It is enough …

Usually, one will wake before the other, crawling into my lap to snuggle while she wakes. 

This time, Evie slept way longer, so by the time she curled up, Mae Belle was ready to play. So I sat on the couch with Evie snuggling sweetly on one leg and Mae Belle playing on the other. 

As I tried my hardest to be still and snuggly on my right half for Evie, and playful, bobbing Mae Belle back and forth on my left, it hit me that life feels a lot like this right now. 

On one hand, our whole entire lives have been upended, and we have all had to figure out how to take in-person life and convert it to online. Many of us have hustled, learned, failed, tried again and lived to tell about it. We have Zoomed, Face-timed, Marco Polo’d and Google hung out until we are ready to throw our phones and laptops into a wall. I think my brain hurts at the end of the day partially because I am exhausted from staring at a screen. 

But also … 

I have cooked, taken long walks with my family, found a routine that is simple and sweet, and gotten time I would have never had with my girls.

And these two categories rarely fall into neat distinctions. They are often clamored together. It feels kind of like trying to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time …

Every day I wake up and pray for strength for the roller coaster that is ahead. I will think of a new way to be the church, exhilarated for a future that God is calling us toward. We will never be the same, thank God! And then, I get opposing news that maybe we are going back, or maybe we aren’t. I learn of an organization I love that may not be able to financially weather this storm. I hear that someone I know is sick. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers. 

I’ve learned since moving up north, (yep, that’s right – Kentucky is north compared to Southern Louisiana and Southeast Texas where I grew up) that I tend to get a bit of seasonal depression during February and March. But what surprises me every single year is that I don’t ever realize how down I have been until spring comes and I start to feel like myself again. 

The other day, while making the bed, it hit me. We won’t realize how much we have carried until life feels normal again … 

I know we aren’t going back to the normal we used to know. But I do believe there will be a day when we can socialize with our friends, go into public without fear, and worship in our sanctuaries. There will be a time when we start to feel OK again, and I think only then will some of us realize how much we have carried and how far we have been stretched. 

And all of this is to say, go easy on yourselves, loves. It may be Spring, but I think, for many, it probably feels a lot more like winter. 

Or maybe … you can feel Winter on your right leg and Spring on your left. Not fully where you want to be but not where you were either. Goodness, it is hard to be pulled in opposite directions. 

As I sat there with Mae and Evie on my lap, who will be 4 this week, I thought to myself how far I have come in learning how to be their mommy. I may be constantly pulled in opposite directions, but I am doing it, maybe even getting better at it. 

It may not be perfect, but it is enough. 

Friends, we may not be doing this pandemic thing perfectly, but we are doing it, and that is enough.