Like many, I woke up on Easter to the tragic news of the terrorist bombing in Sri Lanka. Having buried a daughter and my mother, I can only imagine the grief gripping those who lost children, spouses or parents in the blasts. Whole families were obliterated, but the victims included more than the terrorists’ targets.
It isn’t hard to find something to be unhappy about these days. The melting ice caps. Racial and economic injustice. The high cost of education and medical care. The opioid epidemic. I suppose Lent is as good a season as any to be miserable as we recognize the grievous condition of the human heart and of the harm our actions have wrought on humanity.
With the deep chill of a Maine February upon us and five children hanging around our house on a one-week school vacation, it was time to get out and have fun. So, while our older children played a board game around the kitchen table, my husband, Dana, and I gathered our two youngest boys and headed to a local pool. No sooner were we in the water, than 5-year-old Ezra spotted his former swimming teacher and paddled over to join her class.
My mother’s journals sat in a box in my garage. They covered 40 years – from soon after she chose to follow Jesus, on our Oregon farm, to living in Israel, Russia and Azerbaijan, working as a linguist and Bible translator. And before she died, she’d asked me to destroy them. “But Mom,” I’d protested, driving her home from one of her many doctor’s appointments during her final months with cancer. “Those are the stories of your life. They are a treasure.”
Wife, mom, writer, friend, sharing God in my everyday life through “Faith Notes.”