I wept. Commiserative grief, survivor’s guilt, and all-consuming powerlessness pushed at my soul after listening to the news about all the plants full of COVID infected but non-symptomatic mothers and fathers. This drowning sadness triggered in me historical vignettes of the marginalized WWII prisoners dejectedly lining up to enter what they thought was a work camp, but for the old, feeble, or the very young, was a death march into the incinerators.
My youngest granddaughter called and we were face timing, a regular happening during this season of isolation. It’s killing her that she hasn’t been able to see her chickens that she picked out as babies and brought home. She likes for me to walk around our garden paths to see how “her” plants are growing: the green beans reaching with their first tendrils to climb the trellis and the eggplant and okra poking their heads out but waiting for the heat to really thrive.
I am an introvert and an enneagram one. Before our current mandated “social distancing,” I used to retreat to my home anyway from the demands of social gatherings in which I usually felt like a bumbling misfit.
What do home-made medical masks have to do with my missing church?
We all have resurrection stories. My ninth grade English teacher, Ms. Heath, emphasized that for a story to have impact, it must include:
I’m challenged by why temperance/self-control are the final bookends of the nine spiritual gifts listed in Galatians 5:22-23. What’s so special about self-control?