us in the empty tomb. On Easter Sunday, the silence has everything to say you. It will say, “And you thought death was final.” Or, “Look what God does when all hope is lost.” Or maybe, “Silence is the secret promise that everything will be okay in the end if you can just hold on a bit longer.”

A question for littles

When and where are we expected to be quiet? (at the library, sometimes at church, during the National Anthem, sometimes at school, when we listen to someone else pray) Why are we expected to be quiet then?

A question for former littles

How do you decide what notifications on your phone to turn on or off? Do you ever feel overwhelmed by them? Do the notifications make it difficult to relax?

A spiritual practice

Take a walk and don’t invite your phone. Listen to what is going on around you and what you hear in your own head.